I am a very worried parent.
I never thought it would hit our home. I never thought the term bullying would be uttered in my household—not on my watch. But, here we are today and it is the biggest obstacle we currently face as a family.
My child is being bullied relentlessly at Great Neck South Middle School, and the school is doing nothing to protect him. This has been ongoing for six months and is getting worse.
The school has shown deliberate indifference, and their response has been clearly unreasonable in light of the circumstances. I use legalese because, in fact, the prevailing legal opinion suggests that schools are culpable for any harm done to your child if it is a result of bullying and if the school has shown deliberate indifference and if their response is clearly unreasonable.
The strange thing is, rather than using this legal tenet to protect my son, the school has undergone a systematic and deliberate campaign of misdocumentation. The final straw has been the school rewarding the bully with air time on a highly coveted TV piece about multiculturalism at the school. The true irony is that the nature of bullying heretofore has been extremely homophobic.
I feel so helpless, and I simply wanted other parents to know their rights under the DASA [Dignity for All Students] Act as well as the current prevailing legal opinion regarding school liability if something were to happen. The situation, also affecting other victims, has actually been getting worse recently and several families are furious.
Information and transparency equal power, and the opaque and criminal behavior by the Great Neck South Middle School, as well as the district, should be brought to light. How many more children need to commit suicide before we take this issue seriously?
—A South Middle Parent
