By Garrick & Carrie Moritz
Garretson Gazette
A warning to our readers, this story will contain disturbing content. To protect our sources and the children involved we are making the deliberate choice not to print the names of the families or students involved.
Within the span of five days, two separate parents of Garretson School students chose to approach this newspaper directly, to speak to us about their particular student. The incidents both students are involved in are separate from each other, but we feel that it is important they both be reported on at once. These stories were vexing and distressing enough that our staff felt we had to pursue an investigation and make a report to our readers. These reports left us with many questions as to how prevalent bullying is in our district, how bad the situation has become and what can be done about it.
Parent #1 said that that they plan to withdraw all their children currently enrolled in Garretson from the district and enroll them elsewhere.
Parent #2 came to us, with a story about their daughter, currently enrolled in middle school at the Garretson school. After two interviews with the Gazette, both filled with very harrowing details of violence and assault of a sexual nature, this parent decided they did not wish to make public comments at this time. Parent #2 also said that their family plans to pull all of their students from the Garretson School District, as they feel they are not safe in our school.
In both cases, both Parent #1 and Parent #2 expressed their feelings that the officials at our school district or the Minnehaha County Sheriff’s department had not truly heard or understood their concerns, or that if they had, they had not been taken seriously enough.
Parent #1 wanted to speak to us about events that have happened involving their elementary student.
“The first incident this year, my daughter was shoved down onto the asphalt on the school playground,” Parent #1 said. “She got a severe concussion, to the point where I had to call an ambulance because she couldn’t form sentences, answer basic questions or stay awake. My daughter vomited seven times and had to stay overnight in the hospital. The school called me two hours after the incident happened. The child who did this to her got a day of lost privileges. This happened at the beginning of the school year.”
“The second incident was simply constant bullying on the bus, to the point where I had to remove my daughters from the bussing service because nothing was done,” Parent #1 said.
“The third incident, a random iPhone was found with my daughter's picture as the background, and it doesn't belong to us and no one will claim it,” said Parent #1. “The school is brushing it off as a friend who is using her picture as background, but the spooky thing to me is that no one wants to claim it? My daughter has no memory of this picture being taken and the phone sits with a dead battery in the receptionist’s desk. This happened before Christmas break. To this day no one has claimed it.”
The fourth incident, which Parent #1 said was the final straw for them, was that they received a call that their daughter had been touched inappropriately on the playground during recess by a male classmate.
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