Bullies Can Go Away

A lawsuit has been filed against officials in the Tukwila School District (Washington) alleging that they failed to protect a former student from bullying by several boys at Showalter Middle School, yesterday's Seattle Times reports. District officials also tried to seek a court order declaring the former student, identified as J.B.M., as a truant when his parents took him out of classes. J.B.M., who has Asperger's Syndrome, is now 20 years old and has Anxiety Disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The suit seeks "unspecified monetary damages for discrimination, harassment and retaliation"----while at the middle school, J.B.M.was shoved and pushed,......slapped, punched and kicked"; he was also hit on the head with books, had his books stolen, called "disparaging names," spat on, and liquids were poured on his head.

J.B.M. thrived while attending Cascade View Elementary School in the district but encountered bullying when he moved to Showalter in 1999, the suit says.

The abuse began toward the end of his sixth-grade year and continued through his seventh-grade year, said his father, who identified himself as John at the news conference.

J.B.M. told his parents and school employees he had been harassed and his mother, a special-education instructional assistant at the school, notified school administrators, the suit says.

His mother said at the news conference that her son once told her he wanted to commit suicide.

Charlie has not been bullied at school, or rather, not yet. Due to the level of his needs, Charlie is always accompanied by a teacher or aide when he is outside of his classroom. He is, as I've noted, in a self-contained classroom with three other autistic boys and while we would like to see him in an inclusive setting at some point, this seems to be the right setting at this time. As a mother, frankly, I feel that right now he needs to be among his non-disabled peers in a setting that he feels secure in.

But if Charlie were in an inclusive setting, and had to eat lunch in the cafeteria---a jungle as I remember from my junior high days---I don't know how he would do on his own. A friend whose son has Asperger's once told me how, when her son sat at a table in the cafeteria, everyone would get up and leave; fortunately, one teacher opened his room to students who would like to play chess and checkers and other games, and her son was able to spend his lunch break in there. I'm a teacher and I like teaching my students (now college-aged). I once taught middle and high school students), but watching how they interacted with each other---in the halls, in the cafeteria for sure, even in my Latin classes---revealed that there was plenty of "mean girls" types of things going on (and, too, "mean boys").

A lot of us will, I think, be following the outcome of J.B.S.'s discrimination suit.