Eisenhower Middle School Roxbury Township New Jersey NJ Bullying

BULLYING IN THE MIDDLE SCHOOL
An alert for parents of children in Eisenhower Middle School in Roxbury Township, New Jersey

Most Educators agree that attempts to bully reach their worst in the Middle School / Junior High School years. Many parents don't recognize the far-reaching effects that school bullying has on a child:

- Bullying can take the form of outright violence, but doesn't need to

- Bullying can also take the form of consistent verbal harassment against a child

- Bullying can take the form of shunning others and spreading rumors about them.

- Bullying interferes with education and can link learning with painful memories

- Bullying often leaves deep emotional scars on a child that last for life

- Being bullied has led to the suicide of dozens of Middle School students nationwide

- Middle School Administrators often make public pronouncements in September such as
"a zero tolerance policy for bullying", especially when talking to parents at 'Back to school' nights, then continue to do what they've always done: look the other way in most instances and assume bullying is normative in Middle School, or blame the bullied victim. Anything but take effective action against individual bullies. In rare moments of candor last year, a number of EMS teachers admitted to us that the verbal interaction between students is often shocking & toxic. Since this website went up in January 2008 they now measure every word that they say to us. Our child has been deeply affected by verbal bullying at Eisenhower, and now that we recognize that we were being 'played', to the detriment of our child, we have a justifiable contempt for those Teachers and Staff there who are guilty of negligence in this area, all the while knowing that every teacher we've ever spoken to thinks they do a good job in limiting bullying. Our family knows the truth.

For those teachers & staff who really did make an attempt to help us, Mr. B., Mrs. D., the other Mrs. D., and a few others, our sincere thanks.

The State of New Jersey School Bully Guideline has the potential to be used in a Legal sense against Districts who routinely fail to actually protect students, and just running an anti-bullying assembly once a year doesn't meet the standard. Those assemblies only impress the kids who wouldn't bully to begin with.

We have found that it is standard procedure for the School Administration to deny that bullying of any sort is a systemic problem at their school, no matter what the reality is. That denial is part of what they understand their job entails. When specific instances of bullying are brought to their attention, they address the culprit, but imagine the instance was isolated. The article link below from the American Psychological Association carries the headline:
"Bullying Widespread in Middle School, say Three Studies". See it here: http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct99/cf3.html

If your child is being bullied your first step is to contact the teacher, then the Principal. Keep a dated record of your contacts with them, you may need it later if you have to go to the Superintendent or School Board or Attorney. Here's the school contact info:
EISENHOWER MIDDLE SCHOOL
Mr. Lee Nittel, Principal
47 Eyland Ave, Succasunna, NJ 07876
Main tel# 973-584-2973

OUR STORY

Our child has been mercilessly taunted and called names since we began Eisenhower Middle School. Our child has done absolutely nothing to cause this. It seems that if you're not a jock, or pretty, don't have an ipod in your ear or if you don't use profanity you are a target for verbal bullying. When we went to the staff during early 7th grade we were assured that things would get better, the kids were "just testing each other in a new school". In reality, the verbal bullying has gotten far worse, filthy expletives have repeatedly been used to harass our child, and all the while our increasing complaints were met by statements like "oh, it's just a rite of passage" or "they'll get tired of it eventually". Well, it's worse than ever. Racial taunts have been added by one of the bullies to the toxic mix.

Some aspects of our situation have recently (January 2008) been mishandled by some EMS staff. The "blame the victim, find fault with the victim" route seems preferable rather than carefully examining the facts. A perfunctory snap judgment against our child was made without the facts being understood. Our child is being victimized a second time but in this instance by the adult staff charged with protecting students during the school day. The last 3 months have seen a pattern of missed opportunities on their part to correct the situation of bullying. That's all we want. We want the bullying to stop. Perhaps the posting and publicizing of this website will help.