Posted on 09/17/2010 11:04:23 AM PDT by Red in Blue PA
Sorry for the MASSIVE post. This really struck a nerve for me. I know just how he felt.
___________________________________
No apologies needed. Thanks for posting. You truly are a battle scarred veteran of the culture wars.
Thanks for your service.
Could have and should have the father - to get his point across - used a different set of phrases, and a different set of remedies he would seek, if the bullying of his daughter continued? Sure, that would have been better.
But, to a sane person, his “crime” was far less than the crime of negligence that the bus driver and the school should be held accountable for.
Can they stop every act of such bullying on a school bus? No. But they sure as hell CAN empower and require the bus driver to watch for it, report it and they can expel the students who do it. Instead, it appears, they did nothing and in doing nothing brought a concerned parent to his wits end.
“One mother says it’s not fair that her child is scared to ride the bus after the incident.”
Apparently her child was NOT scared of the bullies on the bus and apparently her child did not feel empowered by that parent to complain about the bullying of their fellow student either.
If that parent HAD empowered her child to stand in opposition to the bullying in the first place, that child would have been happy to see a parent step in to stop the bullying, instead of being “scared” by the girls father.
The kids were putting condoms on the head of his daughter who has cerebral palsy.
I didn’t even know what a condom was when I was 11. Isn’t public education wonderful! The kids know so much more than us geezers did.”
My first thought, also.
WHERE are 11 year olds getting condoms?
Why would they need them?
We aren’t breeding enough welfare recipients fast enough now?
There are enough items in this story to start 4 more threads.
I support the Dad. Saw the tape this AM on TV.
Bullies don’t stop until they get hammered by someone who is bigger & stronger. Wakes them up. Bus driver wasn’t doing anything to stop the bullying. Giving a driver a bus full of rowdy kids & no authority to make them behave is just plain wrong.
I survived riding the rural school bus & the driver would stop the bus & make everyone sit down tight before the bus moved again. At least that was some discipline. It rarely happened twice in one week.
Having survived 3 brothers & 2 ex-husbands, I don’t take crap from anyone anymore.
Lots of times, I say things no one wants to hear, but they leave me alone. I don’t need the drama.
I have a son who is a twin and was born with mild cerebral palsy (spastic dyplesia -legs) and has a ventricular shunt inside his skull. He’s 23 years old.
When he was in high school one of the popular jocks (baseball and football) and his posse lifted him up and put him on top of the soda machine...constantly belittling him and picking on him.
Long story short. I went to the school and followed this kid as he left school.
Let me say, he missed half of the season.
Oh....and nobody every touched my son again.
Really sucks that this had to be his daughter's welcome to her new school. If it were me I'd probably do the same after beating my head against the wall of the local school board/administration.
A few years ago I complained to them that the bus stop that was moved near my neighborhood was now in front of a sex predator's house. Called them, sent email even with the sexpred link to the sheriff's website that listed him. They could have cared less. Bus stop never did move.
The problem is that normal kids can be pretty cruel. Pretending that this isn't so is absurd.
And what was a kid with a "broken body" doing on a regular school bus anyway. How much time did normal kids waste putting up with whatever had to be done to accommodate this kid? Or don't normal kids count?
When my own kids were growing up, I attended one of those Christmas (now "holiday") concerts. The great liberals had to feature some crippled (can I say that here?) kid in a wheel-chair as a soloist. She came out first in front of the curtain in her wheel-chair. Then the curtain when up to reveal the rest of the chorus (or orchestra, I forget which). As it did it snagged on the girl's wheel-chair and lifted one side of the chair skyward while the girl screamed. I don't remember whether she was dumped on the floor, or not; but it was a perfect moment which demonstrated that political correctness can have unintended consequences.
ML/NJ
And there is a lesson in their for all of us:
Threatening the use of Pretend lawyers works just as well as threatening the use of actual lawyers, but costs nothing, and hence enriches no lawyers.
Kudos.
Reading your post makes me feel empty inside.
The schools are full of animals that will never benefit from education. Here is a girl with a normal mind with all of the potential that a brain gives a human being, she has more right to be in that school than the idiots tormenting her.
When I was in highschool, thirty something years ago, one of the kids was a quadraplegic. Somehow, we managed not to set him on fire because he lived in a wheel chair. He actually had friends and participated in school life despite his disability. Amazingly, we all managed to learn despite his presence.
The problem here is not with the girl.
Does anyone have a link that shows where the father contacted the school about the incident? Did they confirm that had been contacted? Their official response to being contacted and apparent lack of action or concern?
He also stated that his brother is a deputy sheriff. Why did he not get him involved?
Listen, I feel for the father of this girl. I have a special needs child myself and wouldn’t want him picked on.
Similiarly, I don’t want some barely in control dude getting on his bus and threatening to kill/hurt everyone on the bus for the actions of a few.
Now, it didn’t happen but human nature being what it is, many times there is going to be some young punk that is going to call dad out and say “Old man, you ain’t gonna do nothing.” Then dad has to make the choice, look mad and ineffectual or beat a twelve year to a bloody pulp, which the news media goes nuts with (pictures and all) and then you are talking serious jail time.
If you are an adult, don’t confront the kids with a man size butt whooping; confront the adult’s responsible for the kids and they can take it in their kids stead.
Nothing gets a school’s attention like the threat of a lawsuit from the ADA.
You got to keep your head.
>I also have to say that no one with cerebral palsy was in any school I attended. The notion that all schools should try to educate everyone is also absurd. (But of course, it’s not about education.)<
Yes, heaven forbid we put disabled people with normal intelligence in schools where they might further distract the poor little bullies from their studies.
I went to college with a young woman with Cerebral Palsy. She did quite well in that environment, as a matter of fact.
“Let your plans be dark and as impenetratable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Dude was the original badazz - back in the day.
Your comment is the best thing I’ve read in months - I’d like to post and frame it...
I can’t imagine why the parents would send their girl back to this school.
Maybe you don't understand that that is the idea. The problem isn't with the girl, it's with the people who think she belongs with the animals. Read John Taylor Gatto's Underground History of American Education. (On-line at the link or from Amazon)
ML/NJ
That's nice. Did you ride a school bus with her to your classes?
ML/NJ
Hat tip to MrShoop.
To be perfectly honest it cost me the price of a postage stamp and an envelope. I really did copy the guy I found in the phone book. I don't know the mail fraud Statutes well enough so I figured that the 32 cents was cheap insurance.
The lawyers office did leave me a message asking if I needed anything. Needless to say I did not call him back.
L
They're called "public schools" for a reason, a**hole. The disabled kids parents pay taxes into that district just like everyone else. Therefore under the laws as they are today the kid in question has just as much right as anyone else to the school bus.
She certainly has the right to travel to and from school with a reasonable expectation that she won't be the victim of violence, ridicule, and condom tossing by a bunch of mouth breathing thugs.
Were this my kid I would have had a very similar reaction except I wouldn't have gotten my point across on the bus in front of witnesses. I'd have come up with a much more private and up close sort of lesson for these thugs.
L
I forget to submit my results sometimes.
Just makin' sure it gets recorded.
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