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November 21, 2009

Part III: Bullying in schools

By Rachel Brown

Tony Duckett says his son was punished at North Murray High School for defending himself from a bully.

Duckett wants the school system to change its policies so that victims can’t be punished for self-defense.

Duckett said his son was assaulted twice in the past month on the campus of the school — once when a boy kicked him in the chest while he was waiting for a ride home and again when a student who habitually cut the lunch line began pummeling him after being told to wait his turn.

For the second incident, he said his son got two days of in-school suspension because he “put his hand out” to prevent the line-cutter from getting in front of him again. Duckett said his son sustained a busted lip, busted nose, severely bent glasses, a knot on the back of his head and an injured ear.

“In the school system, these kids don’t have the right to defend themselves,” he said.

State law requires school systems to have policies that provide for punishing bullies and mandate that they are placed in an alternative school after the third offense. Whitfield County Schools, Dalton Public Schools and Murray County Schools each have policies to that effect. All three systems provide for escalated punishments, ranging from in-school suspension authorized by an administrator to expulsion at the direction of a tribunal.

The handbooks in each of the three systems provide for separate punishments for fighting and verbal offenses, some of which could also be considered bullying. The Whitfield system’s policy does not specifically protect students acting in self-defense from punishment, but administrators in many cases have discretion in determining how to handle violent incidents. The Dalton system’s policy specifically provides that students acting in self-defense aren’t to be punished. There is no such provision in the policies of the Murray school system.

Murray County Schools administrative services director Dean Donehoo said students are often punished for fights they didn’t start at the discretion of a school administrator. Some students might, for example, respond in an overly violent way to someone throwing a punch even though they didn’t start the fight.

“The thought is that often it’s hard to figure out what happened,” Donehoo said. “It’s on a case by case basis.”

By law, school officials can’t comment on a student’s situation, Donehoo said. Duckett said he believes school administrators should have done a better job investigating the incident in which his son was punished. He said the administrator who notified him about the lunchroom incident indicated his son had sustained nothing more than a single punch in the nose.



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Policies on bullying, other infractions

Dalton Public Schools, http://daltonpublicschools.com/Portals/0/PDF/Code%20of%20Conduct_English_2009-10.pdf

Murray County Schools, http://www.murray.k12.ga.us/handbooks/Handbook.htm

Whitfield County Schools, www.whitfield.k12.ga.us, under “Important documents”

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