Anti-Bullying Groups Banned at 'Nightmare' Bronx Schools
The building at 1600 Webster Ave. in the Claremont section of The Bronx includes two middle schools, I.S. 313 and 339. P...
DNAinfo/Patrick Wall
CLAREMONT — Johanna Torrez dashes through two miles of traffic most afternoons, rushing to get her daughter from I.S. 313 before other students have the chance to target her.
“I have to race to pick her up so they don’t bully her,” Torrez said recently as she hurried her sixth-grader through a pack of just-dismissed students. “I don’t feel like she’s safe here.”
She’s not alone.
Other parents and their children who go to school in the building at 1600 Webster Ave., a building shared with I.S. 339, describe a chaotic culture where staffers struggle to prevent student teasing, cursing, hitting and class cutting.
In a Department of Education survey last year, more than 80 percent of students in both schools reported bullying and more than 90 percent reported physical fights on campus.
While bullying and fighting are prevalent in many middle schools, this building saw an unusual entity emerge to help solve the problem.
A small coalition of students, parents, organizers and even a few staffers began meeting