have been avoided?
While school officials in South River will not speak publicly about a March 8 stabbing of a student outside the middle school, one would hope officials there are diligently reviewing the situation to find out just what went wrong and if something could have been done to prevent it.
The primary reason officials have refused to comment about the fight itself, or the alleged events that led up to the fight, is because the district now faces litigation in the matter.
According to the victim in the stabbing, 13-year-old Randy Cruz, and his mother, Rosemarie, the fight, which occurred immediately after school, may have been avoided had school officials been more responsive to her requests to stop a feud involving her son and the 14-year-old classmate now accused in the stabbing.
Rosemarie Cruz claims to have called the school principal on four occasions prior to the week of the incident in order to discuss the ongoing conflict. She alleged that a meeting was supposed to be set up between the principal, her son and the suspect accused in the assault, but no such meeting was ever held.
If that’s the case, this is a problem that district officials should be addressing.
If that’s not the case, and an attempt was made to quell the conflict, officials ought to say so.
Regardless, the Board of Education should be both reviewing its policies regarding conflict resolution and determining whether the guidelines were followed in this matter. If not, action should be taken.
The board should also determine whether any policies should be revised in order to be more proactive in future instances.
Fortunately, the boy’s physical wounds were not more serious, but no child should have to go to school each day in fear of an impending conflict. And by the same token, no mother should have to wait for her son to come home from school, only to find out that the fight she feared would happen had resulted in her son being sent to the hospital with three stab wounds.