Sobering lesson for family

To say that Lisa Lewis was intent on getting her twin sons a quality education is an understatement.

She and her husband sold their home in Wake County and moved to Clayton, to the area surrounding Riverwood Elementary School, specifically so the boys could be challenged and excel.

They were challenged all right. The entire family was. And they haven't quite recovered.

It all started on Sept. 14, 2007, her boys' fifth day of kindergarten.

One son's class was walking out of the cafeteria when the boy got into some kind of minor mischief. Swinging his lunchbox, Lewis heard.

Depending on which account you believe, his teacher threw him, or shoved him against a nearby wall with enough force that other teachers not only took notice but reported the incident to the school administration.

The principal investigated.

Lisa Lewis and her husband, who works for the Wake County Sheriff''s Office, heard nothing from the school about the event or the inquiry.

They did, however, notice their son wasn't acting like himself. Normally outgoing and chatty, he was suddenly very quiet.

The boy who would practically scramble onto the bus told his folks he didn't want to go to school anymore. He didn't like his teacher.

"Anytime you mentioned his teacher, he hung his head," Lewis said.

Lewis called the school repeatedly to ask what was going on. She asked to have her son transferred to a different classroom.

"The principal told me it was my fault my son was having a hard time," Lewis said. "He told me I needed to get more involved at the school and see what a fine teacher my son had."

Principal Frank Knott said he did notify the Lewises that an investigation had been conducted.

But that wasn't until six weeks after the alleged incident.

By that time, Lisa Lewis had begun hearing rumors that her son's teacher was being investigated for bullying a child.

She was horrified to learn that the alleged victim was her little boy.

The day she got the news from Knott and a member of the county's human resources staff, she marched down to the classroom and took her son home.

He was still being taught by the teacher who had been investigated for throwing him against the wall. He had never been moved.

An hour after Lewis took her son out of the class, the teacher resigned for personal reasons.

Lewis got her son into counseling. She and her husband also filed criminal charges against the teacher -- misdemeanor assault on a child younger than 12.

The local authorities were less than gung-ho. After all, Johnston County allows corporal punishment. When the case came to trial, a judge dismissed it, saying it should have been handled by the school.

Lewis kept her sons at Riverwood until June, so as not to disrupt their first year; she is moving them to a charter school in Selma next year.

Her son is resilient. He seems to have bounced back.

But Lewis and her husband are still angry.

Whatever happened in that hallway at Riverwood, it's the coverup, the dodging of responsibility and the lack of communication that made the parents feel so betrayed. In the end, they feel as if they were the ones who got thrown against a brick wall.