UPDATE: Brandywine School District Bullying Attack
The News Journal has a follow-up on the attack by a bully that was caught on videotape on a Brandywine School District bus. The incident wasn’t reported to authorities until Monday and, yes, the bus driver apparently kept on driving even with a fight going on. The incident is being investigated by the State Police as well.
Holodick [Brandywine School District Superintendent] said district officials are reviewing the situation, as well as what was happening in the weeks leading up to the attack, which he called “unacceptable.”
“This is the first time these two students had a confrontation,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t anything prior to this happening. The school district is doing everything to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again.”
“Clearly, there is a perpetrator that has to be reprimanded and dealt with,” Holodick said. He added that all students are afforded due process and would not say what, if any, action has been taken against the fifth-grader.
In response to the incident, an aide was assigned to the bus Wednesday and students on that route are now riding on a new bus equipped with two video surveillance cameras instead of one, he said. A supervisor driving a gold SUV was also seen following the bus Wednesday.
I know that the timeline seems a bit stretched here, in incident happened on Friday, investigation began on Monday and it seems as though nothing really happened to Wednesday. From my own personal experience when my son was punched repeatedly on a bus, we called school district that afternoon. Though the bully was on the bus the next morning, he was not on the bus in the afternoon. Brandywine School District acted in a quick and effective manner for us. Why didn’t that happen this time? Are there other incidents that are not dealt with effectively? What steps will Holodick put in place to make sure all incidents are dealt with quickly?
“This is the first time these two students had a confrontation,(that we know of because usually we just ignore verbal abuse until it turns violent” .. he said
The action should have been quicker but to defend the bus driver a little bit….
I think it’s probably pretty normal for reports filed on a friday afternoon to not be handled until Monday. The article also says the fight lasted only 34 seconds before the older girl moved to the back of the bus. Perhaps since the primary objective is to watch the road, the driver might not even have been able to assess how serious the fight was (it looks like a lot of it took place behind the seats and woudl be hard to see) until it was seconds from being over. There would be no reason to stop the bus once it diffused if they didn’t realize she was seriously hurt, which might not have been apparent until her friends helped her off the bus, depending on how long it was until her stop and where she was seated. Once it was apparent a report was filed.
If that’s the way it went down, I think the bus driver acted appropriately. If they could see the girl wailing on the other girl, they should have stopped the bus and the fight.
having talked to a bus driver who worked for a different school district (this may not be the same for BSD) there are some pretty tight restrictions on how they are allowed to interact with the students. their main job is to safely operate the bus. their second through 125843th job is to safely operate the bus… you get the idea. Im most cases the highest level of athority they have is to tell the kids to sit down, and tell administration if a child is a problem. Remember, they are driving a huge seatbelt-less monster and have to be aware of traffic.
“In response to the incident, an aide was assigned to the bus Wednesday….”
….And a bill sent to the parents of the attacker for the extra cost for the aide.
I think V is pretty much on the mark. Think about it — based on the video, the fight lasts a little more than 30 seconds. You’re driving a big bus on a main road and you’ve got to pull off to the side. Depending on where you’re driving, it could easily take 30 seconds to do that.
That said, I’ve got some concern with how the matter slid over the weekend. OK, it’s Friday afternoon, the driver wants to go home, and so does the transportation supervisor. But the driver should have seen that the victim wasn’t in good shape when she left the bus, and the driver thought it was important enough to write up an incident report on Friday afternoon. However, why didn’t the driver make sure that the transportation supervisor got the report right away? To me, that smacks of a “no big deal, business as usual, let’s enjoy the weekend” attitude.