Quoted Text

SCHENECTADY
Aide can’t stop attack on student
11-year-old beaten by bully, others
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

    An 11-year-old girl was badly beaten recently despite the presence of a school aide who was unable to stop a bully from attacking.
    The incident unfolded April 20 outside Yates Elementary School. T’yanna Lockridge, 11, began her three-block walk home after school only to encounter an older, larger girl who threatened to attack her.
    T’yanna raced back to safety, running into the school. Her teacher stopped and offered to walk her home., then another
teacher offered to drive her instead.
    But Principal Robert Flanders didn’t want her driven home, instead telling the girl to walk to the Boys and Girls Club with an aide who was already walking many other children there. He fi gured no teenager would dare attack while adults were nearby.
    “The principal didn’t be- gazette.com lieve she was in any danger,”
Schenectady City School District spokeswoman Karen Corona explained. “The principal was quite certain she was going to get there safely.”
    He was wrong. As T’yanna reached the Boys and Girls Club, the bully and others attacked; some of them filmed the beating and posted it online.
    T’yanna’s parents said they first learned of the incident when her younger brother called from the Boys and Girls Club to say T’yanna was covered in blood. Her mother immediately raced out the door.
    “The school never once called us,” T’yanna’s father, Tom Burns. “I was working at my home office. We would’ve been there in two minutes. We’re only three blocks away.”
    T’yanna’s mother, Misty Delaney, added, “If the school could’ve called me, all this could have been avoided. When kids are getting bullied or they feel threatened by anybody, I believe the parents should know ASAP.”
    Corona said the school district does not have a policy regarding parental notification in cases where a child reports fears of being attacked by a bully.
    “There’s not a policy. It’s really a judgment call a principal has to make, because the situations are all very different,” she said.
    Reports differ on whether T’yanna called her parents — Burns says she called from her classroom to say she would walk home but did not call again after running back to the school for help. Corona said school offi cials believed she had called her mother and had been told her mother was “out and about” and couldn’t pick her up.
    Delaney said a school offi cial told her daughter not to call home.
    “She asked to call and was told, ‘No, you’ll be OK,’ ” Delaney said.
    T’yanna doesn’t have a cellphone, so she would have had to use an office phone to call.
    The fi rst half of the trip to the Boys and Girls Club was uneventful, but by the end, a video posted of the incident shows T’yanna at least 20 feet ahead of the aide, walking toward the clubhouse. After she is attacked, the aide is seen running forward and pulling on the bully’s arm, to no effect. T’yanna did not fight back during the beating.
    At least two other adults also intervened and were fi nally able to separate the girls, but by then T’yanna had been knocked down, stomped on, punched repeatedly and dragged across the road.
    Her mother called paramedics after getting to the Boys and Girls Club. Delaney said T’yanna was bleeding from her face and nose, and her forehead and arm were swollen. However, X-rays confirmed she had only bruises, her mother said. ...............................>>>>....................>>>>........................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01101&AppName=1

Nah, this COULDN'T have happened in Schenectady ... they're having a renaissance ..

And this is just in an elementary school. Sad.

The parents might decide they want to take their child out of the government schools.

Oh, there's no charter school, and DV opposes that.

Catholic school?   Well, the only one in the city, St John's, is closing.   DV fully supports the pastor who refuses to allow fundraisers and other things that would help keep the school open.   Gee, on that note, despite all-you-can-eat he probably didn't go to Mallozzi's this week.

Other Catholic schools in the COUNTY.   Yeah, but there's the issue of tuition.  Don't worry, DV says there scholarships (or similar) out there.   Spoken from the mouth of one who has NEVER lived as and adult - supporting himself in his own place of residence - and further NEVER had to support a family and so has no clue that a $500 scholarship does not help much when tuition is $3,500 or so and the typical household annual income is only about $30,000 and the DEMS are hiking taxes constantly (to give to the rich), and even renters are hurting.

Private (non-religious) schools?   Well, of course, for the same reasons above, DV has no clue, and the privates charge much more.


So, too bad.  Your kid will have to continue to go to the same school.  Remember, our governing entities know what's best for us, they will tax the heck out of us in the process, and as DV says things are getting better.    ROFL



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