Chicago’s Latin School refuses parents’ request for records of son who died by suicide after bullying, new lawsuit says
The parents of a Latin School of Chicago student who died by suicide in 2022 after being bullied “relentlessly” filed a second lawsuit on June 5 against the elite private school for refusing to hand over their son’s records, including his multiple reports of being bullied, the suit says.
The original lawsuit was filed in April 2022 and alleges the Gold Coast school turned a “blind eye” to the 15-year-old’s situation.
“We are entitled to our child’s school records, regardless of a loss,” said Robert Bronstein, father of Nate Bronstein, who died in January 2022. “Any parent is, and the school has that statement in their policies and in their handbook that says if a parent wants their children’s school files, here’s the department that you go to. They are refusing because, obviously, whatever’s in the school files will show their negligence.”
The initial suit alleges that near the beginning of the 2021-22 school year, a student at the school, whose parents are named in the initial lawsuit, spread a false rumor that Nate was unvaccinated. According to the Bronsteins, though Nate was vaccinated, he was harassed about his perceived vaccination status. According to the lawsuit, Nate had transferred to Latin from Francis Parker School in Lincoln Park because Latin offered in-person learning during that period of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The bullying soon escalated as junior varsity basketball team members at Latin cyberbullied Nate in a group chat and the social media app Snapchat, according to the initial lawsuit.
The initial suit states that on Dec. 13, 2021, a student sent a Snapchat message to Nate encouraging him to kill himself, which led him to meet with a school administrator to report the bullying.
“We were aware of the bullying because he would come home and share with us information about what kids were doing to him,” said Nate’s mother, Rosellene Bronstein. “The isolation, the exclusion, the not feeling welcome. But Rob and I were not made aware of the cyberbullying that happened — ever.”
Rosellene Bronstein said the Latin School failed to notify them that Nate reported events of cyberbullying to the dean of students, Bridget Hennessy, on Dec. 12, 2021, leading him to an in-person meeting with Hennessy the following day.
“Rob and I did not find out about that meeting until Jan. 27 of 2022,” Rosellene Bronstein said. Nate died Jan. 13, 2022.
“As human beings, we will never heal from this,” his mother said. “It terrorizes me and haunts me day after day. I suffer from severe post-traumatic stress disorder from this as well. No human being should ever have to go through this, but our mission is to heighten awareness of how dangerous bullying and cyberbullying is. I don’t think that society has woken up to the fact that this is an urgent crisis and a true epidemic.”
In an email Thursday, Latin School said, “out of respect for all involved, we believe it is not appropriate to comment on this litigation at this time.”
Darra, executive director of the Insight Project for Kids and a 1981 graduate of Latin School, said there is a desperate need for social-emotional learning tools for teenagers. Darra, who uses just one name, has worked with students across more than 16 Chicago public schools on stress management solutions, including coping with bullying.
She said she tried to get social-emotional learning into Latin School by sending several proposals to administrators over the years, but they never responded.
“There was a lot of stress and a lot of emotional angst going on when I was there,” Darra said. “And so I just assumed that these kids needed extra help nowadays. Students can be high achievers and still have a lot of emotional issues.”
Techniques at Insight Project for Kids aimed at managing stress include different forms of meditation, yoga, mindful breathing, group therapy and counseling.
“I give them about 20 or 30 things they can do during moments of stress because many kids really need help. For some, there’s no adult, no friends, no one they think they can go to to talk about the hard stuff, their feelings or experiences,” Darra said. “They also end up teaching each other or teaching their parents because everybody’s dealing with it.”
The new lawsuit states that Latin violated a state law that requires all Illinois schools to investigate reports of bullying and notify parents of students involved. It also accuses the school of allowing a culture of bullying — something that has been discussed extensively on an Instagram account called Latin Survivors that highlights alleged instances of bullying, harassment and hate speech from current and former students.
According to the new lawsuit, the Bronsteins’ attorney, Danielle Gould, emailed Latin School’s attorney, Michael Trucco of the law firm Stamos & Trucco, on April 6 to request Nate’s student records.
Although handing over student records does not require a lawyer, Robert Bronstein said that because of the pending lawsuit they requested their son’s file through counsel. The school declined after more than two months of requests.
“They don’t want us to put it out in the public. They don’t want us to embarrass them, but we’re entitled to do whatever we want with our children’s school files. They belong to us,” Rosellene Bronstein said. “That’s why they won’t give them to us. But if they had nothing to hide, if there was documentation that they did everything by the book and followed law, what problem do they have turning our school files over to us?”
The Latin School of Chicago handbook says parents can examine the files upon contacting the division director for an appointment. The files contain copies of all grade reports, standardized test scores, correspondence involving the student, teacher notes, disciplinary records and other miscellaneous records and papers, according to the handbook found on the school’s website.
The email exchange between Nate and Hennessy on Dec. 12, 2021, fell within the scope of the school files, Gould said.
In an email dated May 15, Gould wrote to Trucco that Latin was required to inform the parents in the event of their child reporting bullying and cyberbullying and during the course of the investigation that was supposed to be done following such a report.
According to a response sent by Trucco to Gould on May 30, the Latin School ultimately declined the Bronsteins’ request for Nate’s school files because the handbook is not a “contractual obligation.”
In the same response, Trucco also said the Bronsteins made repeated public statements about the school, its faculty, staff, administration and board “that are incomplete, misleading, disparaging and defamatory” and cited that as a reason to decline their request.
Rosellene Bronstein said there is an absence of urgency in how the school deals with situations that require it.
In 2021, shortly after the bullying allegedly began and before she knew about the cyberbullying, Rosellene Bronstein said she communicated with a school counselor about Nate’s experience. At one point, she told the counselor she believed her son might hurt himself and asked for a recommendation for a psychiatrist, the initial lawsuit stated.
“I had given the school notice far in advance that I was concerned about my son’s behaviors and the state of his mental health and I was seeing that he was not his normal self at home,” she said. “And the fact that he was being attacked on Snapchat and on a text thread and he goes to an adult at the school to say I need help, you would think that would be a bigger red flag for them to say, ‘We really need to circle back with the parents and tell them this is going on too.’”
Rosellene Bronstein said it wasn’t just her family that was kept in the dark, but also the parents of the students involved in the bullying.
“All parents, understandably, always have their child’s best interests in mind. A lot of the parents of the bullies in our case have expressed tremendous frustration and disappointment at the Latin School,” she said. “Not only were they not informed when the school was required to inform them in December, the school didn’t inform them after our son died. Many of these people found out about their child’s involvement when our attorney contacted them six weeks later.”
Other people in the community found out even later. Geneva Porter, a parent of two former Latin School students, first connected with Rosellene Bronstein through the Bronsteins’ anti-bullying organization, Buckets Over Bullying. Because her children were in the lower school, Porter didn’t know about Nate’s suicide until the school sent out a public response after students returned from winter break in 2022.
“The responses that the school sent out while we were still there sickened me — just the lack of empathy, like, ‘We have nothing to do with this, we know you heard about it, know that we will stay strong in this,’” Porter said. “What in the world?”
The email sent out on April 28, 2022, expressed condolences to the Bronstein family, saying, “This was devastating for all of us, but none of us are as devastated or heartbroken as the Bronstein family. Our hearts continue to go out to them, and we offer them our full support as they continue to grieve and grapple with their loss.”
The message addressed the lawsuit before outlining the school’s policies on bullying: “This week, the Bronstein family filed a lawsuit against Latin and several individuals, and the media has reported on it. While we are not going to comment on the specifics of the lawsuit at this time, we disagree with the assertions and believe we will prevail in court.”
Porter said her family noticed a pattern of behavior from Latin School over the years.
“The children have to know that the administration is on their side, and is doing something so they can feel safe. And I don’t feel like that was the case,” Porter said. “And classism also comes into play. I felt like depending on the perpetrator, that determined how swift the administration would act, unfortunately.”
One parent who requested anonymity over fears of retaliation from community members took her two elementary-aged children out of Latin School last year after a series of incidents.
“There were situations where our child would get hit by other kids and after it’s happened a couple of times, there needs to be some accountability,” she said on Wednesday. “There was also inappropriate touching where some boys would hit girls on their butts, and we’re talking like 6, 7 years old, and at that point, that shouldn’t be happening.
“We reported things like that and were told that, ‘Yes, there are some issues and whatever your family can help us do.’ And OK, we see schools as a partnership with us as a family and we’re willing to help make some changes, but it has to come from the top — from administration and from concerned staff, and we didn’t see that,” the parent said.
Over the seven years that her children attended Latin School, the parent said it was eye-opening how often school administrators failed to mitigate serious concerns.
“When it became a pattern and a problem, I felt our child was being applauded for being a victim,” the parent said. “‘Thank you for not retaliating; thank you for coming to us.’ They did nothing to let my daughter know they would handle this. That was very disturbing.”
Upon learning of Nate’s suicide, the parent decided to transfer her children to another school.
“I felt like I didn’t want to sacrifice my children’s personal and emotional well-being in the name of a great education,” she said.
The lack of accountability on the school’s part is characteristic of the affluent private school where tuition exceeds $40,000 a year, Robert Bronstein said.
“What we’ve learned is that it’s a toxic culture, and it’s arrogant and errs on the side of ‘because we have this prestigious reputation, because people are lining up to pay us $43,000 a year to send our kids here, we don’t have to follow the rules,’” he said.
Rosellene Bronstein added: “They don’t care about the students, they don’t care about the families, they certainly don’t care about the victims. They selfishly worry about themselves, their endowment, their careers; every action they’ve taken has shown callousness, and selfishness, and a tremendous disrespect to our son and his memory.”
The initial suit asks for $100 million on multiple counts. The Bronsteins said they plan to share any money from the lawsuit with anti-bullying organizations.
