This story makes me so, so sad. This poor little boy! Our school district is so overwhelmed, and so understaffed. And you know what makes me feel even worse? I read the comments section:
In October 2011, a nine-year-old boy transferred to a new school in West Philadelphia, but he quickly found his own personal hell there, according to allegations raised in a lawsuit filed last week.
Every kid new to a school might expect some razzing, but according to the lawsuit what began as insults and slurs by a handful of school bullies rapidly escalated into an exercise in terror that culminated in beatings, repeated humiliation and a brutal sexual assault in a bathroom at William C. Bryant Elementary School.
Named as defendants in the suit are the School District of Philadelphia, the school’s former principal and a former Bryant teacher. A spokesman for the school district, Fernando Gallard, acknowledged on Friday that the district had received the lawsuit but declined to comment.
The boy’s plight began soon after he entered fourth grade at the school. The boy, whose name is being withheld, was singled out by a group of classmates for “severe, pervasive, and continuous” harassment, states the suit, which was filed by his family in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.
The inmates were clearly in charge of this west Philly asylum. That was also the case on the blog. (Puts one in mind of C&L.) Having taught in a dozen schools, few with the resources they actually needed to be run at peak efficiency, none of this behavior would have been tolerated for very long. Once the bell sounded the teachers were out of their classrooms and into the halls. Those teachers closest to the bathrooms monitored them. Those closest to the stairs monitored them. Monitoring the grounds was assigned to teachers on a rotating basis, generally one or two days a month. Were there problems at these schools? Certainly. Did the occasional fight break out? Of course. But this school in west Philly was being run by somebody who flat didn’t give a shit. And his/her staff reflected his/her lack of caring. As for the blog comments. It appears that our educational system has failed 90% of them. Dolts.
Why didn’t his parents take him out?