By SHERRY ROBINSON
All She Wrote
© 2024 New Mexico News Services
We’ve been hearing about bullying prevention, awareness and laws for so long that we might think it’s not the problem it once was, but some of our kids are still unsafe. Just before school started this year, a jury awarded $1.8 million to a family over an egregious case of bullying.
The Sandoval (County) Signpost reported that, according to the parents’ lawsuit, they repeatedly warned Bernalillo High School Principal Alyssa Sanchez-Padilla about threats of violence from two other students. They even showed her the texts.
State law requires school administrators to investigate bullying, involve parents, and develop safety support plans for targeted students. However, Sanchez-Padilla advised the girl to protect herself by walking with the school’s male athletes. She failed to notify a school resource officer or law enforcement.
A few weeks later, an 18-year-old female student attacked the 15-year-old girl in a first-floor hallway during school hours. According to the lawsuit, the attacker pulled her to the floor by her hair and kicked and punched her head until she lost consciousness. School employees witnessed the assault but didn’t intervene. Another student finally stopped the attack, and even then, a second 18-year-old tried to keep him from interfering.
The girl suffered a concussion and head and neck injuries. She was out of school for two months and now suffers from migraines and PTSD.
The Rio Rancho Observer reported that after a school resource officer wrote up the incident, Principal Sanchez-Padilla tried to have information about previous bullying and her own knowledge of the incidents removed, according to the lawsuit.
The girl’s parents sued last year. Bernalillo Public Schools denied most of their claims and tried unsuccessfully to have the case dismissed. Early this month, a jury found the district liable for failing to follow New Mexico’s mandatory bullying prevention laws. Only now does the district express sympathy for the battered girl and claim that the wellbeing and safety of every student is a priority; at the same time, they admit to contemplating their legal options.
Sanchez-Padilla is still principal of Bernalillo High School.
It’s tempting to say this is an isolated case, but in surveys one in five kids says they’ve been bullied. In 2019, legislators beefed up the state’s anti-bullying law with the Safe Schools for All Students Act, which passed easily and was enacted in 2020. The law required schools to investigate (the law spells out how they are to investigate) all reports within two school days, notify parents of both victim and offender, develop safety support plans for victims, hand down consequences to offenders, maintain detailed records for at least four years, and provide annual anti-bullying training for all staff. The state Public Education Department was to oversee the effort.
Legislators were clear about what they expected, but this school – and who knows how many others – ignored the law and ignored common sense. Raise your hand if you think it’s reasonable to tell a teenager threatened with violence that she should just find some athletes to walk with? Ladies, step back to your adolescence. Would you have invited yourself to walk with the football players? It’s not something my teenaged self would have done. And how does a school come to display such a culture of indifference to student welfare that the only adult in the room was another kid? Is PED engaged at all?
Along with her physical injuries, our young victim was emotionally manhandled by an authority figure who refused to hear and school employees who refused to see. A jury apparently agreed.
Today, Bernalillo High School’s Parent and Student Handbook has a statement about bullying that covers all the bases about “an environment that is safe, respectful, and free from fear.” Blah, blah, blah.
It’s missing the first step: Listen to the kids.