Posted on 10/16/2007 4:05:33 AM PDT by Man50D
A Missouri public school is taking a mother to court for withdrawing her son and daughter from the school and teaching them at home, after an apparent threat to the daughter's life at the school.
The case involves Moberly, Mo., mother Anita Nicoli, who withdrew her daughter and a son from Moberly Middle School recently after what she has described as a two-year campaign of intimidation by other students.
The breaking point came when another student, who allegedly had harassed and assaulted her daughter, drew a picture of herself holding a gun and pointing it directly at Nicoli's daughter. The picture was passed around among students, she said.
But now she is facing a court hearing in Missouri's 14th Judicial District, prompted by a complaint by the school after she withdrew two of her children.
Multiple telephone messages left with officials at the school district were not returned. But Nicoli told WND that she is accused of "educational neglect" by social services, based on a complaint from the school.
The incident that she perceived as a threat was especially egregious, she told WND, because the student who drew the picture showed it to her daughter, and then other students saw it as well. One student told a teacher, who took the picture. But Nicoli said when she found out and wanted a copy of the offending picture to pursue a complaint, the school told her it had been lost.
Drawings of weapons in schools aren't new. In fact, WND reported just weeks ago that a 13-year-old in an Arizona school was suspended for three days for drawing a sketch of a gun, even without any targeted individual.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
This could go either way. The mother should produce evidence on how many stoopid kids graduated from Missouri schools.
The Situation could go either way, but I bet the school has pretty good evidence because there are a ton of home schooled kids and this is very unusual.
so when will all Missourians who send their children to government schools be brought up on child abuse charges?
Some additional facts would be helpful. I find WND often prints a very interesting headline and then leaves out a significant detail or two.
My guess: the kid who drew the picture is a member of a protected minority. Mom violated a big rule of liberalism (homeschooling her kids) and thus will be given the full force of the law.
I hope she joined HSLDA. If so, that school district will get what’s coming to them.
Let’em try this crap in Georgia and a sh*t storm will follow.
The article says HSLDA is helping her, in which case the situation should be resolved pretty quickly I think.
Actually, libs with kids send them to private schools. Public schools are for proles.
Why would you ever believe the school, especially one that has let this situation go on for 2 years ? The school wants their per capita money and they are annoyed that the mom is going against the “system”.
You need to finish your sentence.
...resolved pretty quickly...in her favor.
The school is clearly overstepping their bounds and have no constitutional basis for their claim othere than that they want the money.
Nothing threatens The State like children who are not subjected to their Statist political indoctrination. I think it was Mao who was first to posit this axiom; maybe Lenin.
The woman should, of course, have the right to homeschool, and i suspect that will be the ultimate decxision. But there’s something not right with this story, either. For one, I assume that PLENTY of parents in Missouri homeschool with no problems at all. And what’s with these kids being bullied and harrassed for years? Your average decent kid just doesn’t draw that sort of negative attention for that long.
Possibly. If it becomes necessary, the mom should just put her kids back in school, hire security guards to follow them around, and sue the pants off the school system (including making them pay for the security guards).
It’s a good thing we have the HSLDA already set up and on the ground running.
When the left decides that they can’t survive the homeschooling wave, they’ll hit us HARD with the full force of the government. If homeschoolers had to play defense when this happens instead of being forearmed with the HSLDA, it could be a tough fight.
Everything you see the left doing these days - the fairness doctrine, the fight against Fox News and the internet, political correctness, “hate” speech laws, and the fight against homeschoolers -
all of this is just further evidence that their ideas cannot compete honestly with traditional conservative values.
A kid can be 'average' and 'decent' as you call it, but react when bullied. That, of course, spurs the bully (or bullies) to bigger and better things in order to get more laughs, more shock and a bigger thrill.
What's wrong here is that the school let this go on so long.
Sometimes they leave out the all the facts. LOL
MO Ping?
As a Missouri homeschooler, my take is this:
Missouri has always been friendly to homeschoolers as far as requirements go. This is a push to start making the state more unfriendly to us, in terms of requirements for the parents, paperwork involved, etc.
“This is a push to start making the state more unfriendly to us, in terms of requirements for the parents, paperwork involved, etc.”
Libs are like terrorists. Probe, analyze, and exploit. If this works out in their favor, it’ll mushroom. If not, they’ll try something else.
The Mom probably failed to give the school district a letter of intent to homeschool.
“What’s wrong here is that the school let this go on so long.”
IF that’s indeed what happened. I’ve had at least one child in a public school for 16 years now and I’ve never heard of a kid, much less two siblings, being bullied so long and so severely. If anything, it seems to me the public schools are OVERLY sensitive about bullying.
In fact, we regularly see threads here on FR making fun of public schools for calling certain things bullying.
Low volume ping list
FReepmail me to be on, or off, this list.
I wish this mother had thought of, or even known about, HSLDA.
Ooops! Further down in the article it says that she IS being helped by the HSLDA.
You're right, except you're failing to account for the bully, who can get promoted right along with the victim throughout grade school.
Once a certain kind of bully has identified a ready victim, they don't let up.
The Missouri homeschooling law is very generous. As long as the parents complied with it, the government is going to have a difficult time getting a conviction.
This does point out another problem: the growing boldness of the child-protection bureaucrats at pushing parents around to comply with government demands. I have seen this in other cases in Missouri. Just like when politicians talk about our income as if it belongs to government, the bureaucrats are starting to act as if they own our children as well.
“The Situation could go either way, but I bet the school has pretty good evidence because there are a ton of home schooled kids and this is very unusual.”
I doubt it. Here’s another quote from the article:
“’Three days after I pulled my kids out, the school apparently wrote a letter to juvenile authorities [with a complaint],’ she told WND. She was notified by juvenile authorities and went in to talk with them.”
It’s tough to commit “educational neglect” in three days of homeschooling.
Looks like the totalitarians running the school were insulted that ANYONE would choose to avoid their “quality” educational offerings.
Actually, it’s probably part of the school’s defensive tactics against a possible lawsuit from the family against the school for not adequately providing a safe environment for the child. By being the first out of the box with (in all likelihood, false) accusations, they can sufficiently muddy the waters so that a lawsuit by the family will look like a sour grapes reaction to the school district’s action against them.
sitetest
“A kid can be ‘average’ and ‘decent’ as you call it, but react when bullied. That, of course, spurs the bully (or bullies) to bigger and better things in order to get more laughs, more shock and a bigger thrill.”
Not normally. When you stand up to a bully they usually go find an easier target.
“It’s a good thing we have the HSLDA already set up and on the ground running.”
As a homeschooling family, we renewed our subscription last month.
sitetest
Interesting story and thread. Thanks for posting. Freedom BUMP!
“Once a certain kind of bully has identified a ready victim, they don’t let up.”
That’s true — until the victim stands up for himself.
“Actually, it’s probably part of the school’s defensive tactics against a possible lawsuit from the family against the school for not adequately providing a safe environment for the child.”
I think you figured out what really happened here.
She should have gone on the offensive and gotten a lawyer, then went to the police as soon as she decided to pull her child out of school. Then they probably wouldn’t have tried something like this.
That's how I would state it.
The article suggests that this is a single mom. At least, I didn’t see a reference to a father.
I’ve seen this sort of situation before with single moms.
My son had a friend from his baseball league a while back. They both went to baseball camp over the summer a year ago.
For some reason, one of the other campers targeted my son for bullying. My son is a patient sort, but eventually, he grew frustrated and angry. He’d tried to get the folks running the camp to intervened, but they barely exercised any authority over the kids anyway. During breaks and lunch, they’d retreat indoors and leave the kids entirely unsupervised.
Since the other camper was physically messing with him, I advised him, look, when the kid pokes you or deliberately shoves you, have at him. But remember, you’re about twice his height. Scare the daylights out of him, but try not to kill him.
Well, the other camper came up the next day and started poking my son sharply in the chest. My son picked him up and threw him against the wall. Then he picked him up off the wall and threw him down on the ground, and warned the fellow that he wouldn’t be as considerate of the fellow’s continued good health the next time.
The creep stopped harassing my son.
But, my son’s friend was absolutely horrified. In discussion with him, he told me that his mom had told him NEVER to fight back against ANYONE under ANY circumstances. I suggested that sometimes, one physical confrontation is all that’s necessary to get rid of a bully. But my son’s friend said that his mother had taught him that it’s actually immoral to fight back.
The friendship came to an end after this incident - I suspect that he and his mom thought we were a bunch of evil, immoral barbarians. LOL.
I don’t want to suggest that every mom thinks this way, but I will say that moms often look for ways of avoiding confrontation, avoiding having to “fight back.” I think that we may be seeing this sort of attitude on display with this mother.
sitetest
Am I wrong in my understanding that home schooling is perfectly legal in Missouri? We have many friends in that state home schooling their children.
Haven’t read the entire article yet, but I just have to respond. It’s not illegal to homeschool in missouri. Homeschoolers have the entire year to pursue the state requirements....which is a matter of being able to “prove” to the state (if asked) how many hours the child studied and how many of those hours were core classes. Missouri is one of the best in the nation because the state stays OUT of it... She is required to notify the “district” that she intends to homeschool. (some districts don’t care if they are notified or not. It probably depends on how big they are) Now if they want to be buttheads about it...they can make the homeschooling family’s life hard. Especially if they lost a family of 5. That’s a lot of tax $ to lose.
It’s important to join the homeschooling defense atty’s.
http://www.hslda.org/Default.asp?bhcp=1
Thnx for the ping...
My youngest was getting crap from a punk for more than a year. We pulled him out of the school (Catholic school) and put him in the public school.
This punk was a charity project the school had adopted. He had been a problem in other schools and our parish school wanted to help. Problem is, when he was a punk in our school they didn’t stop him.
My #38 post might answer your question.
Thanks to the local police, the Middle School was just the beneficiary of a grant to install new security cameras. It would be up to Aaron Vitt, the Middle School principle to explain what is happening; thus far he has remained mum.
I’m glad your son stuck up for himself, but am sorry to hear that he lost his buddy. I would have to wonder why the other mom feels it’s necessary to not have a sense of “self-preservation”, a key concept necessary to survival in so many ways. IE:finance,health etc.. What a sad story.
This is one GREAT thing about living in Texas - no school district has any authority to do anything to or about parents who home school their own kids. Freedom lovers - come on down! We need more voters who love freedom and the law.
the way schools are going,I’d keep my kids home. Ahnold Schwarzenegger, justsigned into law among numerous bills, the one that allows trans gender students to use each others rest rooms., NO MORE SEPARATION OF BOYS FROM GIRLS?
If I were a student today, I’d hold it til I got home.
We traveled threw the northern part of the great state of texas on our way home from a long needed vacation. It’s our NEXT trip. If I could get our entire family to move there...and I plan to make the attempt, I’d do it in a heart beat.
I bought my mug.... “don’t mess with texas”, and use it at least once a week. I can’t tell you home many people we met on our trip (cross country to calif.), who were from Texas. They were the nicest bunch of foks I’ve ever met. I’m not kidding. They were kind, outgoing, friendly and wonderful to speak with. I can’t wait to go to padre islands....that’s the first on my list, as well as a few cities.
My wife and I used to live near Moberly. I can attest that there are literally several hundred kids ranging from K-12th grade that are homeschooled in this region. There may be thousands of kids now. Homeschool Co-Ops have a huge presence in the Mid-Missouri region. I can’t comment on the state of Moberly Public Schools since we lived in Columbia, MO.
“That’s true — until the victim stands up for himself.”
What’s your definition of standing up? Having dealt with our son being bullied for 2½ years, I can tell you it’s a difficult situation.
We told our son that he would NOT be in trouble at home if he ended up kicking some bully butt at school but the school made it very clear that he would be suspended if he got into a fight, no matter who started it.
We got tired of the school’s inaction and finally, after years of considering it, pulled our kids out of public school last year.
The bullying wasn’t the only reason we chose to homeschool, but it was the proverbial straw.
PING...
“threw meant through”..I do get embarrassed at times at my lack of proofreading. (not always...)
:)
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