01/26/2025
Family and Friends,
I want to start this emotional post with an apology to you all. If it’s been a year you have felt like I should have picked up the phone and didn’t. Or I canceled my plans with you at the last minute unexpectedly. Or was too drained to talk when you really needed me. Or your order from Fresh Solutions by the Dimpled Chef was canceled and refunded because I just lamely couldn’t handle it. I want to say how deeply and incredibly sorry that I am for this and anything else that may have occurred.
***THIS POST IS NOT MEANT TO BE AN ORDER CANCELLATION Please know that I am still really looking forward to pouring heart into your meals tomorrow as I always have ***
What Kevin has been experiencing this past year has honestly at times been just plain debilitating for me, because it was compounded at very crucial moment with my mother’s shocking cancer diagnosis. By that time this had been happening to Kevin for months already.
I can already feel that this will be a long post so I hope that you will read it through to understand a few things before reaching out me. I also hope that you will take the time to watch the video I posted. Definitely not in its entirety as it’s over 5 hours long! At the board meeting below, the poor kids from JROTC, the student who was asked to come and recite the pledge of allegiance, all the kids who came to receive awards and the rest of us were forced to wait over an hour for board questions, that are definitely needed and necessary, but not always super interesting for the general public audience to tediously sit and watch. Look for us during the public questions, about an hour to an hour and a half in and in the public remarks that directly follows.
One thing I can say after a very small amount of research is that board members are very dedicated members of society. They go through elections to not get paid and sit and fight for kids through 5 hour long meetings at least once a month. I looked into it because I was considering running myself but unfortunately I cannot afford to devote any more time without getting paid than I already am for this cause even though it has become so incredibly personal for me.
After waiting for so long we literally left after speaking because Kevin had District Championships the following day. He did great, by the way at districts considering everything. I am so proud of him, I can barely express my words. He won 4 out of 7 matches and placed 4th in the entire NEISD district despite very little direction from his coaches during tournaments this whole season on top of the crisis he was silently experiencing due to the stigma of the topic of bullying.
Telling this story has been an extremely emotional process for me because there is just so much pain to unpack.
To help me explain, here is the Judson ISD Board of Education meeting here in Converse, TX, just across the railroad tracks where I live in San Antonio, TX. This is relevant and I ask you to watch because Kevin and I spoke multiple times. As I have alluded to almost all year last year we were going through very difficult and dark times. As I also have alluded but never really expanded upon, it was for more reasons than just the extremely quick and heart wrenching passing of my mother in June of last year.
We also spoke at the same board meeting for the very first time 12/19/24.
I am ready to begin to share our experiences publicly with you, this list of people that I consider allies as well. If you know me well, like so many of you do, you know that I consider myself a pretty open, honest and straightforward person and have always been to even a fault at times. You are the ones who now know this has been just as equally a heart wrenching experience for my small family as my father and mother’s passing combined.
For the past year, I, as a parent who cannot afford a lawyer, was forced to helplessly sit and watch my son be tormented over and over and over because I cannot afford a lawyer. I am not asking for money, don’t worry, you that really know me most know that is definitely not my style. I am just wanting to express our story to you all at once so I don’t have to keep telling this story over and over and can begin to rebuild relationships that have also become casualties of our living nightmare.
I now believe that it has taken me this long to post in detail about and talk to so many of you about this very traumatic experience in our lives out of stigmatized fear of talking about bullying from either side of the equation. I am now working my way past this, at the urging of my son, who is just as sick and tired, if not rightfully more so, of this nightmare as I am.
I keep expecting it to stop but I live in daily fear that it never will because of what my son and I have been told by school police over and over in two different school districts. School district police are who I keep being told by every other agency I have spoken with, begging for help, are the only ones who are allowed to be in charge of this massive and arduous investigation.
I have been worried about how going public would affect Kevin for a long time now which is why I tried to keep details with a very small circle of you. But, as you can see for yourself if you so choose, he is ready to stand up for himself and has been for a while. As his parent, I feel confident in saying that we have done our very best to shield him from as much torment as possible. I literally do not know what more I could possibly have done myself alone.
Unfortunately the school district where he was enrolled in the winter of 2024 has had serious bullying issues for years and I was blissfully unaware. I agreed to allow him to attend his school of choice because we knew a couple of great kids from his jiu jitsu gym who I wanted him to spend more time around. He literally advocated to me to go there himself on top of it so I went and begged Principal Arce, after the enrollment period had ended, for Kevin to be able to attend Karen Wagner High School.
Stay tuned because this is only the beginning of the publicity that this story will be receiving. No matter what anyone says, I will always believe this entire case could, more likely than not, have been quickly wrapped up if the school itself had an Anti-Bullying Committee set up properly as required by David’s Law in 2017. These ANTI-BULLYING COMMITTEES are supposed to not only be put in place at every school in the state to ensure that bullying allegations are properly investigated, but THEY ARE ALSO SUPPOSED TO INCLUDE PARENTS AND STUDENTS who want to help others escape the nightmares of bullying experiences and offer their extra support.
This whole time, this is exactly what I have been begging for at every single office I visited to every single person I have spoken for throughout the many times my heart broke in this year. There really isn’t any other support for parents of bullying victims. Believe me, I’ve checked.
I hope that Kevin’s story is a wake up call for every school in the great state of Texas. If you made it this far down. Thank you. Love you too.
https://tea.texas.gov/texas-schools/health-safety-discipline/minimum-standards-for-bullying-prevention.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/live/WtMJKApeFm8?si=0qjdwNUs2OzEjazr
A Public Hearing and Regular Board Meeting of the Board of Trustees of JISD will be held January 23, 2025, beginning at 6:00 PM in the ERC Board Room, 8205 P...
