By Matthew Mullins
(All names of the students and mothers involved have been changed to protect their identities. All information obtained is alleged until proven, and came from the mothers of the victims and the children themselves.)
In
2013, LAUSD has been prominently in the news with sexual abuse scandals
and education reform, but behind the iron gates of many Los Angeles
schools bullies run the playground. Bruises heal, but the mind bends and
becomes warped as the small world closes in on them.
Sammy's View:
The recess bell rings at 59th Street Elementary School. The children run to the playground with boisterous laughter. When we think of children we think of love, friendship, playfulness and vitality. For some of the kids at 59th Street Elementary, the games are not shared, the laughter is at them, hate overpowers love and friendship comes at a price.
“I’m always worried about what’s going to happen to me at school,” says “Sammy,” in a shaky voice. “Because sometimes they will be my friend and then change the next day—they start bullying me.” He says he looks to the teachers for help, but the help isn’t always there. Apathy is abundant. Enforcement is lacking.
Sammy has been bullied at his school for three years now.
Sammy sits with his mother, “Diane,” as he slowly talks about the bullies. “I just want to say ‘do something’ because I just want her to make the kids be quiet and stop hurting me. Sometimes, the teacher, she screams at us, but they don’t care.”
“It always happens when we go outside and we shouldn’t be near each other, but the teacher doesn’t stop them from finding me.” Sammy paused in emotional distress as he quietly whispered, “They shouldn’t let them come at me, because they just keep bullying me.”
Sammy is still bullied every day.
Diane's View:
“Take a walk with me,” said Renee Rawles, principal of 59th Street Elementary. These exact words are the ones Diane dreads hearing. Principal Rawles has taken Diane for a walk down the halls of 59th Street Elementary a few times to talk about Sammy's situation.
Diane explains, “From first to second grade it was a team of two cousins. At first it was only verbal, but when he got to second grade it became physical.” Diane recalled a moment when a teacher referred to the children at Sammy’s school as “annoying.” She doesn’t understand what the teachers are there for. For some, it’s a paycheck.
Sammy remembers how it all started. He said, “In first grade, these two boys, they started being bullies. I don’t really know why it started, but I know I don’t want to go to school anymore. The school’s not really doing nothing, because they always hit me again.”
Bully Encounter:
In February, the bullies cornered Sammy in the bathroom and the incident has left an emotional scar.
“There was five boys who came at me in the bathroom, they circled around me and started pushing me one to another, my glasses fell of my face and they just kept pushing me, then some teacher came in and asked what were all were doing in there … They said, ‘we aren’t doing anything, we are just using the restroom.’ I said ‘no, they was pushing me around.’ They said that they weren’t but they were.”
They hit him and took his backpack. Then they threw him to the ground and while one held him down, the other one hit him repeatedly. “The teacher came in and told them to stop, but they only stop until she isn’t there again,” said Sammy. After Sammy’s interview, his mother said he cried in her arms. She said he has a real hard time talking about it, but has to experience it every day. Commonly, she doesn’t immediately find out another incident happened. Sammy bottles it up. He doesn’t understand why they chose him.
The following day, Diane contacted the principal and filled out her first complaint form. According to the LAUSD website, the complaint must be fully investigated within 60 days.
Sammy is still threatened by the same bullies all the time.
Deasy's View:
While Sammy was cowering...
LAUSD
officials were busy working on education reform and were also trying to save face
as more sexual misconduct cases flow over the district, casting an alleged
shadow of negligence. New LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy was focused on his plan to
get rid of teachers failing to perform up to his standards.
LAUSD’s
education reform strategy is the number one priority, while the
California Teacher’s Association and United Teacher’s Los Angeles have
been squabbling with Deasy like the children they are supposed to be
defending.
Parents of the children in these incidents are pointed towards the resources available on the LAUSD website. Glancing over the website a parent will find steps on what to do, who to contact, and how to prevent the problem yourself. The question remains, is LAUSD doing anything beyond brochures and PowerPoint presentations?
In Diane’s case, she believes they aren’t doing enough. At Sammy’s school the bullies band together and become larger in numbers by the year. In first grade there were two boys, now there are six for Sammy to run from. In the years to come, the numbers of bullies will most likely grow.
While
arguments and lawsuits are numerous, the teachers, principals, and
campus police are neglecting to answer phone calls from worried parents,
including Diane. Diane believes LAUSD officials concerned at 59th
Street Elementary are not compliant with the rules set up for their own
complaint process and are doing very little to help Sammy.
In
2013, LAUSD has been prominently in the news with sexual abuse scandals
and education reform, but behind the iron gates of many Los Angeles
schools bullies run the playground. Bruises heal, but the mind bends and
becomes warped as the small world closes in on them.
As this is happening, the another child is fighting too....
Lucy's World:
A group of girls in Lucy’s second grade class created an exclusive group called the V.I.P. club. Because Lucy transferred to this school in the first grade, she had to make an entirely new group of friends, while most of her classmates started school together. The bully started at the school in kindergarten and had already found her niche as the most popular girl in her class.
Lucy’s bully uses her popularity to control the other girls around her.
A
notorious bully with a track record of picking on any girl who isn’t
“cool” enough to be a part of the self-created V.I.P. club stalks the
halls of the school. In this elementary school, you cater to the needs
of this bully, or you become her victim. Some parents of students who
saw the school doing nothing about the problem took their kids to other
schools because the situation was so bad. Impressionable young girls
will do just about anything to be a part of the V.I.P. club, including
excluding or attacking their meeker classmates.
Norma's World:
“Most of the girls are probably so scared of her, they joined the club just so she wouldn’t target them too,” said Lucy's mother, Norma.
Norma
is is fed up with the attitude of the administrators
at her daughter Lucy’s school. LAUSD officials at Lucy’s school
neglected to write an incident report over the course of the first long
year of her complaints.
Norma alleges that while LAUSD didn't document any of these problems, she had made numerous reports about the toxic playground environment created by the bully and her friends. The problems escalated.
Classroom View:
Norma gained a greater understanding of the problem after volunteering in Lucy’s class.
After seeing the bully in action, Norma paid extra attention to Lucy and the bully in the classroom. Norma needed to protect Lucy. She noticed the bully caused many problems in the class whenever the teacher wasn’t looking. The bully also noticed the preferential treatment Norma gave to Lucy and the bully become insolent and more aggressive because of it.
This young-girl-turned bully, has pulled Lucy’s hair, broken her favorite pencil box, taken her backpack from her, along with the usual name calling, pushing, shoving and hitting that plagues possibly more LAUSD schools than parents know. It has become so commonplace at Lucy’s school, the faculty seems to be turning a blind eye, unless there are physical markings on a student, they simply don’t see the problem. While many of these children show no physical harm, emotionally and mentally, children like Sammy and Lucy are anxious, afraid, and unsure what awaits them when recess begins.
“I suppose the teachers have seen this a lot,” said Norma. “They think kids are cruel, it’s sink or swim—but it shouldn’t be a place where my daughter is looking over her shoulder constantly.”
Bully Encounter:
Recently, the bully followed Lucy into the bathroom, a place where bullies seem to target their victims because of the privacy.
Lucy knew she was in trouble, and tried to hide in a bathroom stall. The bully opened the stall door and Lucy tried to run out. In a quick moment of chance, the bully slammed the door on Lucy's hand. Lucy escaped, but her hand was cut and bruised.
Because of the noticeable mark on the Lucy's hand, the school finally took notice and called Norma to go over an incident report. While she was relieved that they finally took notice, there was no way of backing up her claims of previous incidents. No paper trail. Norma cautions every parent of a bullied child to write everything down and email LAUSD every single time any type of incident happens.
Norma has moved forward with legal action against the school.
As
Superintendent Deasy concentrates on education reform and sniffs out
lemon teachers, the voices of possibly hundreds of children are falling
on deaf ears. The complacency is changing who the children will become
and how they perceive the world around them.
Norma
believes that the parents of both bullies and victims need to be less
than apathetic and not so trusting of who is teaching their children.
LAUSD has not returned any phone calls or email requests to talk about the situation. Emails and phone calls have not been returned after several attempts.
Norma is diligently continuing her claims. She explains, “The main thing is that parents need to be proactive. If
a kid says something is going on, the parents will need to investigate
because LAUSD doesn’t follow their own protocol. The kids suffering need
to be empowered. If you follow the bully home, you'll find the real
problem.”
These stories highlight a defunct system, in which a child can be in danger
among faculty and their peers. While teachers, such as those in the
sexual misconduct cases are protected until exposed as reckless or
predatory, the children are left to fend for themselves. If the issues
are left unresolved, it can lead to suicidal ideation for many victims.
Some victims develop post-traumatic stress disorder, while others have
been shown to have a higher risk of developing psychotic thinking.
Supplemental Information:
The National School Safety Center reports 90 percent of all fourth through eighth graders have been bullied. Approximately 160,000 U.S. students miss school each day rather than face their attackers. And the number of those being victimized is climbing.
What causes children to become bullies?
According to several researchers cited in “Hong and Espelage: A Review of Bullying in Schools,” it starts in the home. Children who are spanked by their parents are more aggressive at school, and violent television has been shown to result in children emulating what they see and bringing it back to the playground. If parents fight in front of their children, often the kids bring those words back to school with them, too.
Regardless of the many ways a child may become a bully, the school bears responsibility for ensuring students are safe. While creating awareness is a start, actual enforcement is the most important part of taking care of the problem.
Lead researcher René Veenstra, professor of sociology at the University of Groninge explains.
"Bullies do it so strategically that if there is not a good program at the school, nothing will change. They won't change their behavior by themselves, because it gives them a lot of advantages. You really need a good program that changes the attitude of all the kids in the classroom that makes clear to children that if they want the bully to stop they all have to be part, take joint action."
School Crime & Safety Report:
- 20 percent were verbally insulted/made fun of
- 18 percent were the subject of malicious gossip or rumors
- 11 percent were physically attacked
- 6 percent were threatened with violence
- 5 percent were deliberately excluded from social settings
- 4 percent were threatened or coerced into doing something they did not want to do
- 4 percent had their personal property vandalized or destroyed
- 4 percent were cyber bullied
-
And consider some of these facts about other repercussions of bullying (courtesy of the National School Safety Center):
- 1 out of every 10 students who drops out of school does so because of repeated bullying.
- Child and teen murderers are more than twice as likely as their victims to have been bullied.
- Up to 75 percent of all school shootings are somehow tied to bullying behavior.
Effects of Bullying:
Studies have shown that bullying in childhood is often a “gateway behavior” that leads to serious problems later in life, including:
- truancy
- school failure
- law-breaking behavior
- substance abuse
- destructive personal relationships
- difficulty maintaining employment
- cruelty to animals
- violent crime
Photo by Axel Zax
Photo by Sharon Pruitt