An Elite School, a Boy's Suicide and a Question of Blame

[brooklynite]

New York Times

Ellis Lariviere was an eighth grader at Saint Ann’s, an elite private school in Brooklyn Heights, and he had a lot going for him. Teachers praised him as an “abundantly talented” artist, in a school that trumpeted the arts, and they described him as a positive presence in his classes. He had friends at school and an older brother who was thriving there. Ellis liked to cook for his family, and he imagined himself one day being a professional. He also had dyslexia and an attention deficit disorder, and he struggled to express complex thoughts in writing.

On Feb. 3, 2021, the school informed his mother by email that, “despite recent progress,” he could not return for ninth grade.

Ellis asked his parents if it was the school’s decision or theirs. When they told him, “he just cried a lot,” his mother, Janine Lariviere, said. “He didn’t want comfort from me. He was very hurt. This is the most painful thing for me, because I didn’t know how to protect him.”

Three months later, in the family home in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Ellis ended his life. He was 13.

This April, his parents filed suit against the school, its head and its trustees, arguing that its practices caused their son’s death and demanding changes in school policies. In their suit, they quote the last line of Ellis’s suicide note: “Don’t let the school do an assembly about this.”

The suit pits a prestigious private school’s right to select its student body against its responsibilities to the students under its care. If a student develops a learning disability after being accepted, does the school still owe him the attention and education it promised?

[flying_wahini]

1. I'd be so sick with anger I don't know if I could go on. Such a horrible waste.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. The school separated him from his brother

This was more than a complex learning dyslexia disability. This was family ties, ignored, rendered. Great school administrators or psychologists would have paid attention.

[Lonestarblue]

3. So sad. The deliberate cruelty to children in this country is horrible.

For the school just to say he can’t return when teachers and administrators there knew the child had issues without having discussions with the parents and helping them find some options is inexcusable. For example, the school cites that he had made progress. Perhaps the parents could have hired a tutor to help him keep making progress and stay in the school.

Suicide rates in adolescents have been rising in recent years. Social media no doubt plays a role as presents role models of the perfect body for girls and boys and bullies those who different. But I believe the hate and anger so prevalent in this country also plays a role as kids struggle to gain acceptance from their peers and from adults. Kids mimic their parents’ beliefs and actions, and if the Trump cult is any example, there are a lot of hateful, mean, angry parents teaching their children to be hateful and mean to kids who aren’t like them. What a messed-up country we have become.