“Our principal says we don’t have any (bullying), but if you walk down our hallways, you see it every day. You hear people talking about how ugly somebody is, or how that person shouldn’t have that hair color, or how fat somebody is. That’s bullying. And principals don’t see that. And it aggravates me,” said April, who is in eighth grade.
April and her mother Amy believe that a large part of the problem is that a bullying report does not follow a student from one building to another. Fairfield City Schools spokeswoman Gina Gentry-Fletcher confirmed this last week. Emilie’s father, Marc Olsen, has said that Emilie was bullied in the sixth grade at Fairfield Intermediate School and school officials dealt with it. But the students followed her to seventh grade at Fairfield Middle School, and the bullying started anew, a fact April confirmed as well.
Emilie took her own life at her Fairfield Twp. home Dec. 11. Township police said they could find no concrete evidence Emilie’s death came about because of bullying, but April said she witnessed it.
“They just started bullying her again, because they thought, ‘Oh, it’s OK because we’re in a new school and they’re not going to do anything about it,’” said April. She said up to 20 people bullied Emilie.
“It went from her getting called names to me watching them push her down the hallways,” April said.
When a student tells a teacher or administrator about bullying, the student is required to file an incident report, “but then they never call us back to talk about it. I had to write one before, and they really never call you back down for it … so how do you know if it’s stopped or not?” April asked.
School spokeswoman Gina Gentry-Fletcher said after Saturday’s protest that to her knowledge no one has officially brought any concerns about the district’s bullying policy to the attention of the school board or administration, except through social media, which is not considered an official forum for those types of conversations.
According to the district's bullying response procedure, posted on its website, "When acts of harassment, intimidation and bullying are verified and a disciplinary response is warranted, students are subject to the full range of disciplinary consequences. Anonymous complaints that are not otherwise verified, however, cannot provide the basis for disciplinary action.
“In and out -of-school suspension may be imposed only after informing the accused perpetrator of the reasons for the proposed suspension and giving him/her an opportunity to explain the situation,” the policy states. “Expulsion may be imposed only after a hearing before the Board of Education, a committee of the Board or an impartial hearing officer designated by the Board of Education in accordance with Board policy.”
The Middle School has a new principal this year, Lincoln Butts, and April said that some of the bullies may be taking advantage of that fact.
“Last year, we didn’t have as much trouble as we do this year. With the new principal (bullies) think, ‘Oh, it’s going to be OK because he doesn’t know us … they think he’s going to cut us slack because he’s new.”
April said she has seen Butts discipline bullies with lunch detentions, but “I think that if you’re going to bully someone, they should get an after-school detention,” Amy said. Moreover, if the bullying is repeated, the punishment should increase with subsequent offenses, she said.
“It’s not fair to the kids that are getting bullied to leave the ones that are bullying them not getting in any trouble,” April said.
April’s mother Amy said she has not been satisfied with the district’s bullying response. The district used to be better, she said, but “I’m really, really close to yanking my kids into home schooling if the district doesn’t get their act together. I moved up here because of how good Fairfield was.”
April commended the district for being good in other respects, but said their punishment standards left something to be desired.
“The school, education-wise, is amazing. They have a lot of sports, they have good education, but with their discipline and stuff, as time goes on, they drop discipline,” she said.
Unless something is done, April feels the problem will only continue.
April said she thinks “a lot of the girls at our school think that bullying is OK to make them look cool. The more people we have, the more they’re going to do it, because they’re going to want to look cool and get in with that group.”
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