How could such savage bullying still happen in our schools?

I’m wearing a pink shirt, in recognition of Canada’s antibullying day, as I write this. Which makes the story you are about to read even sadder.

Five kindergarten-age children, each from a different family, have been removed from Ecole Cardinal-Léger, a publicly funded, French-language Catholic elementary school in Kitchener, because of months of bullying that the parents say was not effectively handled by the school or the school board.

“The past year and a half has been devastating to each of our families,” said one of the parents, Dawn Vanayan. “We fear that there are other children who are suffering as our children did.”

Vanayan’s daughter was taunted by other children and called stupid. She was pinned against the fence. She tried to make friends with one bully by drawing him a picture, but he destroyed it.

She said her daughter turned into a “different person” because of the bullying. She went from being outgoing, happy and eager to learn, to a child who came home “screaming, yelling at us, bullying her sister.”

When her daughter tried to report the abuse, she was told to figure it out on her own, Vanayan said.

Vanayan and other parents went to see the principal with their concerns, but Vanayan said they were made to feel they were overreacting. She was told that maybe her child was not ready for kindergarten and would be better off at home.

She put her daughter in another school last November and also has her in therapy.

Another child, who was punched in the chest and poked in the eye, was also moved to another school.

A boy was repeatedly called “ugly” and “stupid” by the same tormentors, his mother said. It was months before he even told her about it.

One day last year, his mother went to pick him up and was told he might have a concussion. Her son had been running away from the bully, who grabbed his jacket. He fell and hit his head.

Concerned that hours had passed since the injury, and she had not been notified, the mother went to the principal.

“I was beyond upset,” said Cortney Turner, the mother. But she was told “it wasn’t that big a deal.”

The parents went as a group to the principal and the board, but the offending child was still in the school and endangering their children.

My request to speak to the principal was declined. The school board issued a statement which says, in part: “The Conseil scolaire MonAvenir regrets that the concerned families perceive that actions taken to date to resolve the situation have been insufficient.”

It goes on to say that both the board and the school administration made “every possible effort to work with the individual families and their child in order to resolve the matter. Support and additional resources have been offered to the families.”

These heartbreaking stories sound like the bad old days, decades ago. Learn to deal with it, we were told. It’s part of life.

But slowly, there came a recognition that bullying was terrible and had to be stopped. There were antibullying strategies, awareness campaigns and pink shirts. The government takes this issue seriously and promises the removal of violent children from the classroom.

How could something like this have happened at Ecole Cardinal-Léger? Will the province investigate? It should.