Reply to Bullying, physical and sexual assaults at DCPS elementary and nothing being done by principal

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Email the parents directly. Let them know what is happening, 9 out of 10 times, the parents either don't know or were informed in a way that minimized the incidents. Most parents don't want their kids to be awful people and would step in. In the meantime, keep your kid home. Let him know you will do everything to keep him safe. Sign him up for a sports league or taekwondo - he needs a "pack", other kids that can look out for him or get a grownup if something happens. [/quote]

:roll: Don't contact the parents, and certainly not as a first step. These are young kids; if there were something magic the parents could do to stop aggressive behavior in young kids, there would be no aggressive behavior in young kids.  And if the parents react in a hostile or defensive way (which is a strong possibility) then that's just going to make the situation worse.  Calling the parents is something people do because they actually want the kid punished by the parents.  Which may be an understandable reaction, but is extremely unlikely do do anything to resolve the situation, and very likely to make it worse.  [/quote]

Agreed.  I know of a situation where parents almost came to blows within the last two years--apparently, the parent of a supposed bully got irate during a meeting at school, and police had to be called.

There is some risk involved in talking to several sets of parents yourselves--even if some of them react reasonably, there is always the possibility that others won't.  Unless I knew the parents pretty well, I'd go through official channels.[/quote]

I was on a parent on the other end of this (the aggressive kid was mine) and the teacher kept on trying to get me to talk to the other parents (and then the other parents tried to set up meetings). It was totally pointless.  I knew everything that was happening and was doing what I could to fix the situation.  Younger kid, but probably not all that different for 6-7 year olds.  There was no reason for me to meet with the parents; they just wanted to be nosy about my child, make useless suggestions, or get me to apologize to them or pressure me to withdraw my kid.  This is an issue for the school to work out, not for parents to work out between themselves.  If I needed helpful support/advice the last place I was going to go was other parents who were pissed off at me/my kid.    [/quote]

With all due respect PP, while maybe you really were doing everything you could do, I've been in this situation before and the aggressor kid's parents were in total denial.  Refused to acknowledge their son had any behavioral issues and chalked everything up to "the school not understanding boys enough" even though there are obviously around 50% boys in same grade and none of others in this class were having this level of issues.

My point is, you may not like the other parents asking to meet with you, or you may refuse to meet.  But I am ABSOLUTELY going to ask for that meeting, actually demand it, and if the other parent won't meet which is of course their right, then I'm going to inundate the school with questions in writing and updates on what steps they're taking to insure my child is not victimized any more.  I also, in our case, put the school on notice that they were officially on notice about the violent behavior of this other child in the classroom, and if my child or any other students were hurt by him, I'd make sure those parents were aware that the school knew and there was no or not enough action on their part with the parents.  In our case the school did call a meeting between the parents, and it was only after the other kid's parents completely denying that anything was wrong that the school finally acknowleged they had to get more firm with the parents about what supports they look into for their son because his behavior was going to escalate the school's response if they didn't improve.  (The school didn't tell me this, the parents of the aggressor child did.)

I don't know what the school did further, or what the parents did differently, but things have been DRAMATICALLY better with this student.  His behavior has improved greatly, and I'm pretty sure they had him evaluated and are getting him services or supports he otherwise wouldn't have gotten if the school had not finally put their foot down.

That is all a long way of saying: if you feel your child is being victimized, document everything, ask the school waht specifically they're doing differently to protect your child and any other kids who've had similar issues; ask to meet with the child with the concerning behavior's parents to share your concerns and hear their view and see if any progress towards solutions can be made; if none of that works go up chain tot Superintendents and Chancellor and maybe press, and as last resort be ready to take legal action.

And just to be clear, all of those steps are NOT with a goal of punishing the child with the concerning behaviors.  It's to make the school figure out how to address and manage those behaviors (and work with the parents of that child) in a way that will make things better both for that child and your kids.  Because let's be clear, that child with the behaviors isn't learning anything either if the teacher is spending a lot of time trying to manage them or take them to the office.  It benefits everyone for that child to not be assaulting or harassing or disrupting other students.[/quote]

I'm glad your situation worked out, but trust me, you don't actually know what the issue is with the child, or what the parents were doing, or what the school was doing (or not doing) with the other parents, or why the child's behavior changed.  [b]My main point is that you have to stay in your lane in these situations: focus on resolving the issue for your child.[/b]  Schools in this situation absolutely try to shift the blame of their inaction or poor management onto the parents, when there's plenty the school can and should be doing proactively, regardless of what the parents say.  [/quote]

You show your ignorance of the situation by making a blanket statement like "Schools in this situation absolutely try to shift the blame for their inaction to the parents, when there's plenty the school can and should be doing proactively, regardless of what the parents say."

You seriously think every situation is one where it's all the school's inactivity or cluelessness?  Right there you are wrong.  When a child is chronically acting out, there can be all range of reasons the behavior doesn't get under control: from the classroom management overall (school's responsibility), to the level of disruption the child causes (usually a combo of kid's behavior, what supports are or are not in place (which is both school and parent responsibility depending on the root cause of behaviors), and how responsive the parent is if the school really does put some supports on table that need parent consent.

I've seen so many times that parents refuse to give consent for evaluation or services, because "There's nothing wrong with my child".  That hamstrings the school in so many ways.  But some schools just have no clue how to handle it, or they escalate situations instead of de-escalating them.

At the end of the day, focusing on the bolded part of your post "resolving issues for your child" means doing whatever you have to do to get the school to be responsive.  If that includes pushing the school on how they're managing the child with the problem behaviors because your child continues to be victimized, you bring in or demand meetings with or focus on whoever and whatever you need to.  Unless you hated the school anyway and were looking for a reason to live, you should not have to remove your child because either the school or the parents cannot handle the violent behaviors of another child.  That child may be going through who knows what, and ideally at the end of all this, they get supports or help or the parents get help that makes a difference for the child and everyone s/he was lashing out at.  And if the school should have done things differently, hopefully they figure out how to.

We only hear about the hellish situations that don't get resolved here.  We rarely hear about the situations that start off awful but end up ok or even well.  But those happen, and often it's because someone in the mix figures out how to successfully engage the parents of the kid wreaking havoc and the school figures out its best way of responding to those behaviors and gets parent consent for further supports.

But if you told me to "stay in my lane", I'd say "I'm not the one out of my lane.  Someone is violently messing with my kid, so everything that touches my kid IS my lane.  And will be until my child is safe."  And it really doesn't matter if you like it or not, since it wasn't my choice to have to get involved in the first place. [/quote]

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