FortBendNow.com

With one notable exception, Amy Deschenes has never been in trouble in school since the 1st grade.

A National Honor Society student at George Bush High School, she is president of the school orchestra, and participates in a variety of volunteer organizations. She has applied to Rice and other universities with the idea of pursuing a career as a chemical engineer.

Could Amy Deschenes also represent a sword-wielding threat to the students and employees on the Bush High School campus?

The answer to that question has focused attention on the judgment of Bush High administrators and the disciplinary policies of Fort Bend Independent School District.

It also may result in the Texas Legislature considering a bill that would, among other things, force Texas school districts to consider “intent or lack of intent” and past disciplinary history, before expelling a student or forcing her into an “alternative education program.”

The single blemish on Amy Deschenes’ otherwise spotless school disciplinary record got there in part because she shares a car with her step-brother. He uses the car on weekends; Amy drives it to school during the week.

A senior at Clements High, her brother studies theater arts and, like most of the rest of his student theater troop, participates in the Texas Renaissance Festival as an actor.

One November weekend when it was his turn for the car, his father gave him a sword to use as a costume prop, which the man had himself purchased at the Renaissance Festival.

Her step-brother left the sword inside its leather sheath in the back of the car that Amy Deschenes drove to Bush High the following week.

That’s where a Fort Bend ISD police officer spotted it on Nov. 12, 2008, while he was preparing to conduct a random drug sweep of the student parking lot, using a department K-9 unit.

It is against Fort Bend ISD policy, and that of most if not all Texas school districts, to allow a student to bring a dangerous weapon onto school grounds.

So when the officer saw what appeared to be a large knife or sword in Amy Deschenes’ car, he called Bush assistant principal Gail Parsons and informed her.

Amy Deschenes said she was called out of class and told to go to the front of the high school building.

Parsons and a police officer escorted her to the parking lot, where two other officers were standing next to her car.

“One of them pointed at a costume sword that could be seen through my hatchback window and asked if I knew where it came from, and if it was mine,” Amy Deschenes said in an account she wrote a few hours after the incident. “I told him that it belongs to my brother and that he got it at the Renaissance Festival. I told them that my brother had put it there on the weekend.”

Parsons asked one of the police officers if they were going to arrest the girl, Amy Deschenes recalled, adding that Parsons said “I know you didn’t interrupt my lunch if no one’s getting arrested.”

The officer “shook his head no and then told me that it is a third-degree felony, but that he was just going to take the sword,” Amy said.

But by the time she went into the school to get her car keys, and returned to open the hatchback for the police, Parsons appeared to be changing the officers’ minds about how the incident would be handled.

Amy Deschenes was told to stand at the front of her car, while Parsons and the police discussed the situation.

“She was telling them that somebody had to do something, that somebody had to get in trouble for this,” Amy Deschenes recalled. “She said that they needed to show that they’re serious.”

Paul Deschanes, Amy’s father, said Fort Bend ISD officials did demonstrate they were serious about the incident, first by attempting to get the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office to agree to press criminal charges, which the DA refused to do.

While this occurred, Amy Deschenes could overhear most of it from an adjoining room, and had several panick attacks severe enough that she had difficulty breathing and a school nurse was called in to help her.

At the end of the day, Amy Deschenes was suspended temporarily from school. She faced a disciplinary hearing the next week, on Nov. 18, 2008.

Neither Parsons nor other Fort Bend ISD officials returned phone calls to provide their account of the incident or subsequent hearing.

“The district does not comment on student disciplinary issues related to a particular student,” Fort Bend ISD Chief Communications Officer Mary Ann Simpson said.

But Paul Deschenes made an audio recording of the sometimes-contentious Nov. 18 hearing, and posted it on an extensive web site he created in part “to bring light to the many cases of ISD administration inappropriate actions in execution of their own policies as well as the abuse of powers they possess to unilaterally make decisions on child welfare without recourse.”

The Deschenes brought an attorney, Joel Nass, to represent Amy during the hearing, which was presided over by Bush High School Principal Shirley Rose. Parsons and Amy Deschenes were the only witnesses.

Nass asked whether school officials already had determined that Amy was guilty of a student conduct violation and whether punishment already had been determined.

Rose said “charges must be supported only on the evidence presented here today,” adding, “no, there hasn’t been a decision.”

But a short time later, Rose also said, “this is an automatic black or white expellable offense.”

Nass appeared to try to show that, as an actor’s prop, the sword constituted an exception under the Texas Criminal Code, on which portions of the Fort Bend ISD Student Conduct Code appear to be based.

“Does it matter to you that this may not be an illegal knife under the Texas Penal Code?” Nass asked Parsons during the hearing.

“No sir, not in this regard,” she replied.

The hearing became somewhat heated a short time later, when Nass stated that school reports created prior to the hearing listed Amy as “a candidate for discipline.”

“I’m going to interrupt,” Rose said. “We’re talking about school email…I will ask as building principal, did you obtain a report from Dr. Parsons?”

“I’m asking Dr. Parsons…” Nass began.

“We’re not attorneys and we’re not lawyers,” Rose interjected. “We’re asking you to come down a little in your language. You explain like we are seniors in high school.”

“Is there already a finding and has a discipline already been assessed” for Amy? Nass asked.

“No sir,” Parsons replied.

(On the web site he created, Paul Deschenes displays what appears to be a document from Bush High, titled “Daily Discipline Report,” dated Nov. 14, four days before Amy’s hearing. the dates Nov. 18 – Feb. 19 are listed, under the heading CAEP/DAEP.)

In a closing statement during the hearing, after Paul Deschenes had presented about a dozen letters of recommendation on Amy’s behalf from past and current teachers, Nass said facts of the incident had revealed “no intent. No threat or danger, and there is not a single person in this room that thinks Amy has a violent hair on her body.”

After the hearing, Rose decided Amy was to spend several weeks in M.R. Wood Alternative Education Center, Paul Deschenes said, adding “it’s dangerous. It’s just like sending a 12-year-old to a gang camp.”

Paul Deschenes said he appealed to Assistant Fort Bend ISD Superintendent Michael McKie, who told Deschenes as an alternative, his daughter could spend seven weeks in an alternative education program at Bush High School.

She recently completed that disciplinary program, and said it consisted of sitting in a cubicle facing the wall, with panels preventing her from seeing whether people were sitting on either side of her.

When she began the disciplinary program, Amy was ranked 11th academically among Bush seniors. While she received class assignments, she received no instruction or guidance except for occasional visits by two of her teachers, and Paul Deschenes said she spent the bulk of the time “doing calculus and reading from a chemistry book.”

When she emerged from her discipline program, according to the Deschenes, Amy ranked 9th in her class. Her father attributed that feat to her teachers taking time after they left school to come to her house and work with her on her assignments.

She’ll take on an assignment of a different sort soon, as Amy Deschenes has been asked to recount her experience before members of the Texas House Committee on Public Education, as the committee considers House Bill 171, introduced by state Rep. Dora Olivo.

Among other things, the bill would force school districts to post their student codes of conduct at each school campus – something already required under the Fort Bend ISD policy, according to Paul Deschenes, but which he said was not done at Bush High School.

Also, in obvious reference to the Amy Deschenes case, the bill states that a district’s student code must, among other things, “specify that consideration will be given, as a factor in a decision regarding suspention, removal to a disciplinary alternative education program, or expulsion, to self-defense; intent or lack of intent at the time the student engaged in the conduct; a student’s disciplinary history; or a disability that substantially impairs the student’s capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of the student’s conduct…”

Since the sword incident, Amy said, she has continued with the school orchestra, and pursuing her advanced-placement classes. But her life has not returned to normal at Bush High.

“Basically, the administration at the school just keeps doing things,” she said without elaboration. “I’m frustrated with them, and tired of them.”