The Outcome

I spent much of yesterday morning pacing our upstairs and waiting for the phone to ring.  I made my initial call to the school as soon as I return home from my school drop off rounds around 8:20.  I spent much of my morning researching the districts policy on "threatening acts" and "bullying" and ignoring the other things I needed to do like clean the kitchen and set stuff out for dinner.  I was an nervous ball of energy.  Even though I have a great repore with our principal, I was still nervous about talking to her.  I wanted to be sure I sounded like a reasonable mom and not a screaming banshee.

At 10:30 I realized I had to run out and get Micah, meaning I ran the risk missing her call.  Missing her initial call could mean another 2 hours of waiting or me having to show up at her office.  Neither of which would have worked for me, so I called again to give them my cell number.  Low and behold, she was getting ready to call me and we finally connected.

I've said before that I love our school's principal, and I really mean that.  She is one of the few adults outside of our close circle of family to really try and understand Jason and what makes him tick.  She stood by us when his brother was removed and people believed that we picked the cute, younger one over the older troubled one.  She has advocated for us at the district level to enact changes in Jason's IEP that we had previously been told weren't possible.  She loves her kids and her school and really wants to partner with parents.  She's awesome.

She was also very upset when she heard what had happened.  We had discussed this as a possibility and a fear of Jason's the previous morning and at the time she felt horrible that he should even have to have that fear.  The reality of it happening even worse.  

We talked for about a half an hour about that situation and the child in question.  We also discussed Jason's social woes and how I was pretty much fed up with how kids treat him.  She was open to my ideas about handling bullying (which I must say have calmed down from the night before to things less severe than public stonings).  We also discussed some information I found that another local school was doing to counter-act bullying and that it was a program she could implement in our school.  I also forwarded her information my friend, Amie, sent me about a bully prevention in-service program a local psychologist runs.  Amie's school did it and she said it made a huge impact on her school community. She ended the call with a plan for dealing with today's incident and a better understanding of what life at the school is like for my son.  

After school, Jason's first words to me were that the girl was punished and had to apologize.  He said he felt better and now knows that he can ALWAYS talk to the teacher and principal about situations like this.  I don't think this will stop it, but I feel that at least Jason feels a little safer and a plan is in place to deal with future incidents.