‘ Editor’s note: Cherie Sanders asked that her daughter’s image and name be omitted from this story to protect the girl’s privacy.
On this episode, reimaginED Senior Writer Lisa Buie talks with Cherie Sanders, mother of a thriving eighth grader at a faith-based school in the Fort Lauderdale area. Sanders’ daughter feels safe at school, but that wasn’t always the case. A frightening incident three years ago prompted the family to seek an alternative environment in a bully-free zone.
Sanders talks about the incident at school that she felt put her daughter’s safety at risk and how she and her daughter dealt with those circumstances.
School leadership refused to move the bully from her daughter’s class, but offered to move her daughter to another class, a solution that was not acceptable to Sanders. While school districts are required by law to inform families of the Hope Scholarship, created to help students who have experienced bullying transfer to private schools, Sanders’ district didn’t know about it.
Approved in 2017, the Hope Scholarship law provides for eligible sales tax contributions from the purchase of a motor vehicle to be sent to eligible nonprofit scholarship funding organizations. (Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog, is among the organizations that manage the Hope Scholarship program.) Contingent upon available funds, scholarship funding organizations then award scholarships to eligible students on a first-come, first-served basis.
“He had threatened the teacher and the teacher’s child … He threatened to murder [my daughter] and he said that he could do it because he had a knife … he perceived my daughter and a friend as being in his way and this was how he responded to that … She went immediately to her teacher and reported.”
EPISODE DETAILS:
- Sanders’ emotional state upon hearing about the incident
- The alleged bully’s history
- How Sanders learned about the Hope Scholarship
- How Sanders’ daughter is faring at her new school
[…] This article originally appeared on reimaginED. […]