That’s an interesting title isn’t it? They don’t quite go together but ah well..
Today I was hungry for a sweet snack so I made German chocolate cupcakes with Strawberry icing.. no I didn’t make them from scratch, used Betty Crocker mix and some Betty Crocker Whipped Strawberry icing for them. They came out pretty good, but they aren’t very sweet.. The kids like them of course though, a cupcake is a cupcake to them really.
We can call that the nice intro to a rather aggravated rant on my part. My kids were at Edgewood Primary school last year, well the school district, Woodland Hills, decided, (in all of their infinite wisdom), to move kids around yet again and combine schools and close others. So my 7 and 8 year olds went to Dickson Elementary, my 4yr old thankfully is still at the same place his daycare is, they have pre-school there as well. Anyway, we never had a problem at the old school with bullies, and actually everyone seemed very nice there, I like it, but now we’re forced to go to somewhere that I really don’t know the teachers, and I don’t like the principal or my kids teacher now either.
If you go into the school there are signs all over the place about anti-bullying and no bullying etc. They supposedly have a ‘Zero Tolerance‘ bullying policy, which to me means Zero Tolerance, or it’s just not accepted. Well apparently my definition of Zero Tolerance and theirs differ quite a bit.
Here’s a definition that matches what I thin it means:
“The policy or practice of not tolerating undesirable behavior, such as violence or illegal drug use, especially in the automatic imposition of severe penalties for first offenses.” (it’s from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/zero+tolerance)
But if you go to the same school my kids go to it doesn’t mean that, to them zero tolerance means just let them keep doing it and ignore it and hopefully it will go away. At least that’s what it seems to me and my children.
oh and here’s a quote about the program from the school website: “Dickson Elementary School along with the entire district is implementing the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program this year. Bullying is not acceptable behavior!”
If it’s not acceptable then why won’t they do something about it?
My oldest son is 8yrs old and he’s been being bullied since school started by one child, at least 7 times now that he’s told me of, it’s probably more actually. I should note that the kid doing the bullying is of a different race than my child, we’re white he’s not basically, I think you can figure out the rest… I’m not sure if that has anything to do with the bullying, but who knows…
So anyway, this has been going on for a while. My son tells his teacher and his teacher tells him that there’s nothing he can do and he should tell his parents about it. WTF?!?!? Seriously WTF ever happened to Zero Tolerance? So this past Friday is when things got bad, but right before that this kid tried to push both my sons down the steps at school, again the school does nothing, he could have seriously injured or even killed my kids. Back to Friday, I get a phone call that I need to pick up my son at school because he’s hurt, my son was in gym and this bully ran as fast and he could and kicked my son in the back while he was tying his shoe. Talk about a p*ssy *ss move, hit someone when their back is turned with enough force to leave him in pain for hours and marked…
So needless to say I flipped out once I found out it was the same goddamed kid that has been doing this all along that these pricks at the school refuse to do anything about it. So I went to the school of course and I got into with the principal, and she’s a winner let me tell you…. but I won’t got there right now. She tells me that this kid is a known problem child who has been bullying kids everywhere, but yet they can’t do anything about it. I’ll be honest I wasn’t the happiest person there, and yes I raised my voice, but wouldn’t you when you see your son crying in pain because of something that has been known about and could have been prevented?
So she tells me there’s nothing she can do about it, and I’m like WTF?! What happened to the Zero Tolerance policy and what is it for… she never answered me on that on by the way. I told her fine, if she won’t do anything I’m going to the police and pressing charges. The principal tells me that I can’t do that because the kid is only 8 years old and they won’t do anything about it?!?! It’s assault, battery, whatever you call it at any age last I checked..
Then of course after a few minutes I’m waiting for someone to bring my sons stuff down from the classroom, the principal comes out and tells me the other childs parent is on the way and I could talk to them if I want… not going to happen, and it’s not supposed to happen in a case like this.
So needless to say I went to the police to ask for advice basically and see about filing a report. Guess what? They told me that I did the right thing by coming to them, and they don’t understand why the principal would ever tell me NOT to go to the police… hmmm… wonder why she didn’t want me to go the police.
So that’s how my week end has been, it started out pretty bad overall, but it’s ending up not so bad, but we’ll see what this week brings….
OH well…
