Bullying becomes expanding problem for Cobb County School District

The following information was forwarded to me via email concerning developments on the bullying case of Jorge Santa.

Marietta, Ga. -  In May of last year, a Harrison High School 9th grader, Jorge Santa, was bullied and attacked during class by two seniors. He chose to stand his ground and fight off the violence. No charges were filed against the bully, but two felony counts of aggravated assault and battery were filed against the bullied student for defending himself.

During his investigation of the bullying incident, Harrison High School Asst. Principal Art O’Neill told the boy’s father, Atlanta PD Detective Jorge Santa, Sr., that “criminal law,” which includes self-defense, “does not supersede school rules.” While admitting to Santa, Sr. that the child was being “picked on,” O’Neill intentionally failed to investigate the matter as a bullying incident and chose to base the event on the school district’s “zero tolerance” for fighting.

The family’s attorney, Mitch Skandalakis, was successfully able to secure a dismissal of the charges after he obtained critical evidence from the state which showed the following:
• Many student witnesses interviewed by the Cobb County District Attorney’s office stated that the student who bullied and assaulted Jorge was a well-known bully.
• Many student witnesses interviewed by the Cobb County District Attorney’s office stated that Jorge was bullied.
• Many student witnesses interviewed by the Cobb County District Attorney’s office stated that Jorge asked the bullies to stop.
• The teacher present in Jorge’s class at the time of the incident sent O’Neill an email stating he had interviewed three students immediately following the altercation, who verified that the bullies were “picking on Jorge (stole his lunch, was verbally bullying him, sprayed silly string on him).”
• The school resource officer, who did not participate in O’Neill’s “investigation,” wrote his incident report and intentionally used verbiage to conceal the bullying by stating that the students were “joking around,” and that the bullies “demonstrated a lack of common courtesy and school policy.”

During Skandalakis’ own investigation, the mother of another student who had been bullied by the same individual who assaulted Jorge informed him that she not only reported the bullying to Harrison High School Officials, she also testified about the bullying in front of the Cobb County School District Board of Education. She had to do so out of desperation because the bullying escalated into threats of violence with a gun against her son and nothing was being done by the school. Complaints and testimony were completely ignored by Cobb County School Board officials.

“Cobb County School District administrators are not investigating or reporting bullying numbers as required by law,” says Skandalakis. “We know this because we have parents who have provided us with concrete evidence that their child’s reports of bullying were ignored. We also know this because some Cobb schools are reporting zero bullying incidents, which is statistically improbable, and really doesn’t pass the smell test.” Skandalakis went on to say, “Cobb’s failure to address bullying penalizes the victims and empowers the bullies to escalate their behavior.”

Rob Madayag, a partner at the law firm of Lee & Hayes, has joined together with Skandalakis on addressing bullying at Cobb County Schools. Madayag’s daughter was threatened by another student on her bus and repeatedly during school, including receiving a threatening note to her written on the back of a bathroom stall. “From what we have seen, when an incident of bullying occurs, Cobb County Schools make every effort to avoid having to record the incident as bullying,” says Madayag. 

“School administrators and school police use their power to coerce and suggest specific testimony from those that are bullied or witnesses to the bullying, or just as often, erase the bullying incident altogether and redefine it as ‘horseplay’ if the bullied kid responds in any way, including a verbal response.”

Madayag continues, “No matter what excuse the Cobb County School District tries to come up with, the fact of the matter is that the incident data they reported to the State shows Cobb County is completely out of line with every other county in the region, and, is definitive proof that they underreport bullying incidents.” As for what happened with his daughter, Madayag says his daughter’s school is proof that if Cobb County stops underreporting, good things can happen.  “The bullying was stopped and all parties have moved on with their lives. My daughter’s school is one of a very few schools in Cobb County whose incident reporting data is in line with what is expected.”

Skandalakis and Madayag have been poring over documents and meeting with parents as they begin to move forward with legal remedies that will be the first of many challenges to address Cobb County School District’s failures. Skandalakis has also set up an online contact form for anyone who has additional information or would like to tell their story. The form can be found at http://bit.ly/CobbSchoolSurvey, or contact: Lynn Ross, Skandalakis Law Group, 770-693-8715.