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Parents tell Forest Hills board bullying and safety issues at Ada Vista require urgent action
Summary
Several parents told the Forest Hills Board of Education during public comment that bullying, classroom instability and delayed incident reporting at Ada Vista Elementary have escalated and asked the district for an independent audit of incident reporting, clearer parent communication and confidential staff reporting.
Several parents urged the Forest Hills Board of Education on May 18 to act urgently after describing what they said were ongoing bullying, classroom instability and failures to communicate incidents at Ada Vista Elementary.
Kristen Lipschitz, a parent of a second‑grader at Ada Vista, told the board she had not experienced direct harm to her own child but had been hearing multiple troubling accounts from other parents about bullying and safety incidents that she said were not communicated to families. "When parents follow every process available to them for months and still cannot get straight answers about their children's safety, something's wrong," she said during the public comment period.
Karen Lewis, who said she is speaking on behalf of other parents who could not attend, described improvements in one classroom after the district assigned an additional adult but argued the pattern of complaints suggests systemwide inconsistency. Lewis asked the board to consider "an independent audit of incident reporting, developing a clear parent communication policy with defined standards for incident reporting and student safety, creating a confidential reporting system for teachers and staff, and ensuring restorative practices are used consistently throughout the district."
Susan Firdi, who volunteers in Ada Vista classrooms, described an April 21 incident her kindergarten daughter reported at home after being struck and said a scheduled meeting with the principal had been canceled repeatedly and not rescheduled. "This is not simply a classroom issue. It's a leadership and systems issue," she told the board.
Heather Bartholomew, a parent and a fourth‑grade teacher in another district, urged the board to recognize rising social‑emotional dysregulation among students and to address what she called failures in the system that leave families to seek help at board meetings.
Board members thanked the speakers and said the appropriate district representatives would follow up with commenters who requested it. The board then moved into closed session later in the meeting under Michigan statute MCL 15.268(1)(c).
