I've never used gofundme so I'm hoping the like above takes you where you need to donate. If the link doesnt work you can go to gofundme and search "help a victim of bullying Christina Morgan"
We live in a neighborhood where we are the minority. We have taught our children that everyone is equal no matter the color of their skin and we love all people regardless. My son's oldest sister who is now 25 is bi-racial. She is African American and Caucasian. He obviously understood that Mommy had his two older sisters before I met and married his Dad. His older sister married a blonde haired, blue eyed man and his younger sister who is now 21 is Caucasian but has always dated African American gentlemen. So you understand our desire to always teach our children that the color of skin, religion, background, and even sexual orientation has NOTHING to do with how wonderful people are and how amazing we all can be.
Our son started school with nothing more than what he had been taught and unfortunately he was bullied. He was the only Caucasian child in his class and only 3% of the school was Caucasin. We were fine with that and had no issues until our son started coming home from school in tears and anger and acting out because how he was being mistreated not only by the students but the teachers, the lunch room staff, and every adult in his school. He was in the 2nd grade and this fun loving little boy was angry at us, his parents for "making" him go to this school and get picked on & abused everyday. He was so confused why everyone "hated" him and treated him so badly. When he was nothing but kind and loving. We thought maybe it was just cause school started and the new experience would take some getting use to. He came home day after day with complaints of what kids were doing like tripping him on purpose, slamming doors in his face, pushing him, yelling at him, slapping his lunch tray out of his hands (making our son go without food) and unfortunately the list goes on and on and on. He was told "His white a## didn't belong here" and "You are not supposed to be here, your stupid you white F##k". Yes!!! These comments were coming from 2nd graders. After we started expressing our concern for our child's safety we were basically accused of being racist. Which we obviously aren't and we were appalled by how the school staff responded to these concerns. There were two boys in his class that were absolutely relentless with abuse and the only suggestion the school offered was moving our sons seat away from the abusers.
The last straw occurred only two weeks after being at this school. Yes this all happened in the course of two weeks. One of the boys said "Why are you still coming here? I'll cut your d#mn head off and kill you". Again our baby comes home in tears, shaking, in fear for his life and says to us please don't make me go back because they are going to kill me. Now again he was in the 2nd grade. The principal had already been informed all these things were occurring and she actually said "It's just kids being kids". Um, NO! Its NOT. Law enforcement was involved since a child's life had been threatened. We also involved the Department of Children and Families because if this was happening to our child was it happening to other children at this school? We went back and forth with the school and needless to say our child never returned to that school.
His entire demeanor changed. He was such a happy go lucky kid and this entire experience ruined him for well over two years with some issues even to this day. The school contacted the school board to advise our child had now reached a max number of missed days and instead of the school board in Florida trying to help us and our son they decided to charge me with a 2nd degree misdemeanor with a jail time of up to 2 months because of our sons truancy. We went back and forth with so many people between zoning stating their was no real issue as to why our child shouldn't go to his zoned school and the school board trying to scare me with jail time. This is what our society has come to when a child is threatened at school. The school board felt threatening his mother was the best option. I'm sorry but I will go to jail for the rest of my life for my son to be protected and remain safe and there is not a parent out there that would reintroduce their child into a harmful environment. The law says I have to protect my child and if I don't protect him I can go to jail but when I was protecting him I was threatened with the same punishment. How does this make sense? So instead of the school board just offering to switch his school through the no child left behind act (since the abusing school was and still is a F school) they continued to fight us tooth and nail.
In the meantime our son had to start therapy and luckily due the police report that was submitted he qualified for free therapy through the victim program in our county. He was then later moved to The Child Advocacy Center where he continued therapy for over a year. He also reverted back to sucking his fingers, wouldn't eat, couldn't sleep due to terrible nightmares of being killed, he was afraid to be in his room alone and stopped having bowel movements. We were later advised he had issues with his bowels because kids sometimes feel like they have no control over anything and by not using the restroom when needed he was trying to "take back his control" per his therapist. While all this was going on we still had to worry about my impending court date and the possibility I may go to jail. As you may have guessed all these things also added even more stress in our home and concerns over finances because I was the only one working due to Dad just having major knee surgery. If I went to jail I would have lost my job, our home and everything would have gotten even more extremely worse than it already was. Still the school board refused to offer any solution except "send him back to his zoned school or risk going to jail".
Finally, his father got a much overdue workers compensation paycheck since he had been out of work due to his knee injury. We took a portion of that payment and went to an attorney. The attorney merely went back and forth with some phone calls and threatened to hit the school board with a lawsuit for everything our family had been put through OR the school board needed to transfer our child to another school in our county. The school board offered other schools but out of the three choices our son would still be a minority not to mention he now was terrified of African American boys. Finally our attorney was able to help us get our son into a school that was about 50/50. We still struggled with our sons trust issues between other kids and staff. Our son was again punished and held back to repeat the 2nd grade since he had missed so many days for his own safety. The experience at the other school unfortunately taught him that not all teachers would protect him. He remained at this new school for two years and finally started becoming himself again and started to involve himself with all the boys and girls and not be so afraid of other kids. We were seeing "our baby" enjoy being a kid again.
Now through all this we have determined our son is possible a bit autistic but nothing severe to warrant special needs. He has always had a IEP for language, communication, and speech. This past year while at this other school we fought so hard to get our son in he started getting bullied again but nothing as severe as before. He was being pushed, and tripped, made fun of for being "different" in how he acts, yelled and screamed at when the teacher stepped out of the room and the list goes on. Our son started disliking school again and he was only in the 3rd grade. We brought this behavior to the teacher and principals attention and the two boys that were the main offenders were separated from our son and they tried to make sure the boys didn't continue harassing our son. At a point our son missed days due to being sick constantly or we were getting him out 15-20 minutes before the bell rang to get him home and in bed resting. Now mind you at this point in time I was still the only parent working but the health insurance was so high at my job I couldn't afford to have insurance for any of us and taking our son to the doctor constantly for a cold would have cost too much. Because he only saw the doctor a couple times we didn't have a doctor's note for every time he was out or when we were taking him out early. Even though our son was having issues with kids he still maintained A honor roll for 3 of the 4 quarters of school. Since he was attending this school he was not zoned for through the no child left behind they were able to refuse him returning to the school for this school year. Yet again another issue with zoning and the school board but this time they flat out said he has to go to his zoned school (where he was victimized) or go to a private school that we would have to pay for out of pocket.
Over the course of three years I've prayed a lot and cried even more. Cried because our son was victimized, cried for the little loving piece of our innocent son we lost, cried out of fear what would happen to him or to our family next and cried and cried. As I mentioned before I was the only parent working because my husband had surgery 2 years ago and now due to countless medical conditions of my own I'm unable to work due to almost completely crippling pain with barely any pain relief. I'm at a point where I'm unable to work due to pain and my pain management team says there is nothing else that can be done. Now my husband is working full time during the night, coming home and caring for our child in the morning, getting him to school, sleeping for 5 hours then picks our son up from school and then he heads to work. My husband has to do all the housework, grocery shopping and everything else for our household so getting a second job is almost impossible because he's doing absolutely everything. We are truly blessed to have such a wonderful man in our life.
Back to our son. Due to our son being bullied extensively at this second school he received a letter stating he qualified for a Hope Scholarship. I completed the process so we could send our son to a private school. Now since we are a one income family and my husband was not able to return to his previous line of work he gets a couple dollars over minimum wage with a shift differential since he works nights. We are not rich and like many Americans living paycheck to paycheck since I can't work. I applied for the McKay scholarship for our son as well. I thought he needed McKay for his IEP and the Hope Scholarship for tuition and books. I was wrong.
Well, I applied for our son to attend the Catholic school that is connected to our church. It's the same Catholic school one of his sisters attended. Mind you we tried to get him into the school in previous years but there were never any openings. I prayed day and night that he would be accepted into the school. Eventually we received an email that stated he was accepted and we had to do the enrollment and pay the student fee and the registration fee. I went into the office to speak to the financial specialist. I was hoping the Hope Scholarship would help pay for the fees and all the tuition costs. She looks at me and says he's been accepted into the school but the church officials won't let us accept the Hope Scholarship at this time. I was in such shock I had no words and why was I just now being told this. We had come this far to basically be told no. I looked at her and said "Oh, Ok". I hung my head and politely walked out of her office and the school as my son says "Great, now what are we gonna do?" I said "Baby I don't know". I tried calling to see if I could get the Hope Scholarship switched to a income based scholarship since we are well under the income level and could receive full funding. I was then told by Step up for Students that they could switch it but it wouldn't guarantee the funding for this school year.
As we drove home I remembered the financial specialist asking about the McKay Scholarship and if he qualified. I said he did and so we rush home and collected the McKay information and the scholarship amount. At this point I'm thinking the Scholarship should cover everything but uniforms and things throughout the school year. We get back to the school and I get back to her office and I say here is his McKay Scholarship information and she says " I was just informed we have no more openings". I said, "He was already accepted". She says, "Yes, but you didn't finish the enrollment process". I said I know but we don't have the money upfront to pay the fees and we thought the Scholarship would help. She says, "I'm really sorry". I again had no words. I hang my head and politely say thanks anyway while fighting back the waterworks. We walk out of the office again and my son quietly says, "Mommy, please dont make me go back to that school by our house. Please. I'll do anything to not go back". We got to our car and I lost it. I began crying so hard in front of my son (which I try not to ever do because it freaks him out). He puts his hand on my shoulder and says "It's ok Mommy we will think of something. You always do. You don't have to cry Mommy." I can't describe all the emotions I had in that very moment. I fell into despair and disappointment because I had yet again let my son down but my little 10 year old had confidence in me even when I had none. After I belly cried for 10 minutes and then the entire ride home I told him while gasping for breath while crying I would move heaven and earth to keep him from going back to that damned school he is zoned for.
I continued to cry for two more hours after we got home. I couldn't think of anything else we could do and we couldn't move to another school zone because we have no money to do so. I began praying over and over and I was just so unbelievably distraught. I even thought about the possibility of sending our son to Virginia to live with his older sister so he wouldn't have to go back to the first school. I was desperate. The thought of sending our baby away to avoid a school made me sick to my stomach but what could we do when the school board said his only option was returning to his zoned school and now private school was out of the question since it was literally one week before school started and no other private school had openings or they were asking for way too much for tuition. I couldn't imagine missing one day with our baby if we had to send him away. I didn't think it would necessarily be better because he would miss us just as much as we would miss him. He loves us both so much but he bonded more with his Daddy and his Daddy is his world and we couldn't do that to him so again I ask "Lord what are we to do?" I begged for the lords guidance and help.
I then received a phone call. It was an unusual phone number so I didn't answer it. When I saw they had left a voicemail message I listened to it. It was the Catholic School. The lady in admissions was asking if we still wanted our son to attend their school. I was confused because I was just turned away 2 hours ago. I immediately called her back. Of course I was still very upset and still sounded like I'd been bawling for hours. I said hello then told her the financial specialist told us there were no openings. She says hold on just a second just so she could make sure. She gets back on the line and says "sweetie I'm sorry there was some confusion but our system shows there are no openings because your son "is" included in that count". I burst out in tears of joy. She advises me I had to complete registration though. I said I will do that right now and thanked her profusely. I went in first thing the next morning and apparently the system showed I still hadn't registered. I missed two steps and needed to click "apply". The admissions lady helped me and then sent me to the financial specialist. She looks at me and says can you pay the fees today? I asked if the McKay Scholarship could help pay that amount and she said "Unfortunately your funding won't cover all that is owed. You will need to pay upfront or you can pay monthly." We owe $800 in fees and then tuition for 9 months since the McKay Scholarship will only cover 75%. We also had to charge his uniforms and specific school items to our credit card. All the other things he needed cost well over $400.
Then we ran into another slight hiccup when our son failed his physical due to his eye exam. The school advised he needed to have a passing physical by the start of school in order to remain at the school. We had to pay for him to go to a specialist because the Wal-mart pharmacy may have originally given him the wrong eyeglass prescription. So between the specialist, the cost of the glasses just so he would pass a new physical in two weeks we yet again had to charge these costs to our credit card so our poor baby could see properly for school.
I've told you all our entire story in hopes that maybe we could get some much needed financial help. I don't ask for me. I ask for our smart, amazing little 10 year old that is our baby. Our sons name is Dylan and he just wants what any kid wants. A safe environment to learn and grow. He loves learning and wants to grow up to be a professional youtuber or coding expert making video games for the enjoyment of others. We went to meet the teacher and he was super excited about his new school and since he's a big 4th grader he gets a locker. He has been at his new school for two weeks now and his attitude and body language say it all. He loves his new teacher and all his other teachers that teach Art, Music, Spanish and P.E.. He says the teachers at his new school seem to actually care and everyone is so nice. This school is the kind of school where the principal already knows each kid individually and everyone genuinely loves their job. Dylan doesn't like getting up early for school but once he is awake and it's time to go into the school we can't keep up with him because he wants to almost run in. It is such a huge difference. We are hoping this will be one of many years at this school and we were told next year he will be awarded funding early enough to where we will only have to pay a $35 fee and the cost of new uniforms. Unfortunately, the first payment is due September 16th and we are not quite sure how we will be able to cover it. We have never broadcasted our story to anyone except family nor have we ever asked for money but I'm begging anything you could give to help this special boy excel in school would be so very much appreciated. Even if we raise a couple hundred that would help tremendously. I thank you all for taking the time to read about our son and his trials and tribulations. Whatever you can give we will forever be grateful. Everyday our son is in a safe happy school environment is an amazing, beautiful day. Thank you all so very much.
Submitted August 24, 2019 at 09:53PM by tinaree78 https://ift.tt/33XTct6
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