The parents of a 16-year-old West Hartford teenager who killed himself last year have slammed the local school system, saying it failed to protect their son.
Hall High School administrators ignored pleas about Lukas Oliver Schreiber’s perilous mental health and suspended him as captain of the swim team two weeks before his death, the teenager’s mother, Heather Schreiber, said at a school board meeting Tuesday night. And the board refused to get involved, she said.
“We reached out to you for help, we asked for intervention,” she told board members. “You did not respond. Two weeks later my children and I found Lucas’ body.”
She said administrators wrongly punished her son for an out-of-school incident while failing to investigate his complaints of being hit by another student’s friend.
Her son had been struck by a major depressive disorder early last year that was severe enough to require a Plan 504 agreement for disabilities accommodations, she said. But when he became embroiled in accusations and counter-accusations of out-of-school bullying last summer, a Hall administrator ignored her son’s mental illness and suspended him as swim team captain, she said.
“People who act are often acting out because they’re hurt. All the discipline was punitive; you’re taking somebody who is already struggling and you’re isolating them, taking things away from them instead of something restorative,” she told The Courant outside the meeting room.
“I want to see adminstrators trained in dealing with students who are in crisis,” she said.
About a month before her son was to begin his senior year, a Hall administrator suspended him from all extracurricular activities for six weeks and from any leadership positions for a half-year, she said.
“He would have lost his swim team captincy, which was the only thing he found good in his life at that time,” she said.
Holger Schreiber, the boy’s father, complained that the school system showed no interest in whether Hall administrators mishandled his son’s situation.
“By not acting and allowing this to happen, you sent a message that it’s OK to have this happen in West Hartford or in another school district,” he told the board. “When this happens again and the parents of a child who hurts themself ask you why you didn’t act, how will you answer those questions?”
Neither the board nor Superintendent Paul Vicinus directly responded to the Schreibers’ remarks; typically, school boards in Connecticut listen to public comment at open meetings but do not answer questions or address allegations.
As Tuesday night’s session opened at town hall, board Chairwoman Lorna Thomas-Farquharson made clear that there would be no specific response to remarks from the public.
“We understand that some parents and community members may wish to speak about concerns involving individual students. Please know that when this happens, the board and superintendent cannot respond publicly,” she said. “This is not out of disregard but because we are legally bound by state and federal laws to protect the privacy of all students.”
Thomas-Farquharson also reminded the audience that school boards supervise the superintendent and set policy, but don’t get involved in classroom issues or day-to-day staff management.
More than a week earlier, Heather Schreiber had announced on social media that she’d be raising questions at the board’s monthly meeting.
“We have met many hard-working and outstanding teachers and administrators over the last 11 years in West Hartford, but we are simply speechless over the carelessness and ignorance we experienced over the last year,” she wrote on a West Hartford community page on Facebook.
“We simply expect a level of accountability, acknowledgement that mistakes were made and a plan to correct these going forward,” Schreiber wrote, saying she and her family had met unproductive meetings with the superintendent and board chair after her son’s death on Aug. 9, 2024. “We experienced nothing but disregard for our concerns. Our very specific questions were answered with silence.”
Heather Schreiber said she wanted the board to find out why Hall’s then-principal insisted on a summertime disciplinary meeting while her family was in the midst of dealing with her son’s mental health crisis. She said her son had just been to the hospital after a suicide threat; she feared the meeting would worsen his condition and he was too despondent to get out of bed, so she attended by herself.
“In tears I begged the principal not to take away Lucas’ leadership position, I feared it would put him further into despair. The response was cold: unless new evidence was presented, Lukas would be found guilty,” she said. “There would be no opportunity to come back when he felt better.”
At the same time, she said, a verbal and physical attack against her son was never investigated.
“When the so-called ‘bullying investigation’ was concluded, Lukas felt betrayed and felt he would never get a fair chance at Hall High School,” she wrote in her Facebook post. “He killed himself two weeks later.”