Angry in the Great White North

From Florida:

Four Central Florida middle school students were arrested Monday for allegedly ripping off the clothes off classmates and then snapping photos with their cell phones, according to a Local 6 News report.

Investigators said the boys, ages 12, 13 and 14 years old, attacked the girls Friday at Tavares Middle School in Lake County, Fla., in the back of a school bus. The boys then allegedly groped the girls and took pictures of them.

Cell phone video allegedly showed one of the girls screaming for help while the boys touch her breasts, according to the report.

Police said the attack continued after the boys got off the bus when they pulled another girl by her hair. When she fell, detectives said they put their hands up her skirt.

Here's a thought. How about putting the parents of these creatures in a room with the dads and brothers of the girls who were raped (and yes, as far as I'm concerned, this was rape)?

And where was the bus driver during all this? Probably too scared to do anything, figuring one or more of these animals had guns.

There had to be a failure in the school too. Tolerating cell phones with cameras, for example. This sort of behaviour had to be then end point of a sequence of progressively more aggressive acts. The school had to have seen some red flags at some point.

But then Tavares Middle School has had serious problems. From 1999:

Ninety-seven school districts in 34 states will be able to recruit, hire and train middle school drug prevention and school safety coordinators under nearly $35 million in grants announced today by U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley.

Districts with significant drug, discipline and violence problems in middle schools were eligible for the competitive grants. The department identified schools with "significant problems" as those in which at least one student was, within the previous year, suspended, expelled or transferred to an alternative school or program for possession, distribution or use of alcohol, tobacco or drugs, or for the possession or use of a weapon. Also eligible were schools that referred at least five students for substance abuse treatment or suspended, expelled or transferred for physical attacks or fights five students to alternative schools.

Tavares is on the list.

In 1995, Joey Summerall, 13, was shot and killed by Keith Eugene Johnson, 14. Joey was shot in a school hallway, suffering 13 shots from a 9mm semiautomatic pistol:

Eighth-grader Keith Eugene Johnson, 14, was kicked out of his house today. He goes to school and encounters Joey Summerall, who had tried to pick fights with him in the past. Keith pulls out a 9mm semiautomatic pistol and empties the clip into Joey, killing the 13-year-old classmate for "running off at the mouth" on him.

In 1997:

The board voted to pay $37,500 to settle the suit, which was brought by a mother whose daughter said she was raped in a storage closet at Tavares Middle School by another student.

The mother claimed her daughter and the other students were not adequately supervised.

Cecelia Bonifay, the school board's attorney, denied that the board did anything wrong.

But the school is trying to crack down. From 1995:

Bonnie Turner was suspended from Tavares Middle School for having Tylenol in her backpack, and will not be allowed to take classes this fall until she completes a "substance-abuse awareness'' course.

Jay Marshall, supervisor of student services, defended the policy. "A student is not to have any kind of medication on their person ... because they are potentially dangerous to students that would ingest them. People commit suicide by taking Tylenol.''

Well, maybe they are tough on drugs, but apparently sexual crimes are another matter:

Girls at a middle school in Lake County say their gym teacher is a peeping tom. The girls claim their male gym teacher watches them change clothes in the locker room and parents say the school isn't doing anything about it.

A Tavares Middle School teacher is under investigation after several students claimed he was peeping into the girl's locker room. One parent says she's taken her daughter out of school and she wants the veteran coach fired.

Coach Ray Walters allegedly opened up the girl's locker room door while at least four students were changing. Backlin says, when a girl looked up, that's when Walters started yelling for another coach. The school principal says Coach Walters was in the area because he was looking for a female coach.

A former student says this type of behavior is nothing new; it has been going on for years. In fact, Jackie Pelchat says the coach made sexual innuendoes to her when she was in the 7th grade.

"He sexually harass you, he'll watch you change your clothes, he'll give you sexual innuendoes; when you walk by, he'll tap your butt and all kinds of stuff," says Pelchat.

She claims she reported it, but nothing ever was done.

Who thinks school vouchers are a bad idea?