A viral Facebook post from a Lehigh Valley parent is putting bullying in the spotlight.
Julie Kalinoski showed us the thousands of comments on her Facebook post about her daughter’s struggle with bullying.
“It has been very heartbreaking to read the stories that I have read,” said Kalinoski.
Heartbreaking, because the comments made it clear, bullying is common. Kalinoski’s daughter is a 9th grader at Parkland High School. Kalinoski said bullies put a nicotine vape in her daughter’s backpack and reported it to the Safe2Say system.
“She received an in-school suspension at school, and at home she was grounded for two weeks,” said Kalinoski.
Grounded, because Kalinoski initially thought her daughter actually was smoking. Her daughter was also facing criminal charges for having a nicotine product on school grounds, until they got the evidence.
“Both the blood and urine came back negative,” said Kalinoski. “We did have to go to the magistrate, where she was found innocent on both charges.”
But Kalinoski said the damage to her daughter’s mental health was done.
“I found a note that she was at her last straw to live,” said Kalinoski. “It became a matter of life and death. They were not keeping her safe.”
So she pulled her daughter out of school for now. In response, the Parkland School District sent us a statement, saying in part:
“Neither PHS nor Parkland School District can comment directly on the matter. Parkland School District takes bully allegations seriously.”
To learn more about what could be done, we reached out to Strong Minds, Bright Futures, an organization involved with student mental health.
“Unfortunately, the situations you described are, at least generally, not uncommon,” said Communications Director David Haeyn-Menendez.
Heayn-Menendez said, throughout Pennsylvania, bullying and mental health issues are growing.
“All of the indicators, like when you ask students how is your mental health, have gotten worse,” said Haeyn-Menendez. “These are astronomical numbers that we haven’t seen in past generations, and they’re not going to go away.”
Strong Minds, Bright Futures promotes more funding for student mental health services as a solution.
“We have the capacity to do this, to make sure that almost every young person in Pennsylvania has access to universal mental health supports in-school and outside of school. We have not yet invested in that,” said Haeyn-Menendez.
But if government doesn’t act, he said there are still services available.
“The Pennsylvania Department of Education has a prevention consultation line, where you can ask for advice about how to address chronic bullying,” said Haeyn-Menendez. “NAMI Lehigh Valley is an amazing resource for local people. They have peer-to-peer support, they have trainings for parents, for children.”
While Kalinoski tries to navigate those resources to help her daughter, she’s also asking the School District to move the bullies out of her daughter’s class.
“I would like the school to take action. I would like it to be more than just words on a paper,” said Kalinoski.