Alexandria school officials are looking to strengthen student punishment guidelines after a mother, calling the rules inadequate, pulled her child out of the city’s schools because of bullying.
“Some people were questioning whether [Alexandria’s] code of conduct does give too much flexibility,” Alexandria schools spokeswoman Amy Carlini said.
Alexandria’s student code of conduct specifies students who commit some offenses — such as bringing drugs to school — will at least be suspended. For other offenses, such as bullying, the code provides a menu of options ranging from reprimands or counseling to detention or suspension and gives the administrator room to decide the appropriate punishment.
In the 96 bullying incidents reported in Alexandria schools during the 2006-2007 school year, 42 of the students, or 44 percent, were disciplined, according to statistics from the Virginia Department of Education.
“There’s a zero-tolerance policy toward adults in the schools, but if it happens to children, one of these 15 punishments can happen, which means that nothing happens,” said Mary Ray, who said she pulled her daughter out of George Washington Middle School after another student intentionally hurled a basketball into her daughter’s face at close range during gym class, seriously injuring her.
Ray said the February incident was a hate crime and that the other student called her daughter “white trash” and “white cockroach” before injuring her, but that teachers told her daughter to “forget about it” and that her daughter did not receive medical attention.
Ray has since appeared at three consecutive School Board meetings urging administrators to specify punishments for bullying.
Carlini declined to comment on the incident but acknowledged that Ray’s situation prompted acting Superintendent Bill Symons this month to put together a panel of experts and community members to study the student code of conduct.
“They’re not rewriting our code of conduct, they’re just going to look at it in a really big picture conceptual kind of way and make a recommendation,” Carlini said.
The panel is scheduled to present its findings to the School Board next month.
