Boardman schools provide programs to battle bullying

By Robert guttersohn

rguttersohn@vindy.com

A 14-year-old student at Boardman’s Glenwood Middle School had her lunch knocked to the floor, hair tugged and her hair spat on.

“I don’t know how I got through it all these years,” she said.

The harassment went on from grades six through eight and had witnesses – the other students.

“They don’t do a thing,” said the student, whose parents requested she not be identified. “They just watch it happen. They think it’s a show to watch.”

She is moving on to high school in the fall, but before leaving Glenwood, she delivered a three-page speech to her class.

“We are supposed to be making a difference in this world, but only some actually are,” she wrote. “Some students do not get it through [their] thick skulls that we are all here to learn, and to get a job in the future, not to manipulate someone else.”

The student was relieved to let emotions out after three years of harassment but was still disappointed at the number of other students that did the same.

“Out of the whole eighth-grade, out of those 160-something eighth-graders, only two actually stepped up,” she said.

Superintendent Frank Lazzeri has said that Boardman schools do address bullying in a variety of ways. He has said the school resource officer and guidance counselors address the topic with students, and teachers and a parent-community engagement committee meet to discuss ways to prevent bullying. The school also is developing a program specifically to address cyber-bullying.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.