Just a few weeks into the new school year, students and their parents are already dealing with violence and bullying. At Hutto High School Aug. 30, a girl was hospitalized after an attack by two girls who allegedly laid in wait to catch her between classes. In Taylor, medical services were needed for a middle school student who was beaten at a football game on Sept. 1.
In both cases, the attacks were the results of ongoing confrontations with bullying that the parents say had been brought to the attention of their respective school principals, teachers and even police departments.
“My daughter talked to the principal and teacher, and they just told her not to worry,” said Rudy Villarreal, whose daughter is a junior at Hutto High School.
The attack pointed out a weakness in the school’s security system. The offender was supposed to be in In-School Suspension that day. She rode the bus to school, but did not appear in class. She was counted absent and the school did not know she was present on campus, according to what Villarreal was told by Associate Principal Holly Wells.
“She hid on campus for seven hours. The video shows that she changed outfits throughout the day to stay hidden. This is a failure of security. The administration promised my child she was safe after she told them that she was in danger. They didn’t do anything,” the angry father said.
School officials met with Villarreal Sept. 7 and discussed changes that were being made based on his daughter’s case. The school will now have different accountability methods for ISS students, and will do more frequent sweeps of bathrooms to hopefully catch any malingering students.
When it comes to bullying, social media has been weaponized.
Villarreal’s daughter’s attacker had made threatening social media posts during a previous school year saying she was going to do a drive-by shooting of the victim’s house, and on the day of the actual attack she posted a picture of herself posing with a firearm, according to Villarreal.
Dimitri Burt, the 11-year-old Taylor Middle School student who was attacked at a football game, had also been the victim of cyberbullying.
“I had several parents get in touch with me and tell me I needed to see what these kids were threatening to do to my son,” said Burt’s mother, Angela Christy.
Christy said she reported the posts to the school but nothing was done to protect her son.
“It was going all around on Snapchat that these boys were planning on jumping Dimitri. So, I made the school aware. I sent one of the Snaps by email to Ms. Bates (his teacher),” she said.
Christy also emailed Principal Steven Vigil about another physical interaction between the group and her son. She said she got no response.
Christy was in the stands waiting for her son when the attack happened. She said she saw him stumbling toward her, and when he got to her he fell into her lap and lost consciousness.
“My son collapsed, stopped breathing and ended up seizing. He has a major concussion There were several kids coming up to me stating he was jumped on in the student section of the bleachers and his head was smashed into the bleachers,” Christy said. “That injury could have killed my child. My son is only 11 years old, he definitely didn’t deserve this.”
Christy and Villarreal say they are not the only parents fighting for the safety of their children against bullies, and finding little support.
“I know of quite a few other parents who are in the same position right now,” Christy said. “The bullying problem is serious at the school. The school doesn’t act on it. They’d rather hide it because they don’t want to admit there’s a problem. David’s Law is in place for a reason and the school doesn’t implement that. If they did, what happened (Sept. 1) wouldn’t have happened.”
David Molak was a high school student in San Antonio who committed suicide as a result of online bullying. In 2017, the Texas Legislature created David’s Law to combat cyberbullying in schools. The law requires intervention from public schools when online bullying is suspected. Parents of students who cyberbully others may also be held responsible if they could have intervened but didn’t.
Parents looking for resources in their fight against online bullying can find legal forms and other advice on the David’s Legacy Foundation website, www.davidslegacy.org.
Taylor and Hutto school districts have codes of conduct and discipline plans that define unacceptable student behavior, but the consequences are at the discretion of the school and students may be treated differently.
Christy says her son has been punished more for his encounters with the gang of kids who are bullying him than the offenders have, and suggests it could be racially motivated. Regardless, parents hold little sway in the district’s disciplinary decisions.
Starting this year, Texas Education Agency will begin identifying certain schools as Persistently Dangerous Schools. According to the agency, the number of mandatory expulsions a school has can add up to earning a designation as a dangerous school, and they will face added scrutiny from TEA as well as the public.
Neither Taylor nor Hutto currently have any schools designated as persistently dangerous by the TEA.
While the designation adds a new tool to hold schools accountable, it could also provide motivation for schools to provide more preemptive action to deescalate bullying and assault incidents.
That’s a result many parents are anxious to see.
“I’m a Uvalde native. I’ve got childhood friends and extended family who lost their children (in the Robb Elementary School shooting, May 2022). I don’t want that for myself or any of our community,” said Villarreal. “Uvalde suffered due to being unprepared as a small country town. I don’t want us to be unprepared as well. I want change. Let’s not wait until it’s too late.”
