One of the scariest incidents at Aptos this school year occurred in September, when two girls attacked a sixth-grade girl on the schoolyard. The girls pulled the sixth-grader to the ground by her hair, pulled a chunk of it out of her skull and kicked her in the face and the back of her head...
School administrators held a "restorative justice" meeting with the families of each girl. That’s the school district’s preferred way of resolving disputes, and it centers on mediation and acknowledging harm.
"There were no apologies," [the victim’s mother] said. "When asked specifically what they would do differently, the girl said, ’Well, I guess I wouldn’t have kicked her in the face.’... Those girls have approached her multiple times since then and said, ’You better keep your mouth shut, you little bitch.’"...
"It’s kind of ’Lord of the Flies’ around here," [the mother] said.
The schools previous principal and assistant principal left recently and the new principal seems to have a different view of school discipline. It has become normal for kids (ages 11 to 14) to wander through the halls, enter classes they are not in, and direct bad language at other students and teachers.