An Evergreen Elementary school student has faced intimidation from older students after being wrongly accused of bullying, his mother told the school board.
The intimidation stemmed at least partially from a Sentinel story published April 3, in which an unnamed mother claimed a bullying incident landed her son in the hospital. The mother in that account did not specifically identify her son’s alleged assailants. However, according to Kelly Decker, word of mouth and rumor have since led the victim and two other students to make allegations against her son. Decker spoke in the school board’s public comments section Monday night.
The allegations are completely unfounded, Decker said. Her son didn’t even know about the original incident at all, until being confronted, she said.
“I’m having problems with bullying in the school, kind of on the reverse end of things,” Decker said. “My son is one of the people who’s being named to the people in the community.”
“We’re coming to the board at this point just to make you aware of it, because we’re trying to hit all of the points that we need to hit to come up with some constructive solutions in dealing with this kind of situation,” she added.
The situation has led to hyper-vigilance on the part of parents worried that additional false accusations could land their children in trouble, Decker said.
“It’s gotten to the point where we feel we have to have our kids under lock and key because we’re worried about having an alibi for where they might be at any given moment,” she said.
In addition, the decision – apparently made by students themselves – to use threats to prevent violence, has led to a situation where alleged bullies face consequences for things they didn’t do, Decker said.
“As much as bullying is a problem, and we need to do everything that we can, that it can happen on the other side as well, that allegations are made on the other side that have no backup that are making things complicated for a young boy at school,” she said.
The Sentinel was irresponsible in its treatment of the bullying issue, Decker said.
“Nobody named names in the paper, but it’s being done outside here in our community, and now people are threatening to kick my child’s butt for things they’re reading about in the paper that are being pointed at my son out in the community now,” she said. ”There’s no backup for it at all. There’s no evidence that’s come forward.”
“This is a small community, you can’t get around that, but summarily printing something that may have not had any corroboration behind it, potentially, I feel is a little irresponsible, especially when young minor children are involved,” Decker added. “Now no names were named, but they are being named out there in the community and the families.”
The account underscores the difficulty administrators and teachers face in addressing allegations and counter-allegations of bullying. Decker spoke on behalf of a group of parents who showed up to the meeting.
School board president Susan Eagle directed Decker to Evergreen principal Deidre Jenson and superintendent Rich Rhodes.
“That’s a great conversation to have with the principal and the superintendent,” she said. “The other thing is to make sure that if you have ideas about how this can be handled from a parental point of view, that you discuss those with the principal and superintendent as well.”
In other business, the board voted 3-2 to approve the school calendar for the 2014-15 school year. The school year will begin for students Aug. 25 and end May 21, 2015.
The board also voted 5-0 to adopt a third draft of the school system budget. District figures project an operating capital surplus of $33,007 at the end of the year. While the budget approved Monday night fulfills the requirement that the school system provide the borough with a budget by May 1, an additional revision could be made soon, based on political wrangling at the state level, particularly over the base student allocation amount, a key revenue component for school systems all over the state, according to superintendent Rich Rhodes.
The school board also voted 5-0 to hire Patrick Mayer to the position of Superintendent. See page 5. Similar votes hired two new elementary school teachers: Laurie Brown and Michelle Jenkins. The board unanimously approved three in-house transfers: Heather Howe will move to High School Science. Donna Massin will move to High School Math, and a third teacher will be moved to High School Social Studies, which is currently being advertised in-house.
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