CMS makes changes at Myers Park. But where’s the accountability?
In Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, what does accountability get you?
A senior administrative position and a six-figure paycheck, apparently.
Myers Park High Principal Mark Bosco has been reassigned to a new position following complaints and protests regarding the school’s handling (or, rather, mishandling) of sexual assault and harassment on campus. Bosco will now be the senior administrator for expanded learning and partnerships in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, earning a salary of $149,462, the same pay he received as principal.
Two former Myers Park students, who filed lawsuits against the district in recent years, have alleged that Bosco and other school officials discouraged them from taking formal action to open Title IX or criminal investigations after they were raped in the woods adjacent to the school in 2014 and 2015. One of the lawsuits, which names Bosco as a defendant, says that Bosco discouraged the then-15-year-old student from filing a formal report because if her rapist was “found innocent,” it would mean she would be found responsible for having sex on campus and could subject her to disciplinary action. (Bosco has denied having said this in court filings.)
Bosco was suspended as principal of Myers Park in August while the district launched an internal investigation into how administrators responded to the cases. Apparently, the investigation has concluded, though the district has yet to release any information about it to the public. But calling it an “investigation” might be generous.
Several student victims of sexual assault told the Observer they were never contacted or interviewed regarding the investigation. One of the women, Nikki Wombwell, said she contacted the school board in August asking that survivors be interviewed as part of the investigation, but nobody responded.
What kind of message does that send to students? To sexual assault survivors? Certainly not that CMS is fully committed to taking their concerns seriously, or to making the changes that students say are needed.
Bosco’s reassignment feels far more like a strategic PR move than it does accountability or justice. It gives the impression that the district wants to straddle the line between placating those who want him gone, and giving the benefit of the doubt to Bosco and others who maintain he did nothing wrong. That’s not fair to students, or to survivors, and it definitely doesn’t do much to dismantle the rape culture students say is present at Myers Park and other CMS schools. There’s not a whole lot of room for compromise or appeasement when it comes to sexual assault and safety.
Yet this seems to be the district’s preferred way of dealing with embattled school administrators. Bosco’s reassignment resembles a similar move made last year, when former Ardrey Kell High principal David Switzer became CMS’s “executive director of continuous improvements and logistics” amid complaints about his response to racial incidents at the school. Dueling petitions, each drawing thousands of signatures, had, respectively, voiced support for Switzer and called for his resignation.
Ultimately, the district is giving Bosco more grace and more protection than survivors ever got. It’s a reminder that the biggest consequences are often endured by sexual assault survivors themselves — not the perpetrators, or the people in power who make it easier for them to get away with it. We don’t know for sure whether Bosco is one of those people, since CMS isn’t saying much about the investigation, but we do know how it turned out: Bosco gets a new job and a steady paycheck, Myers Park gets a new principal and survivors get ... nothing.
At the end of the day, this isn’t just a Mark Bosco problem, or a Myers Park problem; it’s a systemic one. All along, students have said that CMS doesn’t listen to them, that they aren’t taken seriously. The way CMS has chosen to handle the Myers Park situation is further evidence of that. It doesn’t reflect a willingness to do better — it merely reflects the same shortcomings that caused the problem in the first place.
This story was originally published October 15, 2021 at 12:33 PM.
