NY. Girl On Girl Bullying In The Elmira City School District, Part II

Elmira, NY—In Part One of “Girl On Girl Bullying” we showed you videos of girls fighting one another, uploaded to Facebook and Youtube by students in the Elmira City School District.

The student’s faces are covered to protect their identities.

A Broadway Middle School student we spoke with says she is in 3 out of the 10 videos we found posted online.

“I got kicked in my head a couple times,” she said.

She says the fights break out from bullying that starts in school.

Fights her mother and several other parents say could be prevented if the school district were more proactive.

The faces of the parents are also being covered so their children can’t be identified.

“They don’t do anything. All they do is suspend them. I want her to stay in school.”

“I feel that if a child is being bullied, then that needs to be addressed right then and there and not wait until it gets to the fist throwing point.”

But Elmira City School District Superintendent Joe Hochreiter says bullying isn’t a problem in the district.

“I don’t think bullying is a problem. I think without the right communication, up to a teacher or school counselor or principal, it’s hard to keep our temperature, our thumb on how students are feeling and what their perceptions are. But it’s not a problem,” Hochreiter said.

Hochreiter says the district knows about the videos.

In fact, he says they’re often used as evidence in disciplinary cases.

But when we tried to show the superintendent the fighting videos we had found online, he told us he couldn’t watch them.

“You know, I’m not sure I can view this, because if this becomes submitted as evidence, I’ve got to be a third party,” Hochreiter said.

Hochreiter says he’s not allowed to view the video until it becomes a disciplinary matter.

After that, the district is free to take action.

“We document every single conversation we have with families, we document every single behavior around fighting or bullying that happens in schools,” Hochreiter said.

WETM-TV obtained school suspension numbers through March of the 2011-2012 school year.

So far, there have been more than 25-hundred  suspensions.

Of that number, only 22 are the result of intimidation, harassment, and bullying.

Three suspensions were handed out because of assault with physical injury.

The top three reasons for suspension include: disorderly conduct, insubordination and skipping school.

But remember, these are only incidents that led to suspensions.

“We’re cognizant that despite our best efforts, 2 kids that want to go throws are going to go to throws, at a bus stop, at a park, at a movie theatre, at school,” Hochreiter said.

As far as the fights that happen off school property, like the one shown on video that happened nearly 2 blocks away from Ernie Davis Middle School; School officials say as long as they can prove the fight has a negative impact in the classroom, they can still take action.

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