District Superintendent Claims 14-Year-Old Student Bullied Her By Using Her Photo In A Criminal Justice Class Project

from the the-only-adult-here-is-the-one-pulling-her-daughter-out-of-this-district dept

14-year-old Lucero Tovar's project for her criminal justice class was supposed to depict the inside of a courtroom. In an unexpected turn of events, her diorama instead proved an unlikely theory: there's a child running Texas' Santa Maria Independent School District.

A 14-year-old Texas student was suspended last week after she created a diorama of a courtroom using pictures of school board members to represent various people in her project, including a prosecutor and "fake" defendant.

The assignment, which was due Oct. 20, was to create a miniaturized 3D courtroom setting, she told KGBT-TV.

She decided to use photos of school district personnel and elected board members, which she printed out from the Santa Maria Independent School District’s website.

Tovar also used photos of family members and relatives, along with various dead presidents, to ensure every "person" in her diorama had a face.

But one of the people "depicted" in her diorama had a problem with her face being used: Santa Maria ISD superintendent Maria Chavez.


As you can see from this screengrab of KGBT's report, Chavez's face was applied to the "defendant's" body.


Somehow, Superintendent Chavez was informed of Tovar's criminal justice project, resulting in Tovar being called to her school's office.

“The principal just looks at me and is like, ‘You know why you're in here right?’” Tovar explained. “I said no. She said, ‘You're harassing people.’ And I was like, ‘Huh?’ For me, I was like, ‘What?’"

Tovar adds: “She just told me that I was harassing and that she's going to suspend me for 4 days.”

Tovar's mother -- perhaps realizing there would be no reasoning with the childlike-but-in-all-the-wrong-ways entity running the district -- pulled her child from the school rather than deal with the ridiculous suspension.

If you think I'm being too harsh on Maria Chavez (and by extension, everyone under her command), read on. The suspension notice obtained by KGBT says the following:

You are hereby advised that Lucero Tovar is assigned an In-School-Suspension (ISS) from Santa Maria High School for the following Code of Conduct violation(s): damaging innuendo message on class project to another’s reputation — district personnel.

After dodging KGBT reporter Ryan Wolf for an entire day, Maria Chavez finally answered one of his phone calls and made the following statements.

Chavez did not want to appear on camera but said over the telephone how she felt Tovar’s depiction of her and others was “bullying” to personnel...

Chavez said she found the rationale behind her face on the defendant in an orange jumpsuit as “politically” motivated, “distasteful” and a complete deviation from the project’s “requirements."

And while Chavez found it “distasteful,” she told Wolf none of the board members, whose faces are also featured in the project, complained to her about harassment or a damaged reputation.

Chavez also claims Tovar's project caused a "disruption," which is a really lame way to shift blame to the victim. (Meaning the actual victim -- Lucero Tovar -- and not the fake victim who's supposed to be acting like an adult.) There would have been no disruption if school personnel hadn't somehow arrived at the conclusion that Tovar's use of district personnel photos was a form of bullying.

What's even sadder than Chavez's gratuitous display of power is that she continues to maintain the pretense that this is really about Tovar's unwillingness to follow the project's instructions. This assertion (and nothing to back it up) leads to non-sequiturious paragraphs like the following:

There was no written description required, according to Tovar.

Tovar said she was just trying to be creative with the assignment and used photos of her relatives as well.

Wolf asked the superintendent if the teacher listed any requirements to students ahead of the assignment to which she responded “yes.”

Unless the instructions specifically stated that no photos of district personnel were to be used, then this assertion is a painfully stupid attempt at misdirection. Even if there were certain instructions Tovar didn't follow, the worst she should have expected was a low grade from her teacher, not accusations of bullying from the district superintendent and a suspension.

What makes it even stupider is Chavez's actions following the assertion that Tovar didn't follow the project guidelines.

[Chavez] also said [the project instructions] would be faxed over to Action 4 News around noon time.

They were never received as of 11 p.m. Wednesday.

Maria Chavez may not have liked her face being pasted to an orange jumpsuited body, but the proper response for someone in her position would have been to tell the teacher or administrator that brought it to her attention to find something productive to do with their time. Instead, she chose to be the victim in a situation that clearly wasn't crying out for anyone to fill that role. To become the victim, she had to turn a 14-year-old student into someone capable of intimidating the top of the district's organization chart. Now, because she chose to fully inhabit the victim role, she's exposed herself as someone incapable of filling the role of district superintendent and unworthy of the trust inherent to the position.

Filed Under: criminal justice, diorama, lucero tovar, maria chavez, school project
Companies: santa maria high school