RN45062023

STORY:

An Ashland family has filed a lawsuit against the Southern Boone School District, its Board of Education, and 11 others saying the district failed to address bullying.

Tawnya Samuel and Michael Samuel and their attorney, Tarak Alexander Devkota, filed the lawsuit in federal court on behalf of the Samuels’ minor son known as C.S.

According to the lawsuit, C.S. has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and has developed anxiety and depression

The lawsuit states that C.S. has an education plan in place that the district has not followed, which affected his education and socialization.

According to court documents, the 10-year-old has been subjected to name calling, tripping, kicking, pushing threats of physical harm, told to “go die,” hit and choked by students and accused of lying by teachers and staff.

Samuel said their son has been dealing with bullying for over a year. He said they have asked that the student who was bullying C.S. be moved to a separate class. However, he said they were put in the same classes.

Samuel said the student has turned C.S.’s childhood friends against him. “He was bullied out of all of his childhood friends that used to come to his birthday parties and such, and he was basically being told to kill himself and nobody wants him here, and nobody likes him, the whole rest of the school year.”

“The good news is our son has a lot of support and a good family,” said Samuel. “But we’ve had to put our son in therapy ever since.”

Samuel said they have moved their daughter to a private school. However, they are not able to transfer C.S. because of the record the school has on him.

Source: abc17news.com

SENSES (Child Safeguarding and Protection Principle):

Bullying has become a worrisome issue among children across the globe. The S.A.F.E For Children® Community Enlightenment Board has in less than 30 days highlighted bullying cases resulting in the bullied children committed suicide both in the UK and the US.

Something hopeful and different in this case is that the precious child being bullied has the support of the family. According to the family, “the good news is our son has a lot of support and a good family,” The family seemed to have been able to fill the gap that the school system could not fill.

STONE: (Call to action):
The main advice we would like to share with primary parents today is that we have a whole lot to do in preparing our precious children for a very volatile world where the milk of kindness seem to have dried off.

Apart from preparing them by building their self-worth and teaching them to embrace kindness as a code of living, we must keep the communication channels between us and our precious children deliberately opened. This increases our sensitivity to their welfare and helps them to be able to speak to us about their concerns promptly.

Up in the discovery, we must first be ready to get professional help for them from credible and tested sources.

Also, must be ready to fight for Justice for them like in this case, beginning from making representation the source of their concern, schools, religious places of worship and any other Child Focused Organization to which we release our precious children for care and be ready to escalate to the highest level possible if our voices are recognized and our demands heeded.

Finally we must be read to withdraw our precious children from the source of the bullying, particularly when we notice that the authorities are inactive in responding to our concerns.

Do have an INSPIRED week ahead.