Editor’s note: The video clip above includes testimony discussing self-harm, suicidal behavior and other subjects that may be triggering to some.
“You are here to protect the students. But the students do not feel protected,” a sobbing Danielle Ledesma told the school board, speaking before a packed auditorium at Central Regional High School in Bayville Thursday night. More than 60 speakers, many of them students, spoke of a bullying crisis in the district.
Many told raw personal stories of getting tormented over and over again. Ledesma, a senior, accused the school board of ignoring their pain. “I’ve tried so hard to just talk, to just try for you guys to listen to me, for everybody here to try and listen to us,” she cried. Another student, Echo McNichols, said, “They told me that I was ugly and fat and that I should kill myself. They sent us pictures of guns and said they would send people to our house to come rape us … And the school’s solution was to tell me to switch classes — to turn my schedule upside down in the middle of the year — to get away from these kids. Or to just suck it up.”
The board meeting began with a moment of silence for 14-year-old Adriana Kuch, who died by suicide on Feb. 3 after classmates assaulted her, then posted a video of the attack on social media. Kuch’s death focused a national spotlight on the district and galvanized the school community to demand change. The board proposed nine initiatives to defuse tensions here, but Acting Superintendent Doug Corbett told reporters, “I see a lot of good kids doing a lot of good things. There’s not a culture of violence. Do these things occur? Obviously, we know that — throughout the country and in every school. We work everything in our power to prevent that.”
