‘I don’t think we did the wrong thing’: Gum-chewing, smug-faced principal refuses to apologize for his staff mocking student’s appearance

When you drop your kids off at school, you expect them to be protected and taken care of. They’re being supervised by capable adults, after all, so there should be no reason to worry, right? Wrong. As TikTok proves once more, not all members of the school staff are to be trusted.

This is a lesson that Michael Bartels unfortunately learned the hard way in April, when his 13-year-old daughter, Alicia, was suspended and later referred to an alternative school after a false accusation. Apparently, one of the teachers at Austin Middle School had noticed Alicia’s red eyes, and when the school liaison officer was brought into the picture to question her, the kid’s nervous stuttering led to the wild conclusion that she was on drugs. This was immediately proven false when her father received a call about the incident and arrived at school with a store-bought drug test. However, the problem didn’t end there.

The test came back negative, but the result was promptly dismissed by the school. To make matters worse, Alicia was even mocked by the school nurse and officer. “Did you see her mouth right here on the side? It looks like she burnt it while smoking,” the two chatted, laughing at the student as she listened from the other side of a door. But the 13-year-old wasn’t burnt, nor had she been smoking marijuana like she was accused. She simply had a fever blister caused by strep throat, and was having an allergic reaction. In such a situation, common sense dictates that the only course of action for the school’s principal, Jim Potts, would be to apologize, but he didn’t seem too keen on it when confronted by the child’s parents.

In a TikTok video posted by Michael Bartels, we see the parents’ reunion with Potts after another drug test (this time conducted by a doctor) came back negative. The principal gives out a number of excuses for the occurrence, claiming that the school staff was following proper procedure, and didn’t do anything wrong. It’s hard to believe that gossiping about and laughing at a student is part of the procedure, but after a lot of back and forth with the parents, Potts ended up reluctantly apologizing to Alicia. Still, it seems like he was a lot more worried about the school’s name being “dragged through the mud” than anything else.

Alicia’s parents filed a complaint about the whole incident on May 3, and have since presented their case at the Austin Independent School District office. Bartels made sure to capture this moment on video and posted it on social media as a follow-up, recounting everything that led to the meeting with Potts, explaining how the false accusation has affected Alicia, and how she’s yet to hear an apology from the nurse and officer who mocked her.

Naturally, the incident has led to a wave of outrage on social media, particularly directed at the school’s principal. Folks consider that Potts’ casual and smug demeanor in the first TikTok clip is unacceptable. “This principal is disrespectful, condescending, and dismissive. The harm done to this poor girl is so sad and he does not give a single duck,” one commenter wrote, while another pointed out the principal’s posture during the entire video: “Hands on the hips and gum chewing. He doesn’t care and doesn’t respect. He needs to go.”

Sadly, as much as we like to think of schools as safe spaces for students, that is not always the case. Way too often, parents are forced to file complaints about schools or educators to get some justice for their children, which is never a pleasant experience. Per Boston.com, racial discrimination appears to be a common cause for such complaints, along with disability discrimination, which is at the highest it has been in the last six years, according to Disability Scoop. If parents or legal guardians ever need to file a complaint, it’s good to keep the Center for Parent Information and Resources in mind for helpful tips.

As with everything in life, there is no guarantee that complaints will lead to satisfactory results, but Alicia’s parents seem ready to keep this fight going for as long as it takes. Unfortunately, she’s not the first student to suffer through a school’s poor conduct and she likely won’t be the last.