Posted: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 10:23 am | Updated: 12:16 pm, Tue May 18, 2010.
A Breckenridge mom says she's keeping and teaching her son at home in order to keep her son safe after months of bullying, including death threats, at school.
Darcy Loomis said her 9-year-old son, a fourth-grader at Breckenridge Elementary, has been bullied by a group of other fourth-grade boys at the school since January, but school officials didn't do anything to stop the problem.
"It started with verbal teasing, then went to violence, then it went to threatening their lives," she said, adding her son has been beat up on the playground as well as spit on. One bully used a broken CD to threaten cutting another child's throat on the playground. No punishment occurred after the incident was reported to school administration.
Loomis said both her son and a bully were suspended from school after the bully beat him up and threatened to kill him in a separate incident.
"I went to the principal numerous times from the beginning," Loomis said, adding she also attended a recent school board meeting to ask the board president "what are you going to do so my child can safely go to your schools? And nothing." She said she has sent registered letters to school officials without receiving answers, and attended Monday night's board meeting seeking an answer to her question.
Breckenridge Community School Superintendent Sean McNatt said he could not talk about any specific incidents due to student confidentiality laws, but that the district's policy prohibits bullying. "We follow up with any reports of bullying," he said.
School staff are trained to recognize the signs of bullying, and to help cut down on problems administrators and teachers are "very visible" in halls and elsewhere inside the buildings, McNatt said.
Loomis said she and other parents have reported the incidents to the Breckenridge Police in hopes of stopping the problem. A message left Monday for the police chief was not returned by presstime Tuesday.
To keep her son safe, Loomis has kept him at home for the last three weeks. The boy, an honor roll student who loves attending school, is completing the school year by doing work that Loomis picks up from the school. She plans to home school her children after this year.
"If they would have dealt with this four months ago, I wouldn't be doing this," Loomis said of why she contacted local media about the problem. The bullies "will just get worse when they get older, now that they've learned they can get away with it," she said.
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