Wokeness Comes for School Safety

AMAC Exclusive – By Andrew Abbott

A New Jersey school superintendent resigned late last week following the suicide of a 14-year-old girl who was routinely bullied at a public school in his district. The teenager, Adriana Kuch, took her own life on February 3 after a video of multiple other female students viciously attacking her at school was posted and went viral online. The tragic incident was just the latest example of an alarming rise of violence in schools, even as many administrators and education bureaucrats work to remove resource officers from hallways and soften disciplinary actions – often in the name of “racial justice” or other left-wing talking points.

Kuch, who attended Central Regional High School in Berkeley Township, New Jersey, is remembered by her friends and family as a kind and generous person who volunteered to help children with special needs and enjoyed spending time in nature. In a shocking 20-second video clip that made the rounds online a few weeks ago, a group of girls are seen mercilessly punching and kicking Kuch and pulling her hair. Kuch’s assailants posted the video to their social media accounts, where they also posted other content talking and laughing about bullying Kuch.

Two days after the assault, and after reportedly facing more merciless bullying at school, Kuch took her own life at home. Soon thereafter, alarming details began to emerge about glaring failures by school officials to adequately respond to the incident that apparently precipitated Kuch’s suicide.

For instance, though Kuch was knocked unconscious during the beating, she was only taken to the school nurse’s office, rather than school officials calling an ambulance. Other students also reported that the viral video was just one example of a pattern of abuse endured by Kuch and others at the school, which students say administrators routinely ignored.

Amid mounting public backlash, Central Regional School district superintendent Triantafillos Parlapanides initially blamed Kuch’s father and even Kuch herself for the tragedy, claiming that her father was having an “affair” and that Kuch had a “drug addiction” which caused her to take her own life. Parlapanides flatly denied that the bullying Kuch faced had anything to do with her suicide.

After days of outrage from parents and a mass walk-out of students at the school, Parlapanides resigned. Kuch’s family is calling for more officials to step down as well, citing systemic failures to protect Kuch and other students who are victims of bullying.

Unfortunately for many students throughout the country, Kuch’s story is hardly unique. Public schools are reporting an unprecedented rise in bullying and assaults, both verbal and physical.

Most of these cases involve students attacking other students, but teachers and school officials have also been victimized by the rise in school violence. A Georgia teen is currently facing criminal charges after assaulting her teacher in January, leaving the educator with a broken leg. In December, another high school student in California attacked a teacher with a knife. Around the same time as Kuch’s case was making headlines, another viral video showed a 15-year-old boy savagely beating a 9-year-old girl on a school bus.

While most schools don’t release data on the number of bullying and assault incidents, one study found that reports of bullying increased 35% from 2016 to just prior to pandemic school closures. Another recent report from the CDC found that teen girls in particular are “engulfed” in violence and trauma.

But even as schools are becoming more dangerous, administrators are removing protections for students and growing more lenient toward offenders. As the “Defund the Police” movement grew in popularity following the death of George Floyd in 2020, many districts eliminated their school resource officer positions. Under policies pushed by Democrats at the federal, state, and local level, most schools have also virtually eliminated suspension and expulsion as punishment for misbehavior, even violent acts. In one high-profile case from a Virginia high school last year, a male student who identified as a girl raped a female student in a bathroom, but was then allowed to attend another district high school the following year, where he abducted and sexually assaulted another female student in a classroom.

In effect, these measures are the K-12 version of the left-wing crusade to “reimagine” the criminal justice system. In Gwinnett County, Georgia, where the aforementioned assault on a teacher took place, the school board had just approved a slate of so-called “restorative justice practices” aimed at addressing “racial disparities” in discipline. Both the attacker and the victim were Black.

According to the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality, 21 states and the District of Columbia had enacted similar “restorative practices” in schools as of 2020, purporting to focus on the “root causes” of misbehavior rather than punishing students who break school rules and in many cases the law. Proponents of the concept argue that “traditional” discipline “widens inequities” and is unfair to students of color.

But as critics have pointed out, the victims in many cases of school violence are also racial minorities. Like in the case of Adriana Kuch, the perpetrators are often allowed to remain in school, leading to more violence.

Some school districts, like in Washington, D.C., and nearby Alexandria and Montgomery Counties, are now rushing to bring resource officers back into schools. But until school administrators and woke education bureaucrats acknowledge that progressive ideology is fundamentally incompatible with ensuring safety and order in classrooms and hallways, schools will likely continue to be far more dangerous than they should be.

Andrew Abbott is the pen name of a writer and public affairs consultant with over a decade of experience in DC at the intersection of politics and culture.