Burlington School District Promoting 'No Bullying' Signs

For a while, I've been noticing these signs scattered in people's yards and school grounds.

It came to a surprise that the school district is now creating signs to the public to use to promoting anti-bullying.  But I believe that these so-called 'efforts' aren't doing enough.  I believe its more of a way to remove the bad image the Burlington Community School District or BCSD has with dealing with bullying, as well as other issues that they try to cover up.

They don't admit fault to it, but instead promote this kind of stuff so that they can fool people that they are changing for the good, even though the school suicides in the area have been going on for a long time.  In fact, shortly after the string of suicides in 1994, both the West Burlington School District or WBSD and BCSD  have claimed that they were working on taking care of the bullying issues and that they would be changing policies in order to help students with their issues.  Those changes were either insignificant or never placed.

I believe that because enrollment is decreasing down and that more people are going against these school districts.  From students who placed fliers on the cars  to students who stand up against the school. 

There was a system in place in having bullying records recorded and placed through a computer system. http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/BC-IA--Bullying-Database-1st-Ld-Writethru

The problem is that none of these schools in the Burlington School Districts were using this method for a long time.  I don't even believe that West Burlington School District uses this method either because both of these schools waste their money on selfish needs rather than helping to prevent bullying and promoting better education standards.

I don't believe that schools like BHS will change their philosophy and selfishness of taking care of the issue.  All that is important to them is the money and the manipulation of one's mind in believing into their crap.

Student(s) writes notes about BHS's faults and places them on car windshields

After reading this article, I was very impressed by how the note was well written and organized enough to have the news publicized  in The Hawk Eye.

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/BHS-052312

I wasn't surprised though that there would be opposition from Evans and Tom Messinger, as well as the School Board President.  I'm not also surprised that each of these faculty are covering their tracks in order to hide any slip-ups they make.

Ordering school officials to look for students who placed the notes:

First, Evans orders school officials to look through the security tapes to see who had placed the notes on the cars.  Its as though she was looking at these individuals as dangerous criminals.  Newsflash, Ms. Evans.  These are not bomb threats or anything related to that!  Its a freedom of expression given to those to expose the ignorance BHS has been showing for years.  Violating their right of free speech violates their right to the 1st amendment to the constitution.  

If the notes are left on cars as part of a way to show the graduate's feelings about the school, as well as the faculty, then leave them the hell alone.  They have graduated from the school and these students have left their feelings to everyone on how they feel the corrupt school system really is.

Evans needs to move on and let go of the revenge cycle she has out of her.  She terminated one teacher and then attempts to terminate another teacher  She seems to want to terminate these teachers due to 'personal issues' that she doesn't want to talk about.  Even after the recommendation she made of terminating the second teacher was turned down, she still holds a grudge to that teacher.  She still doesn't admit the full reason why she wanted her terminated.  She seems more like a bully than a savior.

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Burl-school-meeting-050812

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Teacher-051512

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Burl-school-pre-052112

"Its unfair to make blanket accusations without giving a specific situation"

This statement was made by Darven Kendell, the School Board President.

There have been plenty of specific situations being given of accusations in the past, like for example the counselor who neglected to take care of the situation Chris Taylor had to deal with in regards of suicide.  That wasn't handled properly and as a result, a suit was filed and won by the father.

I have heard parents and students talk about the nastiest things school counselors at BHS would say to their failing students.  Things like drop out of school, attend Job Core and/or Alternative High School, and statements like "you're not going to get the career you want and you should just give up."  When some of the incidents were confronted, there is only a brief discussion behind close doors, leaving the parents and students out of the direct line of communication.  The cycle continues and creates more problems for both the failing students and parents to have to deal with.  Counselors and teachers don't do enough to help struggling students in achieving their goal to graduation and to have a success outcome in a career that a student likes.

What Kendell probably wants from the students who made the notes is specific pieces of information of incidences that can lead to finding out who was involved with who and why, followed by covering up the specific situation(s).  After all, these "bullying programs" BHS had done, and probably now planning to do again, never really bring up about the string of suicides in 1993 caused by the lack of moderation and responsibility from the faculty to deal with these "specific situation(s)".  

The specific situations that I have brought up many times at BHS were never addressed properly and that these "specific situations" became more frequent over time.  Writing complaint forms, organizing meetings with the principal, etc. have never worked out in dealing with my "specific situations" that was being dealt with by some faculty and students.

Responsible Thinking Classroom:

This sounds very cliche.  While I have never been in such a classroom, the note that was left detailing the problem with the room, followed by the original idea of what the room is suppose to be used for, reminds me of something similar back in Oak Street.

When I did some temporary work at Oak Street as a Teacher Assistant as part of a high school class, I noticed some strange things going on whenever I pass this particular room.  There was a room that was designed for Behavior Disordered or BD students to attend to, followed by a couple of general education classes, like gym, home ect, music, art, computers, etc.  

Before volunteering to work at the school, I knew very little about the system of what punishments are given to students who misbehave in a BD classroom.  What I first noticed when I started working there was how the misbehaved BD students were punished.  The students whom had caught some certain act of trouble would be locked into a room next to the BD room, followed by a teacher aid guarding the outside door.  Screams and yelling could he heard from down the hall.  It wasn't clear how long the misbehaved BD student had to stay in there for, but it sure seemed to be too much for them to handle.  The odd thing about the room is that the only students that I witnessed being put in the room came from the BD room, which the BD room was always occupied by BD students.  

The original room BD room was located where the room where the student was locked up at.  What was more interesting is that there was no Health class during the time that I worked there, which seemed to be unusual.  Normally there was a requirement to have Health class, which would not only help teach students about the basics of health, but also sex education.  

Responsible Thinking Classroom sounds like a toned-down version of the BD room since any student can be put in there.  The question is whether or not the student is locked in there for a period of time.   Not only Oak Street's original BD room was used to lock up misbehaved BD students, North Hill had a similar thing going on as well.  There were a couple articles in the newspaper about children being put into a padded room, but weren't locked up behind a door.  

Pediatric psychologist considers time-outs effective

March 25, 2007

Taking Time

March 25, 2007

"It places a large emphasis on getting student input and what we can do to improve BHS." 

This is a quote from Messinger near the end of the article.  

This was a technique that was suppose to be used during the bullying program in classrooms back in 2005-2006 era, but had eventually quit on it within a few months.  It only occurred once a month, in closed classrooms, during early outs in 4th period.  The idea was to have teachers ask the students about whether or not the school is improving their ways to stop bullying and if there are any improvements needed to increase student potential and safety.  The class I attended during these sessions was a fairly large biology lab.  We don't spend the entire period talking about the subject, but instead spend about 10-15 minutes on it right after we are finished being lectured.  Not much input was put forth from the students, thus failed to try accomplish bullying and student potential troubles.

The idea wasn't really new nor was it successful enough to curve the students bullying and failing grades.  On top of that, the entire school is locked down and students are being watched by whomever keeps an eye on the cameras, which being the faculty and the school's resource officer.  It's more like a prison than it is a school.

Messinger and the other faculty giving opposition in the article can keep talking out of their butts, but its obvious that they're pulling a big stunt in order to prevent anymore students from leaving the district, as well as their precious governmental funding. 

Researched information

In one of my previous postings, I used some basic information about finding out one of the suicides that had taken place back in 1993.  Here are some information that can be downloaded for anyone to look through for themselves.

http://www.mediafire.com/myfiles.php#alpb1qhrpfebu

In addition to downloading the articles, I also will place them through the blog for everyone to see and read.  I'm planning to upload the original copies of the articles that were researched from the library and upload them to the blog for everyone to access.


Copy of Bully article from the original Psychology Today magazine.

Database file of the same article from the magazine.

A book written about bullying that references the article from Psychology Today's magazine.

Two of the many Letters to the Editor published in the newspaper.  These particular pieces were written from outside the state.

An article written in Chicago Tribune about Curtis Taylor's death.

Updated research information on the student suicides

After a few hours, I came back with some research material about the student suicides in 1993.

I went through these four rolls of microfilm to look for newspaper articles listed as important dates.  Here is what I discovered.

An article was listed named W.B. teen-ager commits suicide  in The Hawk Eye on March 21, 1993.

The first of the three suicides occurred on March 19, 1993 at 2:30 a.m.  She committed suicide by a gunshot to the head.  Latricia Nacole, 15, of West Burlington, attended West Burlington High School.  She was a cheerleader for the football team.  She originally was a student at the Burlington School District, but was transferred to West Burlington the year before.

The news about the suicide was going around before authorities released any information about Latricia.








An article was listed named W.B. copes with 2nd teen suicide in The Hawk Eye on March 22, 1993.

On March 20, 1993 at 11:30 p.m., a second suicide was reported.  He committed suicide using a 12-gauge shotgun.  Jade Klein, 15, of West Burlington, attended West Burlington High School.  He received the National Merit Science Award, and enjoys the outdoors, fishing, and hunting.

Police and school officials identified five to six other high school students to be potential risks and the parents were asked to keep an eye on their children.  Half dozen students left the high school without alerting school officials.

The newspaper listed an obitchuary, but no photo was published of Jade Klein.


An article was listed named Police probe 3rd suicide in The Hawk Eye on March 23, 1993.

On March 22, 1993 at around 5:30-6:00 p.m., a third suicide was reported.  He committed suicide by shooting himself.  Curtis Taylor, 14, of Burlington, attended Oak Street Middle School.  He was involved in a school play and was featured in the December 1992 newspaper about a book that he wrote in regards of Vietnam as part of a class project.  He researched war at the library, looking for poems and songs during that time period.  A copy of his book was placed in the library at Oak Street school.

In the same article, George Rinker, 19, of Burlington, threatened to commit suicide on March 23rd at 1:20 a.m.  It wasn't clear though on whether or not he was a current or former student at the time.

After the report of Curtis's death, letters were mail out from Oak Street School to acknowledged the students' parents about the death of the recent student.

The letters were written out by Robert Dodder, President of Board of Education.

 Meetings were created for not only the affected schools, but other schools around the general area, such as the Burlington and Mount Pleasant schools.  Counselors were organized to work with students, as well as having support being given by Governor Branstad with bringing in state counselors.  Churches also did their part with setting up meetings in order to help prevent anymore suicides from taking place.  Letters to the Editor were published by students, as well as a couple of other individuals, expressing their emotions on the suicides.

The events unfolded from March 21st through the late end of the month.  It was unclear whether the discussion began on the 20th.  That is due to the lack of the entire March 20th newsprint.

An article was listed named Father sues school over son's suicide in The Hawk Eye on November 11, 1993.

On November 10, 1993, the father of Curtis Taylor files a suit against the Burlington School District.  On the same day of the suicide, Curtis told his school counselor Elwin Kendell that he was thinking about suicide.  Elwin wasn't able to reach Curtis's father at work.  He then sent Curtis home after making a promise to meet with him the next morning.

Curtis had some history of psychological problems and the father believed that he should have done more with his son on the day of the suicide.

He filed a suit because the school district failed to properly supervise and protect Curtis and other students at school.

His son was reported to be harassed and bullied by other students.  The school didn't do enough to stop the problems.

An article was listed named School district reaches settlement in The Hawk Eye on May 1, 1996.

In late April of 1996, the school district paid $160,000 worth of damages to Curtis Taylor's father.  In addition to the damages, a change of policies were made.

The district agreed to implement a plan for identifying students who are at risk for suicide and a list of responses to be considered after identifying such a student.  The new policy must be forwarded to the board for approval within eight months.

I looked into researching the names of the victims shortly after I looked through the microfilm, which lists articles from the newspaper.  None of the victim's names showed up in the special section for deaths, even though their names should have been added years ago for the listings.

Burlington and West Burlington School Districts: How these districts cover up their student suicides

The other day, I was thinking about the article that I read months ago about a memorial of a middle school student whom passed away due to a suicide.

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Suicide-032412

What I don't understand is the fact that the Burlington and West Burlington School Districts' kept their mouths shut about the other suicides that happened toward several other victims that happened over the course throughout the years.

I recently came across an article by accident when researching student suicides in the general area. This particular thing I found was both shocking and unreal.  In March 22, 1993, a student by the name of Chris Taylor committed suicide due to the bullying issues he faced.  Here is an exert from the Psychology Today Magazine article:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200910/big-bad-bully

On the first day of spring in 1993, honor student Curtis Taylor took his seat in the eighth-grade classroom he had grown to hate in the Oak Street Middle School in Burlington, Iowa. For three years other boys had been tripping him in the hallways, knocking things out of his hands. They'd even taken his head in their hands and banged it into a locker. Things were now intensifying. The name-calling was harsher. Some beloved books were taken. His bicycle was vandalized twice. Kids even kicked the cast that covered his broken ankle. And in front of his classmates, some guys poured chocolate milk down the front of his sweatshirt. Curtis was so upset he went to see a school counselor. He blamed himself for the other kids not liking him.


That night, Curtis went into a family bedroom, took out a gun, and shot himself to death. The community was stunned. The television cameras rolled, at least for a few days. Chicago journalist Bob Greene lingered over the events in his column, and then he printed letters from folks for whom the episode served largely as a reminder of their own childhood humiliations at the hands of bullies.


This not only hit magazines, it also hit into newspapers, like the Chicago Tribune!

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-04-28/features/9304280301_1_lunchroom-column-object

Because of the reticulated crap that the district refused to handle, a suit was filed against the district on November of 1993.  In 1996, the victim's family received a settlement of $160,000 from the damages caused by the district.  I'll provide an update to the research once I find the exact article of its entirely.

What was more interesting is the fact that this was the third suicide in a four day period!  Chris Taylor attended at the Burlington Community School District while the other two victims attended the West Burlington School District.  Currently, I'm doing research on the names of the other two victims.

The strange part of about doing some of the research is the fact that I cannot find the brief information about the $160,000 settlement and the beginning of the suit in November of 1993.  Clearly, The Hawk Eye is covering up the story too, not just the school district.

Several months ago, there was a reported listed in the newspaper about a death of a high school student.

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/obit-Z-Brunken-091311

The night before this article was published, some talk was going around town about a suicide of a BHS student.  I was asked by two students at Notre Dam High School if I knew who it was.  I told them that I didn't have any clue of a suicide going on and that I didn't know who it was.

It is a possibility that Zachery Brunken could have committed suicide, however those details weren't realized to the newspaper due to him being underage.  It would be up to the parent(s) or guardian(s) to release any info to the media about the cause of death of their child.

The school districts and The Hawk Eye are trying to keep the suicides 'under wraps' and only reporting the most recent suicide, even though that particular suicide was almost identical as Chris Taylor's suicide involving the use of weapons, not to mention that Shaw's suicide occurred just three days before the 19th anniversary of Chris Taylor's suicide.  It may even fell on an anniversary on one of the other two students whom committed suicide.  Regardless, I think the reason the cover-up is happening is because it would not only hide their checkered past of handling bullied kids, it would also erase any mentioning about possible lawsuits that can be created to go against the school district for failing to control the problem.

With the thought about Daniel Shaw II, the parents are obligated to sue the school district just as easily as what Chris Taylor's family had done almost two decades ago.  The school district deserves to be punished for not only doing nothing about Daniel's case of suicide, but of the other students whom had taken their lives caused by bullying as well.

In short, here are some copies of articles taken from books, magazines, etc. in regards of Chris Taylor and his suicide.

http://www.mediafire.com/?alpb1qhrpfebu

North Hill School's growing problem: How this could have been avoided years ago

For the past few of articles that I read, North Hill School now has a problem with having limited space to have new students attending the school.....again.

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Alignment-031412
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Burl-school-pre-032612
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/North-Hill-032712
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/North-Hill-Lawn-032912

Back in 2009, the school had finished construction of the new school.  The reason why the original school wasn't working had numerous reasons, particularly the lack of space students can attend the school.  The new school capacity, according to Cirriculum Director Laurie Noll, is 350 students.

The problem didn't start occurring this year. In fact, it started occurring in 2010!

This chart was taken from the School Digger website.  The chart was created from using the data from the National Center for Education Statistics and the U.S. Dept. of Education.  The information can be accessed here.  Source

From the opening year of 2009 through 2010, there was a huge leap of students enrolling into the school system.  As far as 2011, I wasn't able to find statistics for that particular year, however the statistic for the current standards now is 452, according to Laurie Noll.


This fluctuation of students have created a similar problem that the Burlington School District should have foreseen and predicted better in order to prevent this from happening again, but failed to do so.  There are couple of reasons that could contributing to this, but I don't believe open enrollment is the sole reason why this is happening.

Open Enrollment

The first reason is the means of open enrollment.  Open enrollment is designed for parents and students to easily pull a student out from one particular school to the next.  This particular approach can be used for different reasons, like a student being bullied and the school refusing to take the course of action necessarily to remove the threat, distance from home to school is too far, friends and/or family attending a different school, lack of unique and helpful classes and materials needed for a healthy education, etc.   I'm all in for open enrollment as it will help students achieve better and healthy success toward an education, as well as making parent's lives simpler and less worrisome.

Here's what Noll has to say about the situation in the March 14th article.

"At North Hill, we have 452 students in that building and capacity is 350," Noll said. "At Black Hawk, there are 395 students in their building and they have a capacity of 500 students." 

Noll said 94 students living within the area bordered by Curran Street on the west, Central Avenue on the east, Division Street on the south and Agency Street on the north could switch schools. 

"Those 94 students, we would like to move from the North Hill area to Black Hawk," she said. "We have a building that is not being utilized to its fullest capacity. We need to have students in Black Hawk so we are utilizing that building." 

By making the proposed moves, Noll said class sizes in the schools will become more balanced. 

"There are kids from different boundaries in different schools," she said. "That needs to be corrected."

The problem I had reading this is that although there is an issue with one school lacking the amount of students, the areas these 94 students are in crime-infested areas.  Reading from many articles from the For the Record reports on criminal behavior, there seems to be a lot of crime on the south end of town than there is on the north side.  Parents who own their share of the 94 students probably can't move out of the area and feel that safety could be one of their main concerns, especially when the students would most likely walk home and to school through unsafe neighborhoods.  It could be other mix of reasons placed in there as well, but we don't know for sure.  Although it is still a problem having a lack of students attending schools like Black Hawk, there are other problems that Noll can realizes about students moving out of their short distances from school.

The problem with open enrollment in this town is that school districts don't research enough to estimate the proper amount of students that wishes to attend a school of their or the parents' choice.  Because of this students and parents have to battle with the school in keeping their child in enrollment, thus making an overwhelming amount of students attending the maximum limit.  The construction of the building should have been better planned out instead of increasing the student amount by a small margin.  This tries to prevent students and parents from seeking open enrollment because it limits students abilities from leaving the school of disinterest.

Parents and students moving into town/schools


Another contributing factor could be parents and students moving into nearby towns around the general Burlington and West Burlington area.  This helps increase the amount of student input.

I don't believe that open enrollment is the sole reason why its contributing to the overflowing problem.  I think its more on the lines of years worth of people moving into the town with their children, increasing the population of students attending the school and the open enrollment. Parents who are moving into the area for employment, healthcare needs, etc.; they are most likely to bring children along for the ride.  Those same parents might move those children to different schools in the general based on their preference and perhaps from word-of-mouth from the other parents or students.

Before the construction of Sunnyside, there were talks about Sunnyside not having enough room to fit enough students in their school.  One of the main contributors that was talked about was students moving in from other cities.  The school first made placements of mobile homes in order to be transformed into classrooms.  Each building was roughly one classroom.  When the population continued to increase, students were moved to different schools in order to start construction of the new Sunnyside school.  After the school was built, there was a large spike of students attending the school, which had more capacity to hold students that the current North Hill School.

A couple or so schools were probably built in the late 80's through the early 90's in order to fix the fluctuation of students going into North Hill school.  Some schools even implemented the mobile home classroom method, including North Hill.  It somewhat fixed the problem until the beginning of 2000 where the increase started to go up for North Hill, which lead to construction of the new school in the same general area.

What would happen now


With the current trend being seen, it will be probably likely that students would be eventually forced to move to other schools to reduce the amount of students coming into the school.  Another thing that could happen is North Hill could start placing new mobile buildings outside nearby the playgrounds, starting an old trend that could have been fixed when the decision of reconstructing the school was made.

With pushing parents and students aside from attending the school of their choice, families affected would be disappointing and have their backs turned from having their opportunity and right to have open enrollment.  Schools are suppose to have everything planned out from the beginning of how much capacity the school should hold instead of placing a limited amount of seating arrangements that would last for only a couple or so years.  I feel that the school district believe that they can demolish and rebuild any of their buildings to make it look more up-to-date when it comes to certain qualities, but never takes much of an account of how many students that could be brought into the school through open enrollment and new city students.

Schools that are affected, like Black Hawk, would lose funding if they continue losing students.  Building schools with limited amounts of seating can limit this rule, which can force parents to enroll into schools they believe isn't fit for their preference, can balance the schools with having the fullest amount of students attended he schools.  Another problem that rises is once the schools are yet again overfilled, both the school district and the city will help pitch in paying the construction fees of building another new school building, repeating the undesired effect of overfilling and limited seating for open enrolled students.