HUMBOLDT – In emotional revelations of heart-breaking personal tragedy, claims of a broken juvenile justice system and pleas for a change in how society deals with bullying, Monday’s school board meeting at Humboldt seemed to bind parents, school officials and school board members with a common cause – empathy.

Board member Leah Reyes said the meeting was eye-opening.

 

Reyes: “You know it’s just like they said as parents, it’s going to take a village. We don’t really know … as a parent, I’m speaking as a parent, it’s going to take more. I mean, the school board can’t really fix the problem. It needs to be a community.”

County Commissioner Rick Karas said the issue are not confined to Humboldt, but sounded the alarm that the community needs to be involved to prevent suicide among young people.

Karas: “Until they got a resource officer here, we had officers here three or four times a day. Hopefully we are moving in the right direction, but you’ve got to start somewhere and that’s what this meeting was about tonight.”

The school board is considering a change to the bullying policy to allow teachers to report harassment and bullying to authorities even if the victim does not want to.

Sheriff Rick Hardesty said trust is needed between teachers, students  and the resource officer.

Hardesty: “Help us. We have to partner up in this deal.”

Some parents urge expulsion as a consequence, but one parent described a situation where a child was expelled for trying to stand up to bullies in an inappropriate way.

Karas: “Just kicking kids out of school and making them go someplace else – that problem is going to go with them, so we need to take care of things here.”

 

Parent Quentin Bowen said students have a right to be safe from bullying under both state and federal law.

Bowen: “When your school becomes a hostile environment -- harassment is encouraged, tolerated – I believe what most of us feel it’s not been adequately addressed – you’re violating federal law.”

Bowen: “It’s still going on. It’s not only still going on, it’s getting worse.”

He there is concern that victims of bullying do not come forward because administration does not have their trust

Bowen: “When you have kids that do not think it is going to be handled, they are going to fear retaliation. Every kid has a right to come to this school and not be scared.”

 

Superintendent George Griffith said he has inquired with the state Department of Education about conducting a confidential school climate survey to try and learn if students feel safe in the school and identify barriers to trust that might keep them from reporting incidents.

Griffith supports changes to the juvenile justice system to allow for the arrest of offenders so that students can see there are consequences. Under current law, he said, administration can not reveal sanctions against a student. If the student tells his peers there were no consequences, the school is not allowed to dispute that.

He is reaching out to the state Legislature for help.