Too bad someone/anyone didn't tell her how beautiful she was and that life would get better.
Posted on 10/08/2010 12:42:51 PM PDT by Mind Freed
Sladjana Vidovic's body lay in an open casket, dressed in the sparkly pink dress she had planned to wear to the prom. Days earlier, she had tied one end of a rope around her neck and the other around a bed post before jumping out her bedroom window.
The 16-year-old's last words, scribbled in English and her native Croatian, told of her daily torment at Mentor High School, where students mocked her accent, taunted her with insults like "Slutty Jana" and threw food at her.
It was the fourth time in little more than two years that a bullied high school student in this small Cleveland suburb on Lake Erie died at his or her own hand — three suicides, one overdose of antidepressants. One was bullied for being gay, another for having a learning disability, another for being a boy who happened to like wearing pink.
Now two families — including the Vidovics — are suing the school district, claiming their children were bullied to death and the school did nothing to stop it. The lawsuits come after a national spate of high-profile suicides by gay teens and others, and during a time of national soul-searching about what can be done to stop it.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
“When the family tried to retrieve records about their reports of bullying, school officials told them the records were destroyed during a switch to computers. “
Sickening...
A few years ago, a Bosnian family named Vidovic came to Euclid, Ohio, to escape persecution by Serbs in an embattled region. Realizing their dream of reaching freedom in America put them in debt and forced both parents to take two jobs. However, to see their youngest daughter, Sladjana, so full of excitement as she entered the local high school made it all seem worthwhile. She was a lovely girl, with rosy skin and long blond hair, but she had an accent, she wore strange clothes, and her hairstyle was not exactly contemporary. She was ignored and taunted so continuously that one day she wrote a four-page suicide note. Her sister found her hanging out the window, a rope around her neck.
Her bewildered and devastated parents couldn’t understand what had happened to Sladjana. “We came here to be safe,” her father said. “We thought we were going to have a better life.”
In nearby Mentor, Ohio, outside East Cleveland, broken children like Sladjana abounded. There had been five suicides in two years at the Mentor middle and high schools. And the area was far from unique. Thousands of schools, public and private, are ruled not by their principals but by the bullies, and have had at least one, if not multiple, adolescent suicides.
Too bad someone/anyone didn't tell her how beautiful she was and that life would get better.
“She was an incredible person. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about her. I was new and very shy when I transferred into the Mentor Schools in ninth grade, but Sladjana helped me to change that. She reached out to me and was my friend. I sat with her at lunch and study hall and we were lab partners in science. Her locker was also by mine and I walked with her in between almost every class. She changed my life in ninth grade and was such a fun person to be around. Sladjana’s bubbly personality will never be forgotten.”
Posted by cara salveter on October 9, 2010 at 1:33 AM |
Adrian Beganovic, a 2009 Mentor High graduate, said he would try and stand up for Sladjana but that security guards in the school would threaten him with suspension.
“I even got the same treatment,” he said, “but I was big and strong.”
Sladjana was fine while attending elementary school in Willoughby,
Suzana said, but things turned bad at Ridge Middle School in Mentor and then followed her into 10th grade at Mentor High school. Some students would make fun of two moles on Sladjana’s face, Suzana said. But even after she had them removed, the harassment continued.
The lawsuit claims Mentor High Principal Joseph Spiccia and Mentor School District Superintendent Jacqueline Hoynes knew what Sludjana was going through but failed to intervene. The Vidovics complained numerous times, the lawsuit said, warning school officials that Sladjana had become depressed and telling them that bullying had lead to emotional problems that caused her to be hospitalized.
The Vidovics were in the process of taking Sladjana out of Mentor High and enrolling her in a private school when she killed herself, Myers said.
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/08/parents_sue_mentor_school_syst.html
I suspected my young son was being bullied. Every time I asked if any of the kids were picking on him he said no. But something wasn’t right.
Finally, parents started calling us, telling us their kids came home crying because the teacher was bullying my son.
He’s not been back to public school since. The teacher had the good sense to leave town.
Now they say that any more than 20 kids in elementary school is far too many to teach. Our baby boomer classes often had 36 kids, and nobody would have dared misbehave or be disrespectful to the teacher. I’ve seen tapes from classrooms where there was no teaching whatsoever, just pure chaos with kids roaming around, using foul language at the teacher and each other. And worse than I care to describe here.
How did our teachers manage with so many kids? The parents were on board, the school district backed the teachers if discipline would have come up. Oh, and all the kids shared American values and language, and we even got let out for religious training of our choice once a week for an hour or so.
“How did our teachers manage with so many kids? The parents were on board, the school district backed the teachers if discipline would have come up.”
I teach college English, and we instructors often lament that some of our students are ill prepared for even the most basic English course. When I was growing up, everyone’s mortal fear, academically, was failing a grade. Passing students regardless of performance is a huge disservice. I have high school graduates in my courses who literally cannot compose a grammatically correct sentence. What have these kids been learning for twelve years? I remember sitting in junior high English diagramming sentences in a calm, orderly classroom—afraid of ticking off the teacher because I knew I’d be in bigger trouble at home if I did.
I hope these bullies feel like pond scum.I hope this stays with them for their entire lives.
What have these kids been learning for twelve years? I remember sitting in junior high English diagramming sentences in a calm, orderly classroom—afraid of ticking off the teacher because I knew I’d be in bigger trouble at home if I did.<<<<<<<<<<<<
Exactly, me too. I’ve had to deal with delinquent kids for some years, and there is little hope of success for teenagers who cannot read or write above lower elementary school levels, if that.
Expectations of students to do well have been continually dumbed down to enable non-performers to pass, not to mention we have many students who barely speak English.
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