An Ozone Park, Queens mother, and her teenage daughter made several visits to the NYPD’s 106th precinct stationhouse last week in response to issues the young girl has experienced in school with bullying.
According to the mother, a student at the John Adams High showed up in school last Wednesday with a boxcutter in her possession. This despite the fact the school has metal detectors and security guards which are supposed to prevent an incident like this from happening.
The teen told her mother she did not feel safe when she found out the other girl had a knife. The girl has been a victim in other bullying incidents by this same student. The girl reported the other incidents to school authorities, however, she had never shared with her mother what was going on until the knife incident.
The mother was very upset, stating that when she sends her child off to school in the morning, she expects the school will keep her safe. Even more upsetting to the mother was that on the prior incident reports, someone at the school had made a note that “parents” were notified – something the mother said never happened.
School officials did confirm that the knife was taken from a student at the school. A spokesperson for the school district said they take all allegations of bullying seriously and that there are protocols in place to ensure that anytime there is an incident, it is “swiftly reported, investigated, and addressed.”
In a discussion about the incident, attorney Neal Goldstein noted, “Apparently the protocols the district says they have in place are not as fail-safe as they think they are. The fact that this mother was notified by the school of the other incidents her daughter had experienced – and the reports incorrectly say she was – indicates there is something seriously wrong with the district’s protocols.”
Goldstein and Bashner
