[quote]Boy beaten for acting too white[/quote]
The mother of a Callaway High School student is taking legal action against Jackson Public Schools after her 15-year-old son allegedly was attacked in school in October.
Hazel Banks said her son, Jaylon, was hospitalized as a result of two fellow students assaulting him Oct. 29.
“One of the boys punched my son and knocked him unconscious,” Banks said.
The other students allegedly targeted Jaylon, who is black, because they believed he was “too well-dressed, well-groomed, well-spoken, and they thought he was quote unquote, ‘too white,’ ” said John Reeves, Banks’ attorney.
Banks said no school official called her about what had happened to her son. Instead, she said a family member told her. The related hospital bills have topped $10,000, she said.
Banks is seeking the maximum damages allowed by law, according to a letter sent to JPS notifying Superintendent Lonnie Edwards that Reeves’ firm was retained in a negligence claim against the district. JPS has 90 days to respond to the notice.
“It’s choking me up because that’s my child,” she said. “It’s just sad that nobody stopped it.”
District officials would not comment because of student confidentiality rights.
Colendula Green, a spokeswoman for the Jackson Police Department, confirmed AMR was called to Callaway Oct. 29, and simple assault charges were drawn up in relation to an incident at the school. However, whether anyone was charged could not be confirmed.
The alleged attackers should not have been in the school because they are habitual trouble-makers, Reeves said.
“It shouldn’t take an event like this to get the administrators’ attention,” he said. “They ought to be aware of it.”
Teachers and administrators should be more aware of what’s going on in schools, Reeves said. “Bad actors” in schools “ought to be watched closely and they should not be allowed to bully and beat up people,” he said.
Ronald Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center, said school is one of the safest places for most children.
But once school officials learn of a serious habitual offender, “there’s a greater responsibility that they have to provide adequate supervision of that individual,” Stephens said. “That’s not to say you can always score 100 percent crime prevention all the time.”
Persistent discipline problems merit additional supervision, he said.
Every school should have appropriate provisions for dealing with violence, he said. “If they don’t, the courts will,” Stephens said.
And there has been an ongoing trend toward litigation, he said.
Fighting among students each year results in numerous expulsions, but those numbers are going down.
In the 2009-10 school year, there were 527 expulsions in Mississippi, including 54 expulsions for fighting, according to the state Department of Education. That’s a decrease from the 766 expulsions in 2005-06, including 73 for fighting.
Like JPS, other school districts in the state are using discipline that encourages positive resolutions of problems and rewards good behavior. Clinton schools are phasing in that approach.
Clinton schools that do not use what’s called a Positive Behavior Intervention System still have schoolwide discipline plans, said Tim Martin, assistant superintendent.
The rules are posted in the hallways and discussed at the beginning of the school year, he said. Teachers also go over the handbooks with students, and students are given a planner that includes the handbook, he said.
It is also stressed that if students are having a problem, such as being bullied, it should be reported to their principal and to an administrator to be handled by the authorities at the school, Martin said. Parents are encouraged to report any problem their child may be having, he said.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t fights in Clinton schools, he said.
After the second major discipline offense, a student is put on an individualized plan and there is a meeting with parents and teachers, he said. The plan details consequences and rewards.
“Without discipline, there can’t be teaching, so we take that very seriously,” Martin said.
When fights occur in DeSoto County schools, principals can “call the police and have them hauled off in handcuffs,” Superintendent Milton Kuykendall said.
The district also has behavior technicians, funded by a federal grant, who work with children who have behavior issues, he said. Each month, nonviolent intervention trainers instruct employees, so they are prepared if there is a serious incident, he said.
“One kid can keep a teacher from teaching 25,” Kuykendall said. Students know fighting is dealt with severely, he said.
The district’s code of discipline spells out the severity of consequences for misbehavior. The rules are also a common part of announcements. There are resource officers at most of the schools, said Katherine Nelson, a district spokeswoman.
“I’m not saying we never have a fight in this school district,” Kuykendall said. “We don’t have many because we think it’s wrong and we try to come down on it hard.”
Marquita Brown • Clarion Ledger • November 24, 2010
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