Mom fights for help for her son, who says he was abused at a Chicago elementary school

CHICAGO (CBS) – A six-year-old boy tells his mother he is being abused by classmates and teachers at Robert Nathaniel Dett Elementary.

The boy is not alone. One in five students at the school said they did not feel safe or comfortable with their teachers.

The boy, Karter, is a smiling, giggly child.

“He brings life to every room he walks into,” said his mother, Shaneka Crain.

But raising him can sometimes be a challenge.

“It was very difficult to raise him because I was a single mother,” Crain said.

The young person has also been diagnosed with behavioral and developmental delays.

“He has a serious problem,” Crain said, “and it’s going to take gentleness, and it’s going to take love and caring people to work with him.”

That’s why Karter attends special education in the Chicago Public Schools district.

In the 2022-2023 school year, he attended Robert Nathaniel Dett Elementary School on the city’s Near West Side.

Karter was in first grade that year. Within months of starting school, he came home with stories that were anything but kind and caring.

In December 2022, he was bitten on the hand by another student. Crain took a photo of the bite mark.

“I was not notified,” Crain said. “There were no accident reports, incident reports. I didn’t get a single phone call.”

The incidents escalated.

“He came home with multiple bruises on several occasions,” Crain said.

Karter told stories about teachers who were not nice.

“I tried to eat the popcorn and she took it away from me,” he said.

And in March 2023, he told his mother that two of his teachers had hit him.

“Madam (redacted) is banging me in the head and madam (redacted) is also banging me in the head with the market,” he said.

Crain filed a police report documenting the alleged abuse. She also placed Karter in therapy. Session notes show Karter explaining why he was there “because a teacher hit him.”

“My son needs help. He needs therapeutic help,” Crain said.

Additionally, she has filed a complaint with the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS). She says that on the same day she filed her complaint against one of the teachers, she learned that an anonymous complaint had been filed against her.

“If you stood up for your child, they started taking revenge on me. They were putting DCFS cases on me,” she said.

DCFS said both complaints were unfounded.

Crain also claims that she volunteered at school but was banned from the classroom when she started advocating for her child.

For months, she kept text messages between herself and school administrators. She wanted a meeting to address her concerns, but did not receive a sufficient response.

‘No one listens. Nobody hears me. No one cares,” she said.

Dett’s disturbing history

Crain and her son aren’t the only ones reporting feeling unsafe at Dett Elementary.

That same year, Karter raised safety concerns with his mother. The annual My Voice, My School Surveys revealed the concerns of Dett students and teachers:

• 20% of students reported not feeling safe or comfortable with their teachers
• 57% of students said they did not trust their teachers
• 28% of teachers indicated that they did not trust each other

In addition, the school has historically been among the worst elementary schools for student misbehavior.

In the 2021-2022 school year, Dett was one of eleven elementary schools with more than 300 incidents of student misconduct. That put it in the bottom 2% of district elementary schools.

In the 2022-2023 school year, Dett improved. It reported just over 150 misconduct incidents. This made it one of the worst 10% of primary schools that year. That was the year a classmate bit Karter’s hand.

“I would just like to say how disappointed, angry and furious I am because they are aware of the things that are happening and it’s like they’re failing our children,” Crain said. “They have failed us as a whole. They have failed us, failed us, failed us and failed our children.”

Dett has been designated an “Intensive” school for the past two school years, meaning it is in the lowest performing 5% of schools in Illinois.

The student body is currently 94% low-income students, 36% Individualized Education Program (IEP) students, and 15% homeless students.

In 2020, the school was placed under a two-year improvement plan by CPS.

“I think they need to start listening to parents. Parents’ voices and concerns certainly need to be heard,” Crain said. “I think they need a lot of training, retraining or whatever for people who actually work with children.”

The outcome

Toward the end of Karter’s school year, Crain finally got a face-to-face meeting with school administrators and the teachers who accused Karter of hitting him.

She was allowed to record the meeting in which she told those present: “I’m not going to let anyone put their hands on my child and get away with it.”

That meeting ended without a resolution.

Ultimately, Karter was moved to another school for the last two school years. His new school has fewer misbehavior cases and fewer special education students. It remains one of the lowest-performing schools in the state, needing “comprehensive support” to improve, according to the Illinois School Report Card.

Crain hopes her arrival will lead to real change as soon as possible, not only for her son, but for other CPS students as well.

“I just want my voice to be heard when it comes to my son because this can’t be, it can’t be acceptable,” Crain said.

CBS News Chicago reached out to CPS for comment on Crain’s claims about the teachers and the issues surrounding Dett Elementary and did not receive a response by the time this story was published.