This is long, but is a prime example of how fucked the US public school system is.
Absolutely disgusting policy. I got bullied for being fat and a looking Asian even though I’m not. It was a very middle eastern population school. I fought a lot of people and solved most of my issues but got in a lot of trouble too(didn’t graduate 50/50 fights and staff wouldn’t work with me on classes I needed to graduate).
My autistic brother went to my HS after I “graduated”. Got bullied by his middle school bullies that also moved to this HS. His autism makes it so faces don’t stick and he has big loud outburst when he’s hurt or mad. They found this hilarious. He still (>10yrs later) holds a record for one of the district’s standardized test scores, so the school lied to my parents about transfer programs and work-from-home programs they had(lied to me about them too when I wanted a way out from the bullies), in order to keep his test scores and look good. He “wasn’t going to graduate because of all his absences” so my parents told him to fight his bullies, but he had to go to school. The school would also tell dad one thing and mom another but b/c their schedules, mom & dad didn’t really have a chance to compare notes...
He put one attacker through a vending machine at one point and the school wanted him arrested, even after the vending machine stocker who saw the whole thing, took my brother’s side. The stocker saw the whole thing and said he’d pay for the machine out of pocket if he had to, but my brother did nothing to start that fight. He tried to get away, got surrounded by 5or 6 of these kids, they all were hitting him from behind when he’d turn to face the last person who hit him, finally he caught one by the arm and got hit in the face which broke his glasses, that’s when my brother shoved that kid into the machine and beat him through the front and into the machine.
Our parents threatened to call every news station and sue the HS and district due to how long they had done nothing to protect him and then when he protects himself, they want to further ruin his life. Only then did the school “figure out how to set up a work from home program”. If you couldn’t tell, I’m still pissed at that school.
My brother, 10+ years later still has ptsd(yes, I am using that correctly here). He can’t handle someone patting his shoulder or any contact from out of his line of sight, he can’t handle large crowds, and while it might seem kind of racist, he gets twitchy around middle eastern people because his tormentors were almost exclusively middle eastern.
Fuck that staff, fuck his bullies, and I want to see that school burn down.