A Tucson School Stopped A Kid From Being Bullied — By Kicking Him Out Of School
A Tucson mother says her son’s school put an end to her son’s bullying once and for all — by kicking him out of school and issuing her a restraining order, telling her to never set foot on Tucson Public Schools’ property ever again. It’s the latest in a series of failures of Tucson schools to address a severe bullying problem, say other parents.
As KGUN (Tucson) reports, Sue N’Goran says that her African-American son has been spit on, kicked, called a “dirty n****r,” and worse at his Tucson school.
“He’s been bullied by these children… saying that he’s brown only because he’s so dirty that he can’t get cleaned. So he’ll scrub himself, he’ll sit in the bathroom and scrub his skin trying to get the brown off of him. And asking me, ‘Why did you make me brown. If you know I was going to get bullied?'”
She said she’s made repeated complaints to the principal at her son’s school, only to be given vague promises that something would be done about it. At a board meeting Tuesday night, N’Goran says that the bullying problem would be solved, once and for all, as of that night. However, the problem wasn’t solved in the way she was expecting: rather than deal with the bullies, Tucson schools dealt with the problem by kicking her son out of school. Further, she says, when she showed up at school the next morning to drop her son off, campus security told her she was not welcome on the property anymore.
“You are not to step foot on TUSD property, the school or the district ever again in your life or your son. If you do you will be arrested.”
Whether or not N’Goran’s version of events is true cannot be confirmed; a statement from the school district noted that they cannot comment specifically on student discipline issues, citing student privacy.
However, other parents besides Sue N’Groan have been complaining of bullying at Tucson schools, according to a KVOA (Tucson) report. At a sometimes-heated school board meeting Tuesday night, some parents say that the bullying is so bad, and the school district so uninterested in addressing the problem, that they’ve been pulling their kids out of school.
Kristina Hansen says that her daughter was being bullied on a daily basis; when she complained, she says, school officials moved her daughter to another classroom rather than deal with the bully directly.
“Instead of dealing with the bully, they deal with the victims. They pull the victims out of class, they have them stay away from the person.”
Another parent, who asked not to be identified, said that school officials refused to take her concerns seriously, even as her son had to go to the emergency room from the bullying, according to Tucson News Now.
“Now I have medical bills stacking up because my son’s tooth was knocked out and the other one was jammed into his other tooth that is now broken. This is not OK. You guys are supposed to protect my children.”
Tucson Schools Superintendent Dr. H.T. Sanchez insists that the district is, in fact, proactively addressing bullying. However, he says, parents may not feel satisfied because they aren’t being told how, or even if, their children’s bullies are being punished.
“Because of privacy law, we can’t explain to a parent who wants to know what happened to that bully. Because of federal law, I can’t say well that bully got x, y, and z consequences. And so I’ve listened, I’ve met with some of the parents that came and spoke.”
Sue N’Groan, for her part, says she intends to try to address her and her son’s banishment from Tucson schools at the next board meeting.
[Featured Image by GagliardiImages/Shutterstock]
