- November 14, 2024
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Doug Glasco stood before the Flagler County School Board at its September business meeting and read a resolution recognizing October as National Bullying Prevention Month in Flagler County.
Glasco, the school district’s coordinator of behavior and conduct management, began his time before the board by saying, “We at Flagler Schools take (bullying) seriously. We’ve built systems of intervention and support to help mitigate those effects of bullying for our students …”
He cited Capturing Kids’ Hearts, a program the district subscribes to that trains educators in helping students build positive relationships.
According to Florida Department of Education data, bullying is hardly a problem in Flagler Schools with just nine reported cases last school year in the state’s School Environmental Safety Incident Reporting (SESIR) system. That’s from a district with over 13,000 students.
But in a post last month on the Facebook group, Flagler Schools Parents, an anonymous parent was frustrated that their school was not solving their child’s situation. Several other parents commented about similar experiences with their children being bullied, and while some were helped, others were frustrated by what they regarded as a lack of action.
Bullying is prohibited in public schools by state statute 1006.147. It is a SESIR offense that must be reported. As a Level 4 offense, it requires 3-5 days of out-of-school suspension at minimum, said Flagler Schools Director of Student Services John Fanelli.
But to qualify as bullying on the SESIR report, three elements must be met:
An imbalance of power, Fanelli said, could mean big to small, older to younger, extrovert to introvert or popular to not popular.
Meeting all three criteria is one reason why there has been a total of only 39 SESIR bullying reports by Flagler Schools in the last five years with a high of 14 in 2021-22.
“The state of Florida has very specific guidelines of what is bullying,” Flagler Schools Superintendent LaShakia Moore said. “A lot of times (a complaint) doesn’t meet the state definition, and the action is misbehavior. When a staff member says it’s not bullying, it may feel like it’s being deflected. Misbehavior may mean a couple days out of school and a class change but not with language that these two will never be in the same class again.”
Fanelli said Flagler Schools’ reported bullying numbers are low because the district works very hard to “nip it in the bud” before the behavior is repeated.
The district has a Report Bullying icon on the front page of its website and on the front page of each of the school websites that allows anyone — student, parent, Flagler Schools employee or community member — to report bullying. The site asks specific questions and has space to describe what happened asking for detailed information.
Fanelli said during the current school year, which began in August, there have been 10 bullying reports that have been directed to his inbox from the website link.
The Observer spoke to three parents whose students, they say, have been the targets of bullying.
Parents are encouraged to take their problem to their individual schools. Brandii Saunders said during the last school year her fourth-grade daughter complained to her teacher that she was being bullied. The teacher’s response, Saunders said, was, “Aww, poor baby.”
Unfortunately, Fanelli said, students aren’t always the best advocates for themselves. A child might tell his teacher that another child was bothering him, and the teacher might say, “stop bothering him.” The teacher may seem dismissive of the student’s complaint, Fanelli said, but the student in that scenario “didn’t articulate that it’s everyday.
“We as adults have to intervene early and often,” Fanelli said.
That is what we deal with most, making sure parents understand and they feel heard, making sure we take this very seriously and don’t tolerate these type of behaviors in our schools.
— LASHAKIA MOORE, Flagler Schools superintendent
Saunders said she went to the teacher a number of times and spoke to the dean. She said she was offered a Hope Scholarship, a state program that provides students subjected to harassment and intimidation the opportunity to transfer to another school with capacity or to an eligible private school on scholarship. They declined the offer. But they did have her class switched. The situation came to a head about a month later, when, Saunders said, her daughter was “jumped” by three other girls on the playground.
The incident was recorded on security video, Saunders said. Two of the girls and Saunders’ daughter received a one-day out-of-school suspension for fighting, she said.
“She hit one of the girls’ hands off of her and ran to the bathroom and called me,” Saunders said.
Fanelli did not speak about specific complaints but said that, “If at any time when there is a fight and a student goes from defense to offense then they are participating in a fight. We have to pick the code that most appropriately relates (to the incident).”
Saunders said she home-schooled her daughter the rest of the school year. Her daughter is now attending another district school, where the guidance counselor is helping her, but she sticks close to the teacher during recess, Saunders said.
“Bullying caused her tremendous amount of stress and anxiety. She is literally not same bubbly kid. Now she stays by herself,” Saunders said.
One common criticism from parents who have complained to school and district administrators about a bullying situation is that their student is the one whose class is switched.
One reason, Fanelli said, is that when there are no witnesses, it can become a become a he-said, she-said situation.
“We have to be able to substantiate the child was doing the behaviors the other child alleged they were doing,” Fanelli said. “So we offer to move their child.”
Fanelli said they never move a child from an advanced class to a general education class.
But one parent, Stephanie, who did not want her last name used, said that’s what happened to her fifth-grade son after he made a serious threat following months of being harassed, she said.
Stephanie’s said her son is biracial and other children began calling him by the N-word last year when he was in fourth grade. It got worse this year, she said. Her son reached a breaking point when he told a student that his dad belongs to a gang and “he’s going to shoot you up.”
“It was very impulsive. His dad’s not in a gang (and lives in another state), and we don’t have guns in the house,” Stephanie said.
A student reported the incident on the school’s FortifyFL tip line, Stephanie said.
Stephanie’s son received a three-day suspension. He has been directed to wear a clear backpack to school, he is randomly searched and he can no longer take his school-issued tablet home because an investigation found that he was doing searches using proxy servers, she said.
She said her son’s complaints were never classified as bullying because there wasn’t one child consistently harassing him.
Her son once loved school and loved sports, she said.
“Now, he hates school, his grades are slipping and he’s still consistently called names. He’s called snitch, he has no friends because he’s the kid who threatened to bring a gun to school,” Stephanie said.
Her son has made a connection with a teacher to talk to, Stephanie said, and now he just wants to finish the school year.
A parent who did not want her name used for this story, has two children who have autism spectrum disorder. When her older son was pushed to the floor by another student he slid on a carpet and suffered carpet burns on his face and hands, she said.
“They pulled footage. They said we can’t tell you, but your son won’t see that person on campus for several days, implying he was suspended,” she said. “There was an in-school restraining order and the perpetrator would have to switch out of class. That seemed fine.”
But the bullying didn't stop, she said.
She said his stimming, characteristic of ASD which involves repetitive motions that relieve anxiety, was misunderstood. He had his hand in his jacket pocket in class and a student posted a video on Instagram, which she tried unsuccessfully to take down, she said.
The final straw came, she said, when the student resource officer called to say a student reached his phone over a bathroom stall to video her son.
“I took him out of school right then and there,” she said.
She received a Hope Scholarship form.
It still irks me. Bullies are the ones who get to stay in school. Victims are the ones who have to leave. It just seems wrong.
— PARENT
“It still irks me,” she said. “Bullies are the ones who get to stay in school. Victims are the ones who have to leave. It just seems wrong.”
Her younger son was also being teased incessantly, she said.
Now she’s home-schooling three of her children.
“My 9-year-old wanted to be home-schooled because everyone else was,” she said.
She said there are good administrators and teachers in the district but their hands are tied.
“Safety is paramount, even (over) education,” Fanelli said. “Nobody wants (bullying) to happen. I want every kid to have a safe experience and want to be at school every day.”
Superintendent Moore said she tells parents all the time, if they have a problem bring it to the district and they can address it. She said sometimes families don’t like the results of a bullying investigation.
“Bullying is not one of those offense we don't see a lot of. I know that’s difficult for parents to hear,” she said. “We make adjustments based on what we’re seeing come through the schools. We have training for our staff. We make sure they know who to report to. Our staff makes sure the appropriate intervention is put into place. Training is a huge part of it, how their complaint is responded to. That is what we deal with most, making sure parents understand and they feel heard, making sure we take this very seriously and don’t tolerate these type of behaviors in our schools.”
