A Student at Saint Ann’s Died by Suicide. Was the School to Blame?

Mr. Gural fixed on messages from the school, like one from Mr. Tompkins: “[W]e believe that differences in aptitude — in one child preternatural dexterity on the violin, in another precocious ability to decode a novel, in a third the ability to create marvels with a brush and canvas — make for the richest possible learning environment.” What if Ellis wanted to be an artist like his mother or a baker like his father? What was the harm to the school in nurturing him for that path?

“What,” Mr. Gural asked, “is the benefit to the institution by not having him there?”

Clara Hemphill, founder of InsideSchools.org, a guide to New York’s public schools, said private schools counsel out students fairly regularly, with few if any restrictions.

“My experience is that none of the private schools do a very good job serving kids with special needs,” she said. “As a generalization, public schools have the will but not the capacity, and the private schools have the capacity but not the will. And if your child has special needs, you’re in a very, very tough place.”

Saint Ann’s declined to answer questions about its practice of counseling out. The board president, Mino Capossela, told Mr. Gural in an email that “there is no single fixed policy” for determining that a student should leave the school, but that each case is considered individually.

One month after Ellis’s death, Saint Ann’s announced that it was forming a working group to review its resources for providing academic and mental health support for students. The review found, among other things, that the school’s staff to support students was proportionally about half that of peer schools. In any year, a quarter to a third of the school’s 1,000-plus students have a psychological diagnosis requiring an accommodation plan. The school asks an average of five students each year to leave, the review found. Since the review, the school added two members to its student support staff.