March 16, 2005

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Palo Alto Online

Stricter guidelines for robotics team?

by Alexandria Rocha

Like unruly parents reprimanded at their children's sporting events, the parents -- and student members -- of next year's Gunn High School Robotics Team will have to sign behavioral contracts promising to stay in line.

"I want to make it clear that at a certain point, parents and students may have to accede some control. They may not be able to get their way just because they're the loudest people," said Bill Dunbar, Gunn teacher and robotics coach.

In January, two students on the team received restraining orders at the request of two classmates, causing Dunbar to take a month-long leave of absence and Principal Noreen Likins to shut the program down for the remainder of the year.

While district officials said the orders were unnecessary, the two students who filed the orders and the parent who guided their complaints said the district ignored their reports of harassment for nearly two years.

Despite what school officials say, a judge in the Superior Court of California, Santa Clara County granted the restraining orders Jan. 28 -- one for a female team member who accused a male of sending her hundreds of unwanted instant messages and staring at her in class, and a second for a teen who said he was being bullied by another male on the team.

As this situation escalated, the robotics team quickly grabbed headlines. Various Web blogs also surfaced with team members, parents and outsiders firing off dozens of rumors -- none of which made what really happened inside the classroom any clearer.

Some said the team's dissolution had more to do with the one overbearing and disgruntled parent who guided his daughter and her friend to file the restraining orders in a massive power play to take control of the team. Others said the two students' complaints of harassment were concealed by the team's coach, principal and district administration to avoid tarnishing the award-winning robotics program. Some even said those involved with the team took the program and themselves way too seriously.

Dunbar, who has returned to the school to teach his other classes, including advanced placement physics and engineering technology, said he will re-launch the program next school year.

This week Dunbar is handing out applications to students who want to join the 50-member team. The four students involved with the restraining orders are seniors and will graduate this year.

"The policies we want to set up are to protect the people we think are innocent: the teacher and the students on the team who are just trying to be students and they're not doing anything particularly malicious," he added.

Dunbar said robotics team members and parents already have to sign a slew of paperwork, such as typical classroom rules and regulations and student expectations.

"What I don't have is a place to sign at the bottom that says if you don't adhere to these things, you'll be removed," Dunbar said. "If someone is removed from the team, we can say this is why."

Many school programs and clubs already require students and parents to sign various guideline and access documents.

"I don't think (a behavioral contract is) a particularly unusual thing," Board of Education President John Barton said. "Every organization has a code of conduct. I wouldn't read too much into it."

Dunbar, however, is advocating that administration and board members take the district's conduct policies one step further by writing and adopting procedures to deal with parent complaints -- a notion two board members said is highly unlikely.

"These are parents and they have rights. We can't tell a parent they can't say things because they have rights," Barton said.

Mandy Lowell, the board's vice president, said it would be impossible to draft a policy that would cover every incident.

"As well-intentioned people are in wanting to craft a policy, being a lawyer I know that no matter how well drawn your policies are, you're going to have conflicts," she said.

Dunbar said he has not written the behavioral contract yet, but plans to have it finished sometime this spring when next year's team members are selected.

"I'm tremendously optimistic that this team has a bright future," he said.

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