$27 Million Settlement in Bullying Lawsuit — And What It Means for Schools

A school district in California just reached a $27 million settlement with a family of a middle school student who was beaten to death by bullies in 2019.

And I didn't hear about this story when it occurred, but it's making big news now that the settlement has been reached.

And it really is a wake-up call for school districts, for school administrators, and for I think everyone who cares about education.

to be aware of what our liability is and what our responsibility is when we have a bullying situation.

And I don't think we can ever completely prevent this kind of thing.

The student was punched several times and, you know, died several days later in the hospital.

You know, that kind of thing could happen randomly.

That kind of thing could happen without any warning.

But in this case, there was warning.

There were multiple incidents that were reported to administrators.

There was a previous incident in which the student had been punched.

And one of the things that the administrators were held responsible for was failing to contact police because this was an assault.

The previous case, the previous incident was an assault.

And the principal was fired.

The assistant principals were fired.

And ultimately, the district was held liable or considered itself liable enough to pay a $27 million settlement.

And none of that will bring that student back.

And of course, we want to do everything we can to ever avoid being in a situation like that where a student loses their life.

And...

I think we have to not be naive about the predictability of things like this.

I think, you know, again, there's an element of randomness.

You know, we can't predict or foresee everything like this.

But at the same time, when it has happened before with the same students, we kind of can.

And one of the things that I find most alarming about the dismantling of progressive discipline and the failure to follow progressive discipline policy in so many places is and just the legal, you know, undoing of progressive discipline is we're discarding evidence about what is likely to happen in the future, right?

When a student assaults another student, or in this case, a group of students target and assault another student multiple times, the first time is likely evidence that it is going to happen again.

And we might say, well, we would like to have a restorative conversation, or we don't want to, you know, exacerbate the school-to-prison pipeline.

And if I think I hear stuff like that and I think I don't want to exacerbate the school to hospital pipeline.

I don't want to worsen the school to morgue pipeline.

And if we have to place some students in alternative school, if we have to suspend or expel some students to keep that from happening, I'm much less concerned about the school to prison pipeline and much more concerned about the students who are predictably being put in harm's way by their peers who are bullying them, who are harassing them, who are being violent toward them.

And, you know, and there are always going to be scuffles between students.

There are always going to be things that just need to be kind of resolved.

But we have to not reduce assault to a disagreement between students.

We have to not downplay it and act like we can just handle it by having a conversation because these are things that need to have real consequences and one of those consequences needs to be separation.

Students need to be physically separated from their perpetrators when they have been victimized and I think that's just one of the most basic things we can do and I'm curious about this idea of reporting to the police because obviously we don't call the police a whole lot in school.

We don't want to refer things to law enforcement but in cases where a crime has been committed on school property We're not a court system, right?

We can't handle crime.

So at some point, we do have to refer things to the police, like assault.

And that was specifically what these administrators were held responsible for failing to do.

So let me know what you think about this.

To what extent should law enforcement be involved?

To what extent should we treat things as crimes if they occur on campus?

Let me know what you think about this tragic situation.