Bullying happens on almost a daily basis to students, teachers, bus drivers, monitors and teachers aides. What’s it going to take, another Columbine disaster, before our school boards and administrators/principals take this problem seriously?

In Florida, where I have been a substitute teacher for over 12 years, the problem is only getting worse. Schools have a police officer called a resource officer assigned to each school to monitor and control student behavior.

What are our schools becoming? Probably in a few years we will need metal detectors in our schools. Just recently, I read about a loaded gun being brought by a student into middle school.

A 68-year-old bus monitor was bullied and harassed by “middle-school students.” I read many comments in my USA Today criticizing the bus monitor for not doing her job. Have you ever worked as a bus monitor? Or driven a school bus? Don’t go there unless you have firsthand knowledge of how the schools operate and how today’s students behave/misbehave.

With the recent suicides as a result of bullying, I believe those students guilty of bullying should be held in contempt and face criminal charges. Their parents should be held accountable also.

This is a very serious problem that must be addressed by all school boards regardless of the size of their school district. Better act now before it’s too late and we have more suicides occurring because of students’ behavior.

Douglas C. Eberhart

Clayton

Thousands of readers like you have made Northern New York Newspapers the number one ranked website* for local news and sports coverage in the north country.

You can continue on to this article in a few seconds, or you can visit one of our websites:

• Watertown Daily Times
• The Ogdensburg Journal
• Daily Courier-Observer