Mom, boy speak out about bullying incident
NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. (WABC) — The mother of a 10-year-old boy who was brutally bullied for months is speaking out against the school in New Rochelle. The image is jarring, a 10-year-old boy wearing a mask straight out of a bad horror movie, but for Brandonn Baez it’s doctor’s orders: the plastic helps protect his face which was pummeled by a classmate. The ugly incident happened last Thursday during recess at Trinity Elementary School in New Rochelle. [read the entire article]
Bullying in New Rochelle
Thanks to Jennifer Parente and Beth Feldman for singing my praises and that of our organization STOMP Out Bullying and Love Our Children USA.
As a Bullying Prevention expert, it breaks my heart when I see any kid being bullied. What happened to Brandonn Baez is inexcusable. His bully’s parents need to get busy parenting and get him help. And Trinity School can no longer sweep this issue under the rug.
For anyone who thinks bullying can’t happen in your backyard YOU’RE WRONG!! New Rochelle is a wonderful place to live. But guess what? Bullying happens everywhere in the U.S and all over the world. In fact, the U.K. has a bigger problem with the issue of bullying than we do.
It’s not a community that starts bullying. It’s many things. A kid can be a bully because that could be what he/she is learning at home, they could have anger management issues, they could have been bullied themselves.
Not only do we need to help the victim, but we need to get help for the bully so they can change their behavior.
This should serve as a wake up call to Trinity School, its faculty, students and the parents in the community — It’s not enough to have bullying prevention in school. Parents have to educate their kids and communicate with them. Bullying prevention needs to brought out into the community. It really does take a village.
Brandonn’s bully may be facing criminal charges. It all depends how New Rochelle law enforcement decide to handle this. Even if he ends up in the system, he still needs to change his behavior.
I invite Brandonn and his mom to reach out to me so we can help and be of support. And I invite the bully’s parents to reach out to me as well, so we can get him help in changing his behavior so that he never does this again.
Ross Ellis
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
STOMP Out Bullying™
http://www.stompoutbullying.org
New Rochelle resident has made strides to Stomp Out Bullying
Beth Feldman,a New Rochelle resident has devoted countless hours spearhesding the issues of bullying and cyberbullying. Beth held an event recently at Temple Israel addressing the existance of bullying in our schools. Working along side Love Our Children USA’s signature program “Stomp Out Bullying”, the event brought parents and children together giving them the opportunity to become informed, proactive and aware of solutions to bullying. Ross Ellis is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of this amazing organization, Stomp Out Bullying http://bit.ly/PVhpG focuses on the prevention of bullying and child violence. The family of this beautiful little boy should hopefully consider trying to get in touch with Ross Ellis, for she may be instrumental in helping them move on from this terrible heartbreaking situation. 888-347-KIDS
And to Beth, Thank you for your continued efforts to prevent bullying and making a difference in our community. Lets hope the school district sees that these issues need consistant attention.
bullying
shame on trinity school. This is what we are paying taxes for schools that allow incidents to be put under the table hush is the word. lies on top of lies the truth will come out and my heart goes out to this family.
trinity
The saddest thing about the situation at this school is the children and unsuspecting parents trust the administration.It takes many instances for people to realize that they are being ignored.Once the parents realize this,they will be flat out lied to. The teachers are stellar at Trinity and their hands are being tied, they have no freedom of expression and the principal has no creativity, denying them the chance to do what they do best!
No wonder people don’t want
No wonder people don’t want to come to NR. Another disgrace for the City.
Bullying Incident in New Rochelle
My heart goes out to the young boy who was bullied and his family, who felt as if their voices weren’t heard when they tried to protect him from being abused by his peers. While it is incredibly troubling that the child responsible for this behavior was not reprimanded prior to the incident, it is time that parents of bullies play an active role in monitoring their kids’ behavior. It truly takes a village to raise a child who knows the difference between right and wrong, but the negative behaviors that a bully exhibits oftentimes start at home. Is he being ignored, left to his own devices, bullied by his siblings or parents? Every bully has a back story and it is time we as parents realize that we must do our part not only to protect our kids, but inspire and empower them to become positive role models in their community.
As for the comment about why people shouldn’t move to New Rochelle, you should be aware that bullying is prevalent in every playground in America – including the richest neighborhoods in our county. While some forms of bullying might not cause bloody noses, words are just as harmful as well. I have to say, I happen to love living in New Rochelle. Though our city might not be perfect, it’s comprised of many compassionate, kind and good hearted individuals who work hard to make our community a better place for our children. Let’s hope that as a result of this terrible incident that our schools will forge a partnership with parents to Stomp Out Bullying by issuing a zero tolerance policy for bullying district wide.
As Jennifer had mentioned, Ross Ellis, the founder of Love Our Children USA has made it her life’s mission to support children and families who find themselves victimized by bullies. Visit http://www.loveourchildrenusa.org and http://www.stompoutbullying.org for more details about how you can seek help or do your part by Stomping out bullying in your community.
Sincerely,
Beth Feldman
Founder, http://www.RoleMommy.com
Bullying v. Rug Sweeping
Beth,
Before you pass judgement on those who are concerned about what has been going on in New Rochelle keep in mind that those reading and commenting on this site are, for the most part, people who live in New Rochelle. They have just as much a stake in New Rochelle as you. Further, knowing many of them, they include many people who were born and raised here in New Rochelle or have otherwise been here for many, many years. I would caution against dismissing their concerns on the grounds that there are many wonderful, compassionate people here in New Rochelle because you would be talking about, in many cases, those very same caring, compassionate people who volunteer in the community, raise their families, support the schools, run for office or otherwise very involved in our community.
I am not a native New Rochellean. I went to high school at Iona Prep in New Rochelle from 1977-1981 and spent a great deal of time in New Rochelle ever since (dating the Ursuline girl from New Rochelle who became my wife). I lived on the border of New Rochelle, in Larchmont, from 1985 to 1991 and then moved into New Rochelle in 1994. Despite a long-standing and close connection to new Rochelle and having made New Rochelle my family’s home for 17 years I still defer to those who have been “born and raised” in New Rochelle when it comes to discussing the state of New Rochelle.
I mention this because you obviously do not know who John Imburgia is, or the Imburgia family, or his father George Imbrugia and yet you are responding to John as if he knows nothing of New Rochelle and you know everything about New Rochelle. Based on article published on Talk of the Sound, I see that you moved here 12 years ago. John grew up in New Rochelle. His family has made the East End of New Rochelle for MANY DECADES! You might want to consider that John and his family have been a part of New Rochelle for a very long time before you deign to “lecture” him on what is what in New Rochelle.
That said, your points about bullying per-se are all well-qualified on point and I do not want to take away from the fine work you have done on the subject of bullying-prevention and remediation. I would point out, however, that your efforts have been limited to the North End.
I am taking the time to highlight this one particular aspect of your exchange with John because it encapsulates an issue that I care deeply about and was the focus of my recent campaign for the Board of Education.
Fair or not, my take is that you are like many North End residents: you moved to New Rochelle to raise a family in the suburbs, you want to take advantage of the school system and the leafy, quite neighborhoods in Westchester without having to pay Scarsdale or Larchmont prices and taxes. Many people like that come to New Rochelle; they raise their family and then leave. In the meantime, they want to maintain the value of their real estate investment and get value from the school system so they support high taxes and large school budgets and board members almost exclusively from the North End of New Rochelle who will support an administration that flows resources and talent into the North End schools. As a consumer of these resources there is no amount of taxes too high because no matter how high it is still a bargain for a consumer of school services to raise everyone’s taxes so you can get a “free”, high quality education for your children
This cycle has been in hyper-drive for the past 20+ years, about the time school board members were elected at large and the North End came to completely dominate the school system. That cycle has greatly benefited the North but led to a deterioration of the South End quality of life and public schools. This decline in South has been documented by numerous people in numerous ways including, for the last three years, on Talk of the Sound.
Now, consider that the home-owing population in the South End tends to be older and have lived in New Rochelle far longer than the North End. Many have seen their taxes skyrocket over the last 20 years and, as Andrew Cuomo noted in his State of the State address in January, Westchester County is now the highest taxed county in the United States, that includes New Rochelle, and is almost exclusively driven by school taxes. These are people who can no longer afford to live in a City where they have spent their whole lives because they are paying massive taxes to educate other people’s children.
Meanwhile, the quality of the schools in the South End has declined, in particular Isaac E. Young Middle School. I have published numerous articles with hard data — state test scores, gifted programs, arts programs, etc — all of which make clear that South End schools are being massively short-changed. Even Naomi Brickel, a “North End Clique” candidate for school board admitted in the PTA Council debate that the North-South divide was real. That divide translates into real dollars when looking at the impact of property values.
Compounding this is that even for the homeowners with children, many parents in the South End simply refuse to send their children to what they perceive to be a failed South End school system. Their children are in private or parochial schools or they desperately seek magnet programs or variances to get onto the North End track.
One of the primary concerns that parents have is that behavior and performance that would never be tolerated in North End schools is considered a fact-of-life by administrators in South End schools and so accepted as “normal”. Behind this is a not-so-subtle form of racism which has manifest itself from time-to-time in various forums including the recent budget debates this spring at the high school. Poor performance and poor behavior in school is often blamed exclusively on the students and their parents.
Try to imagine what would have happened at Albert Leonard had the school district attempted to sweep under the rug a case of sexual abuse of a child by a school administrator and got caught (by me, I broke the story they were trying to cover up). As an Albert parent, I can tell you that ALMS parents would have been up at the school with torches and pitchforks looking to put someone’s head on a pike. Jose Martinez was allowed to quietly slip away without the board even being informed until AFTER my story ran 5 days later.
Imagine how ALMS parents would respond to a cover up the massive (30-40 percentage points) disparity between test scores in ELA/Math and Science/Social Studies at Isaac, or that 97% of the children in Kaleidoscope are from the North End or that 90% of the PAVE students from our middle schools came from Albert Leonard.
How would you like living in a section of town where just 10% of the children could get into the elite arts programs or just 5% could get into the gifted-and-talented elementary school program or that half the students taking the state social studies test in middle school failed the test how good would you feel about New Rochelle?
John’s family has owned, for many years, a house in the East End which sends its children to Trinity School and then to Isaac. The value of that home is determined, in no small part, by the quality of the elementary and middle school. This is the family’s single largest asset, by far. All of his neighbors are in the same boat. So, when John writes “No wonder people don’t want to come to NR” he is speaking from his experience and represents the experience of THE MAJORITY of New Rochelle residents who live in the East End, South End, West End and Central City of New Rochelle. From where he and his family stand, it is true that they have a difficult time selling their homes, even in a good market, because homebuyers looking for a place to settle and raise a family take one look at Isaac and bolt. No amount of cheerleading is going to change what any real estate broker can tell you, the South End schools are toxic for home buyers.
With all due respect to the folks from the North End (and I am one myself) unless you are make a concerted effort to build relationships and experience the South End of New Rochelle the way that South End residents do, it is more than condescending to presume to instruct them on how they should feel about New Rochelle or point out what a great place New Rochelle is to live. They know perfectly well what is good about New Rochelle, it is why they have, in many cases, lived here for generations.
In this particular case, imagine how you might react to your child’s school principal going before the media and claiming that you never expressed any concerns about the bullying of their child until the day before or that every protocol was followed when you had repeated contacts over months about the bullying and know that protocols were not followed. Imagine these thoughts running through your mind as you sit in waiting rooms for ENT specialists, plastic surgeons and dentists preparing to discuss the need to cauterize blood vessels, replace permanent teeth or break a child’s nose to reset it. Imagine then meeting other parents and staff who tell you that bullying is routinely ignored in your child’s school, that your experience is the common experience.
If I have your attention, and those of other folks from the North End, please take this long comment the right way. It is meant to be a combination wake-up call and invitation to come out of the North End bubble and see how the other three-quarters live.
Folks up North might not be so quick to judge once they have looked at New Rochelle from the perspective of residents living in the South End school districts. At the very least they might consider that the reputation of the entire district suffers when the district is associated in the media with low graduation rates, bullying, sexual abuse of students, no-show jobs, misappropriation, kick-backs and more; the media does not distinguish between North and South so why should we?
Journal News continues biased reporting
Today in the Journal News there is an article titled: “Officials dispute bullying account” in which the claim is made the Assistant Superintendent Jeffery Korostoff spoke with the child’s grandmother after the incident. However the report that the parent had made many complaints in the previous months about bullying of their son was not addressed. I think it is fair to say that this is the case because Trinity is in the south end of the city. We do not hear stories like this in north end schools.
Certainly the Journal News prints no reports of such incidents in north end schools.
School District and City Administration
It seems sad and frankly, a disservice to the entire community to fail to tie together the inescapable fact that elected officials and candidates continue to distance themselves for, I suppose, understandable “political” reasons from any direct responsbility on school district policy, oversignt or process. Yes there are separate voting provisions, but it is anything but logical and certainly not naive to question why the district and the city have not developed some form of formal arrangement that promotes stability, equity, and equality of services. Can anyone deny the impact of a less than adequately functioning of city growth and development? It is absolutely ridiculous to think that a separate voting process absolves the council and city governance from, at the very least, protecting its business plan by coming with with a workable solution to addressing this issue. the school board is not and has not been an adequate functioning entity. The educational results and the lack of uniformity, resource allocaton, labor relations, etc.etc.etc. speak to this point. For one, I cannot understand why if the City is unwilling to disturb existing status quo, they don’t at least see the impact of a district where relatively low commecial growth and home, cooperative or condominium ownership,does warrant represents on some adjunct committee of education reform where members are appointed by the current council district to ensure broad representation. two thirds of a tax payer’s burden comes from the district and like it or not, Bob Cox has pointed out many issues in the district performance and consistency of application, that warrant examination. You cannot bring a city together without across the board representation; it is insulting to think that only residents of one part of the city are electable and can serve. In fact the last redistricting process pointed out the emerging growth areas to be south, and west.
Look, bullying is eminently solvable; it is not a recent phenomena. what is new is simply that the internet and its components have presented new opportunities and coupled with some real socio-economic issues that have negatively affected the notion of family and community, we have some new issues separate from the school fight or even gang involvement.Point is all are definable and thus, solvable, and the association and individuals cited in this report, seem competent and concerned. Let them at it; and hopefully, they will not only have an impact, they will begin to understand that the people “down city” so to speak are not mumbling, moronic knuckleheads who need big brother and sister to patronize them. We have neighborhoods of committed citizens, many with educational credentials rivaling our “upstate brethren.’ and that needs to be understood and respecting. I think that is the gist of what Bob Cox was saying; the Imburgia’s are a valued part of a community and if your voice is dimmed, or not even heard over many years, you tend to sometimes oversimplify or overgeneralize. So what! But I don’t read that into the anti bullying people who have spoken here. I just think it is time for government to listen to other voices and for the city council to stop what Fareed Zakaria has labeled recently as dogma and “abstract principles;
Look I have just returned to this blog after a year’s absence. I was banned from the blog because of physically threatening bob cox, he reported it to the authorities and he did the right thing. Cox and I are not going to announce our engagement anytime soon. but I can tell you as a former substitute teacher in the district where I was very well received by the majority of administrators and teaching staff, that he has isolated many important issues that mandate, yes mandate attention. I don’t like how he presents or even chooses some of his issues, but any fair minded citizen should at least think for a moment about what he has reported for some years and push for more voice, some action on the part of elected officials. How in the name of common sense, can you not?
the common denominator is love for New Rochelle. It is present here and in abundance. I think it is time for open and honest debate, setting priorities that place the city before individual selfish interest and to recognize the incredible gap between different ends of the city. I know quality in education. Many years earlier I did some loaned executive work in Washington D.C. and assisted in developing senior administrators, board members, and policy. I have seen the teaching staff throughout new rochelle. It is uniformly of a high quality. I know Trinity. It has a fine TESOL program and, like other schools, some issues. But I have seen the principal in action and he seems fair and competent especially given that this is his first assignment. But, as Bob Cox states, there are some real problems with one or more specific schools. Just simply check results, no more, just check results! And unless you buy into the false notion that “downcity” teachers are of a lesser quality, do the mental math. They are not!
Imburgia mentioned that perhaps people have another reason not to move here. It is an honest expression and should be valued as such. I don’t fully agree, but I do see some heads in the sand about taking some community responsibility for our school district and it begins with our elected officials. Bob Cox can and filled in the gaps on other areas that should be addressed.
Ms. Feldman,
I spent many
Ms. Feldman,
I spent many years in NR both as a student and a resident. I know first hand about what it is to be “bullied” long before before the term became popular for political wannabees. I think I have a right to complain about what goes on in NR given my long-standing time in the community. I have witnessed first hand how downtown NR turned into a hell whole do to failed government policies. I have watched as the City and its leaders have dumped tens of thousands of taxpayers dollars into the area to “correct” the damage they did in the first place. I am sick of the lies and the “rug sweeping” as are many more longtime NR residents. Box Cox has given us a voice and the ability to get the FULL story despite the City’s efforts to conceal info that may damage thier credibilty. I thank him for that.
It is indeed sad that with the adoption of tax funded school security measures that incidents like this are still occurring.
John Imburgia