A student at Keystone Elementary School has not returned since the attack

Steve Callahan remembers hearing his son's screams from the Keystone Elementary School hospital room as staff repeated the phrase, “It was an accident.”

In the office, Callahan found his kindergarten student, Grayson, with a laceration on his forehead and teeth hanging “flat forward” from his gums. He was wearing a different shirt; Callahan later noticed that the shirt his son had worn to school was smeared with blood.

He asked staff what happened. “They said, 'We don't know, we have to keep an eye on the cameras,'” Callahan said. “I said, 'So how do you know it was an accident?'”

That was in May, and Callahan is still trying to confirm what happened. Although officials told him later that day that Grayson was pushed into a cafeteria table by an older child with special needs whose caregiver wasn't paying attention, the Bristol Township School District has denied Callahan's requests to view video footage of the incident, citing privacy concerns.

Instead of returning to Keystone Elementary, Grayson has started the first grade at a cyber charter school.

“This district is not transparent with parents,” Callahan said. He said problems “could be completely avoided if students with special needs received the care they deserve rather than what is available to them.”

A district spokesperson referred to a statement released at the time of the incident that said Grayson was “injured when he was pushed in the cafeteria by a fourth-grader from a special education program at Bucks County Intermediate Unit,” which uses Keystone Elementary space for its program.

The district, which said it apologized to the “student and family and wished the child a speedy recovery,” said the BCIU was investigating the case.

“The Bristol Township School District trusts the BCIU to share all updates permitted by law after completing its investigation and to initiate actions and processes to ensure this does not happen again,” the district said.

In a statement this week, the BCIU said it had “taken appropriate action” based on the findings of its investigation, but did not disclose what those findings were.

“To protect the privacy and rights of our students and team members, Bucks IU cannot provide any additional information,” said Robyn Gross, a BCIU spokeswoman, who said it “remains committed to supporting everyone involved in this difficult situation.”

Access to video footage vs. privacy

David Langsam, an attorney representing Callahan, said both the district and the BCIU had been notified of a possible lawsuit.

“At some point, this will go to court,” Langsam said. The video footage is crucial to a damages lawsuit, he said, and officials should find a way to allow Grayson's parents to see it.

Bristol Town Spokesperson Kellie Francello said the footage “contains protected images of children who have a legal right to privacy and confidentiality in the school environment.”

Langsam, who said the BCIU also denied a request for the footage, said there are ways to address those privacy concerns. He pointed to other cases in which he and his clients have agreed to confidentiality terms to access video footage that is uploaded to a server and can only be viewed with a password. Artificial intelligence tools can also blur the faces of other children seen in the video, he said.

“The process takes only minutes, not months,” said Langsam.

In addition to trying to make “some kind of meaningful change” to school procedures, Callahan also sought to obtain the video footage for medical reasons, Langsam said. When Grayson was taken to the hospital after the incident, doctors wanted to assess how badly his head was hit, Langsam said.

Callahan – who questioned why the school didn't call an ambulance instead of waiting for him – said Grayson had a head scan to check for injuries. “The teeth are the worst affected,” he said.

But the family continues to struggle with the psychological effects, Callahan said. Grayson no longer feels comfortable in crowded spaces and has difficulty concentrating, Callahan said.

The topic of school has revived memories of the incident. When Grayson visited another school building over the summer to meet with officials at his cyber charter school, he panicked, Callahan said.

“He thought I was lying to him – that I was leaving him,” Callahan said. It was “a huge slap in the face that reminded us what we're actually dealing with.” He said that “our whole lives are different.”