Bullying in the news...

Bullying Remains A Problem At Schools

Tamara Cherry, Sun Media

Anti-bullying policies in school boards across the province are worth about as much as the paper they're written on, parents say.
In response to the story of a bullied 12-year-old boy who allegedly brought a cache of weapons to his Toronto classroom before breaking down in tears and being ar rested last week, several parents contacted the Toronto Sunwith bullying tales of their own.

It was September 2007 when Bob -- whose name was changed to protect the identity of his daughter -- contacted his 11-year-old daughter's Mississauga school principal about a classmate who threatened to break his daughter's neck, he said.

"The principal took two weeks to address it, and, basically, the punishment was, 'Please don't do it again,'" Bob recalled. "This girl (the bully) just turned it up some more. Finally, I kept my daughter home."

By the time the decision was made to put the bully in a different classroom, Bob had decided to put his daughter in a different school.

Lisa's son, now in Grade 10, was bullied at his Belleville school from grades 2 to 8, but she didn't notice until about Grade 5.

"He had no interest in going to school and he wouldn't tell us what was going on," she said.

Lisa spoke with various school officials "probably about eight times," she said.

"They were trying to encourage them to play together. Meanwhile, it was continuing to escalate."

She said promises by the principal to keep complaints confidential weren't kept. When the bullies got wind that her son ratted them out, it only got worse.

"He went through hell. Every day would be a challenge to get him to go to school because he didn't want to go to confront them. And he felt that he wasn't getting any support at school," she said.

When her son came home in Grade 8 with a suspension for punching his bully, "we just applauded him, really, because he put up with enough," Lisa said.

"He had chest pains, anxiety, just years of it. Not wanting to go to school, his marks would slide and he just became anti-social," she said.

"I spoke with the teacher on numerous occasions," said Dee in Hamilton, whose daughter was bullied in the classroom and on the Internet and called names that can't be printed in the paper, with little or no repercussions for the bullies.

"I thought that she (the teacher) was sort of close-minded from the standpoint that she said, 'Oh no, I know that little boy and he wouldn't say such a thing,' when she did end up finding out later on down the road that in fact he did.

"Although the school boards probably have various universal policies in place ... which schools are making use of the policies?" she said. "I think this in an area that the boards really, really need to pull up their socks on and make more accountability to the youths who are the bullies."