Last Updated on April 24, 2025 by Michelle Ball
By Michelle Ball, Sacramento California Expulsion, Special Education, sports/CIF, College, Education and School Attorney/Lawyer for Students since 1995
Far too often I hear about students bullied at school with nothing done, despite a school being aware of the continuing trauma. It can become unbearable for a bullied student and their family.
Bullying is heartbreaking and dangerous.
What’s going on here?! Why is no one helping?
School Staff Become Numb to Student Complaints
I have theories about why school staff, despite witnessing bullying, and parents reporting, often do nothing. One of the biggest reasons is that school staff deal with complaining people all day long. Parents complain. Students complain. Teachers complain. Social media complains. It is constant dissatisfaction.
After a while, the complaints all blend into each other and seem the same.
This is despite the fact that one complaint is that a female student is being stalked, intimidated, and sexually assaulted in a school bathroom. Another is a parent complaining about a terrible teacher. These are very different, but may be treated the same.
Another way to put it is, one is a burning fire and one is a spilled cup of water– but both get the same lack of urgency.
Staff become numb to complaints as they are overwhelmed by them. They lose their ability to distinguish important from unimportant issues.
School Staff Are Lazy or Overworked
Schools are also mismanaged, understaffed, and sometimes have people that may not be working up to their potential.
Some school staff move slow and don’t hustle. Some don’t want to have to stay a couple minutes after school to write a report on bullying. That’s just more work for them and “kids will be kids anyway!”
Sometimes, union rules may limit teacher’s actions, as they are “not contracted” to stay after 4 pm, for example. Some teachers, once in a while, work until the work is done to serve their students. Others just don’t.
There is a never-ending amount of work in schools. More reports, more paperwork, more investigations to open, just means more work. School staff often are poorly managed as well.
But who loses? The bullied child whose life is endangered day after day.
School Staff Experience Conflicting Rules
There are also laws or practices that conflict and which cause confusion.
We have gone from “Zero Tolerance” in the early 2000s-ish, to the California Department of Education (CDE) pushing that students remain in school always if at all possible (non-exclusionary discipline).
These days, even if a violent fight happens, a student bully may not get suspended. Instead, the victim (bullied student) may instead be punished when they have to defend themselves.
Then, when a bully remains at school with few consequences, despite bad acts, they may feel emboldened and act even worse.
This new “keep everyone in school” policy conflicts with past efforts to address bullying and hinders enforcement of bullying law.
Instead of suspension, bullies may be allowed into a restorative justice session where they are treated equal to their victim, the bullied student. Schools don’t seem to realize that inequality of power underlies all bullying. Putting a bullying victim into social justice meetings with their bully is not appropriate, as both sides are not equally guilty.
School Staff Don’t Know How to Evaluate “Bullying”
It is definitely a factor that school staff really don’t know how to evaluate what “bullying” is and what it isn’t due to lack of training.
Is a student who is Autistic being targeted because they are Autistic? Bullying.
Or, is the student just being teased by friends? Maybe not bullying.
Teachers may not know due to poor training, supervision and lack of education.
Again, as staff see all incidents at school blending together, they may not recognize or acknowledge actual bullying, such as “N words” or gay slurs directed day after day at students.
There needs to be much more training in recognizing bullying, strategies to prevent it, and agreement to report and stop it, among school staff. If this does not exist, the bullying will continue and student’s lives will be lost due to the anguish caused by bullying.
School Staff Don’t Care
Even if school staff see bullying, sometimes they just don’t give a darn.
Maybe they are on their way out to retirement.
Maybe they really hate the student being bullied and think he is a whiner.
Maybe they think a student with a hidden disability is a bad kid, overlooking that the “bad kid” stuff is caused by their disability.
As school staff on the frontlines often do nothing, sometimes the only conclusion has to be that they just really could not care less.
Actions a Parent Can Take to Get a School to STOP the Bullying
Some actions a parent could take to combat school bullying are:
- Find the District or school bullying complaint form
- File a report on every single bullying incident occurring
- Follow up on each one filed and ask what the resolution will be
- Ask for specific outcomes, such as a stay away order for the bully, non-punitive eyeballs on the bullied student, training for staff, increased supervision, a safe adult for the student to turn to when in need, student texting ability to immediately contact the parent and other interventions.
- Go up the chain of command if things don’t get resolved
- Repeat
Report criminal activities to the police. Report Title IX (sexual harassment) as well, as needed.
If parents can’t get enough attention to solve the problem, sometimes they do need to bring someone else in to help. But, hopefully with the above, things will be addressed.
Parents should not let student bullying get to the point where the student is being regularly and relentlessly bullied. No one wants the worst to happen, and it only takes a minute for a young life to change forever.
Good luck.
Michelle Ball, student attorney, has assisted families since the mid 1990s. As an experienced education lawyer, Michelle can step in and help when parents seem to have no voice. She can intervene across California, in Placerville, Jackson, San Diego, Santa Cruz, Napa, Davis, and many other locations.
