Protective Custody
School District Fails to Protect Bullying Victim at MLK
11 year-old Dominique Reed is a bully victim. She is the target of choice for the number one bully at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. She gets taunted, pushed and punched. Her hearing aid gets taken and thrown around the playground.
Three times Reed tried to show her tormentors just how tough she was. Acting against the advice of the school, she fought back. Each time she was suspended along with the attacker.
�There�s nothing I can do,� she said. �If I tell, nothing happens, and every time I defend myself I get suspended.�
MLK is one of those ‘progressive’ schools that suspends everybody in a fight regardless of whether they were instigating it or defending themselves. They have a solution for her problem though - for the past couple of months they’ve kept her alone and secluded in her classroom while the rest of her schoolmates (including her bully) go outside to play.
[Gerald Herrick, the district�s director of student services, said] that he wasn�t surprised that Reed was kept in at recess. The practice, called �time-out,� is commonly used by teachers to handle such problems, he said. That is just one of several tools at the district�s disposal to handle bullying. The school can also suspend students, offer them counseling or, if both the aggressor and the victim agree, they can enter conflict management.
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That doesn�t mean Reed has passively accepted her fate. Tired of being confined during lunch, she stopped going to her assigned classroom and returned to the playground.A few days later, she described the following incident. �He had me under his leg in a headlock, then he hit me in the back of my neck. I wanted to grab his head and twist it off,� she said.
She tried to and was suspended again.
After the fight, Andrea Reed, Dominique�s mother, spoke again with Vice Principal Sing and learned that her daughter had been confined indoors during recess for two months. Reed was furious that no one at the school informed her of the decision and that when Dominique stopped showing up no one bothered to retrieve her.
The school has figured out a long-term solution as well. They’ll let Dominique transfer to a different school across town. Her mother is justifiably upset at the idea.
�Why should my daughter have to transfer to a school across town. She�s not the problem. If she leaves, they�re just going to pick on someone else.�
Director Herrick said transferring the bully is especially difficult when it�s a special education student because that requires school and parent approval.
Does anybody else hear the Twilight Zone music yet? This tops the ridiculous. The school does not supervise a known bully, allowing him to terrorize the same target over and over. When she defends herself they punish her. They lock her up while allowing the bully to roam free. They want to get rid of the victim and keep the bully. What in the world is going on here?
School officials at King haven�t documented her complaints, Andrea Reed said. She claimed to have spoken to Vice Principal Sing more than 10 times about the violence against her daughter, but the only testimonial to her complaints in Dominique�s permanent record on file are the three suspension notices.
�Instead of getting help, she�s getting a record for defending herself,� Reed said. �It�s setting her back.�
Convinced the school couldn�t help her, Reed filed a police report in December and met with Sergeant David White of the Berkeley Police Department�s Youth Services Division. White couldn�t talk about the case, but after a particularly rough day in class, Dominique Reed is certain he paid a visit to the parents of the main bully.
�[The boy] told everyone that my parents told the police on him, she said. �They surrounded me and got in my face and said they were going to hurt me.�
Her biggest disappointment that day? That the police had only given the boy a tongue lashing.
�I want them to take him to jail so he quits messing with me,� she said.
The way he is going, he’ll be in jail sooner or later. It would be wonderful if the school recognized that they are creating a person with habitual criminal behavior and did something about it. Neither Dominique nor her bully are well served at the moment. If they cannot monitor the bully then they need to remove him. Difficult does not mean impossible and it certainly does not mean that it would be better to punish the victim further. If the bully’s parents don’t agree to transfer him then expel him for his habitual fighting.
Whatever they do they need to stop punishing the victim and empowering the abuser.
Mom should stop being nice; Mom and other wimp parents need to take action. Go to the principal and politely explain that she will begin notifying the police EVERY time her child is attacked. Mom should file assault charges on behalf of her child against the attacker. Yes, MOM is having the attacker arrested for assault. The school’s records and policies will provide her with enough information for a warrant.
Based on my experience, here in CT, that stops the incidents DEAD. I made it perfectly clear to the principal that when I was called to the school, by my daughter, the NEXT time, I would bring the police and have the child arrested. I live in a town where the cows outnumber the people, btw. Several towns have formed a region to support the one high school. Each town only has 1 elementary/Middle School. My course of action was not the norm, to say the least.
Additionally, CT has a law where 1 incident of a child being arrested for a violent crime, such as assault, would have the school branded a violent school. Now, under CT law, I have the authority to have my child sent to another school district for education. I explained to the principal that once I did this, he and I would probably have to explain why the town will now incur an extra 20,000 per year in transportation costs, plus the additional costs for enrolling and educating my child in another town.
Suddenly, the bullying stopped. MAGIC? NO. Stop whining. You may have given the government TEMPORARY authority to educate your child. YOU DID NOT abdicate your responsibility for your child’s safety.
I grew up in a large city. In high school, during the 60s it was routine to see ARMED police and dogs to keep the peace. I am no stranger to bullies. They and their enablers respond to only 1 thing: Retaliatory Action greater than their inital action.
Yeah. This is common. I was sexually harassed when I was in third grade by two sixth graders. When confronting the administration my mother was told “What’s it matter? She can’t hear them anyway. As long as they don’t touch her.” (I’m deaf. I lipread. I knew 100% of what they said)
Then they made me ride the bus home instead of walking (I lived a short walk away) so instead of being home in 10 minutes it would take an hour for me to get home every day. THEN they made me sit in the principal’s office for recess every day. Etc.
Gotta love schools.
Then in HS they didn’t give me an interpreter so I understood nothing of what was going on in class, and when I got depressed because my A’s were dropping to F’s and I was moved out of honors classes into classes where the teacher’s main subject of discussion was Jerry Springer and was STILL performing poorly (lack of interpreters yeilds zero understanding horrible headaches and total embarassment when the teacher calls on you for a question and you have no idea what’s been going on for the past 3 months)… I got depressed and made some posts to my website, which the administration happened to know about, and they suspended me pending psychological evaluation. Note that the posts were totally non-violent and non-suicidal. Just the sort of posts that a kid who had wanted to attend a great college would post when they see their good record going down the toilet and weren’t sure how they could salvage their future. And I was suspended. Hah.
Um… weren’t they *required* to give you an interpreter or other means of equal access? Isn’t that federal law?
Actually as I was finally able to figure out, under the ADA/SARA “equal access” does not include high achievement. Since I was an honors student with an interpreter, it was rationalized that my drop in grades was not related to my lack of interpreter so much as it was related to me. Someone actually suggested I was too dependent on the interpreter.
We tried to sue, but no lawyer seemed to have any interest. The only part of the situation that seemed to interest them was the lack of visual fire alarms in the classrooms (There once was a fire drill and I had no clue what was going on because I couldn’t hear the alarms and you don’t see the small lights that are on them until you’re in the hall. I had a panic attack that day and was accused of being “over emotional”. and “taking things too seriously”.
The guys in the wheelchairs and those with learning/mental disabilities or the blind get all the benefits school accomodations-wise.
The reason schools adopt such policies in the first place is that bureaucrats always prefer the path of least resistance. The solution is to increase the costs of those policies beyond the bureaucrats’ threshold of tolerance (e.g., by a course of action like Paul suggests above). A bureaucrat is just like the cockroaches that scurry under your refrigerator when you turn the kitchen light on; the last thing in the world he wants is bad publicity.
What’s really horrifying about the way that school treats the victim and the bully, respectively, is the lesson that students in general will draw from it. Along with D.A.R.E., etc., it is creating an entire generation that sees the proper solution to any problem as running to an authority figure. All the social skills that enable people to relate to each other horizontally, as equals, without appeal to the State, are being destroyed by the State’s schools.
Sure, dependance on authority is a problem for our kids, but kids are not equal in terms of strength: the bully creates the unequal situation, not the authorities. If the victim is not strong enough to fight back, or is isolated socially (by, say, being deaf), it is absurd to expect that they should be able to handle the problem, and have no recourse to a levelling authority.
The problem here may not be the school’s policy, which is designed to prevent the physical harm which can stem from fights, but the special education laws of the state. As the article states, this girl is attending a “special day class�a special education anachronism the district plans to phase out�that mixes students with behavior issues with others with developmental disabilities.” She has a developmental disability, and the bully is probably categorized as “emotionally disabled.”
They’re in the same class, which is a recipe for disaster.
But if the bully has been categorized as “special education” because of his behavioral issues - bullying, uncontrollable outbursts, or ADD - then he is protected under state law because of his special status. A further quote from the article: “Director Herrick said transferring the bully is especially difficult when it�s a special education student because that requires school and parent approval.”
A child who is a bully often has parents that are bullies, and they will often ignore or even encourage the child’s abusive behavior towards others. The parents will even threaten the school administration with legal action if the child is disciplined.
It’s unfortunate that there do not seem to be legal consequences for parents who will not participate in solving the issues of their child’s bullying behavior.
One aspect of this that I find frightening is the small detail of the school keeping no records except those which document itself carrying out what it believes to be its own correct policies. The parent’s visits and the schools replies do not show up in the file.
This seems to me evidence of the school official being so extremely ou of contact with reality that in their mind there is no question of a response being incorrect: there’s nothing they are aware of to respond to.
I’ve had this happen to me a couple of times in the last few weeks, since I’m living a sort of Road To Wigan Pier existence, in the maw of the poverty machinery while a lawsuit (which I trust will return me to middle class life) works itself out. In my experience the bureaucrat who behaves in this way lives inside a bubble of isolation in which I am one of the class “children or criminals,” to be cozzened, and about whom rules or regulations can be confected on the fly and without appeal, neither appeal to reason nor appeal to any authority or claim of legitimate process.
I think that this Berekeley case, and my own, are exceptions to the usual: they have come to light and can be observed. The sad normality, for the poor, for the handicapped — and for children and criminals — is that the bureaucratic bubble is the major part of the word. We who are able to bring these misdemeanors to light are little bubbles of our own — and if we can make a little fizz now and then, that’s the limit of triumph available.
To the anonymous poster: Your school administrators’ actions are sickening, insensitive, and completely callous…when I was in HS, I knew a hard-of-hearing kid whose teachers, in all his classes, were equipped w/a mike that broadcast their voices to him via an earpiece. Was he “dependent” on them? Of course…if you’re hearing-impaired, how else are they gonna keep you from falling behind?
Your school was either too lazy or negligent to give you the help you needed, plain and simple…I’m surprised that not a single organization was willing to help you legally.
Its not just at the public or “progressive” schools that this stuff happens.
My son has had the same type of problems at the private schools and summer camps he has attended in New Port Beach and So. Orange County, CA.
The main driver here is the lazy, path of least resistance mentality that dominates the education profession (both private and public).
As mentioned above you have to keep the pressure on the administration, make it more inconvenient for them to ignore the problem than it is to correct it.
Also, you need to fully participate in their “corrective protocols”, keep up your end of the bargain, keep good records of their failures to follow through with the action plan and remind then of the fact that they haven’t fullfilled their obligations whenever they start hinting at expulsion.
Its a pain in the ass to do this and yes you shouldn’t have to do it, but that’s life.
In our town we have a man who was bullied as a child, and he made a movie to try to help kids not become bullies. It’s called “Broken Toy,” I believe. It was shown during school when my kids were little.
This subject has always upset me. “Tattling” was always more harshly dealt with than bullying, when I was a child.
Carnival of the Vanities
The stars are gathered here tonight, folks, after endorsing Graham Lester�s blog, for the Carnival of the Vanities #81, a…
And people wonder why some people just snap and shoot someone? If I was walking down the street and I was jumped by a group of attackers I could legally respond with lethal force… This is different true but it does make one think doesn’t it?
The EXACT same thing happened with my son at a Jr. High here in Clark County, Washington. I am AMAZED to say the least that this happens elsewhere, after thinking this school district must have the most senseless “system” in America.
After MUCH repeating of the same excuses, protocols, rationalizations and the like from all sides at all levels of school personnel, I began homeschooling. I chose giving up my career to live just at poverty level in order to have time to homeschool because it seems a much better option than ending up with a high school drop-out, permanently psychologically damaged child, or worse.
What a shame these allegedly “progressive” schools do not require administrators to attend at least one common sense course. Suspended for defending, with witnesses, and teachers open statements of the child “getting in trouble for things he didn’t do”, collectively even, does not count anymore - at least not in the Evergreen School District! They talk the talk but fall backwards on the walk.
What horrible examples for the students of today and the parents of tomorrow!
Document everything and anything. Not just you, but your child, too! Having them write hardcopy versions of their experiences can be used in your favor, and can be theraputic for the child, also. Use every law you can for your benefit, NOT from the school district employees mouths, or handouts, but directly from the city/county/state laws - all online and free in this tech age