A single mother from Akron, Ohio, is speaking out after she says a Christian school expelled her kids because she is unmarried and her children have different fathers.
Summer Grant took to Facebook to defend herself Friday after Chapel Hill Christian School suddenly gave her children the boot.
Summer Grant says her daughters were kicked out of their private Christian school after an administrator accused her of living in sin. (WKYC / video screenshot)
“This situation has really put me in a bind mentally!!!” Grant wrote in the lengthy post. “I can say I’ve done some ‘not so OK things’ in my life. Done some things I probably shouldn’t have, but I do not want to be judged as a bad person! N I especially don’t want my kids to be judged for my actions.”
The mother of three said she met with school administrator John Wilson earlier this year to discuss scholarships for her 10-year-old daughter Summara-Rayn, and 7-year-old Summaia, the Akron Beacon Journal reported. The conversation went left, however, when Grant said Wilson began asking about her children, their fathers and “how we can get your household to live biblically moral.”
“It wasn’t about whether they had their scholarship in place,” a tearful Grant told the paper. “It was more or less about me just not living right. It was an uncomfortable conversation, but I sat through it because I really wanted my children to go to the school.”
Her daughters’ time at the school suddenly came to a halt Wednesday when the two girls were booted 30 days before the end of the school year. Grant figured the expulsion was the result of an issue one of her daughters had on the school bus the day before. Grant got involved in the incident, which escalated until the police were called.
When she asked Wilson if the school bus incident had anything to do with her daughters’ dismissal, the administrator told her, “No … the bus incident just shed a light on many problems that we have with you.”
Grant said Wilson also accused her of committing “adultery,” a claim she denies, seeing as she’s never been married.
“I understand I’m not married and fornication would be what I committed, not adultery!” she wrote on Facebook. “However I’ve been the same unmarried women with children who have different fathers since the day he first accepted me n my children and the money for them to attend and that’s where he’s wrong at.”
It was last summer that the mother first realized that the school took issue with the fact that she was unmarried. Grant recalled past conversations with the administrator in which he asked when she planned on marrying her youngest daughter’s father and inquired about who she was dating at the time. Wilson would also ask her daughters who they lived with, she said.
“Honestly, I thought it was just coming from a place of being a pastor and just being concerned and wanting the best for us, at first,” she told the Beacon Journal. “It just started to be uncomfortable because it was just all the time.”
Grant said her daughters have attended the both Chapel Hill Christian School campuses in Cuyahoga Falls and Springfield Township, which offer preschool through sixth grade classes. Growing up, the mother said she attended both public and private schools in Akron and Pittsburgh, and knew she wanted her children to attend a private Christian school.
Though it wasn’t a requirement for Grant to be married in order for her kids to attend Chapel Hill Christian, Wilson said it’s a “strong recommendation.” Grant pointed out that other parents at the school are unwed, too, and their children are still enrolled.
In a statement to CBS News, the school said parents sign a written agreement promising “to reflect a common commitment to the cause of Christ.”
Grant doesn’t remember signing that agreement, however.
“The unfortunate reality of a relationship of this nature is that individuals occasionally decide to act in a manner inconsistent with this written agreement and, as a consequence, separate themselves from the community,” the statement read.
The school declined to comment on the particulars of the situation involving Grant, but said it “felt that dismissal [of her daughters] was necessary in order to protect the safety of our school children and their families.”
Grant said she’s considering home-schooling her daughters for the remainder of the year but fears they could lose their opportunity for private school scholarships. Still, she says she doesn’t want her kids an an environment “they’re honestly not welcome in.”
“Getting rid of old negativity that wasn’t good for me n my children,” the mother wrote. “Trying to live n love right. Tryna be a better woman.”
Watch more in the video below.
