Bonita Vista Middle School

Horrible staff that apparently tolerates bullying and prejudice. When I attended years ago, my class was awarded a dance during school hours because we raised the highest donation of canned foods for a food drive. I had asked the principal standing by the door if I could put my jacket in my locker, which was 30 feet from the gymnasium door. He refused to let me go to my locker and it was no problem. However, I turned to my friend and said something along the lines of, «Oh well, that sucks for me.» At that point without warning, the principal grabbed me and threw me against the wall SUPER hard, I mean so sudden and hard that I pissed my pants; he was so much bigger and stronger than me. Then he practically DRAGGED me all the way down to his office while yelling at me, called my mother, and told her that I «cursed him out». Quietly saying «that sucks» to my friend is far from cursing out the principal. I was already very unpopular, shy, insecure, and being bullied by my peers (which I never got help from the staff when I sought their help), so this was an experience that didn’t help me at all. I can only speculate that the principal did what he did to me because I had long hair and wore a black leather jacket, but I was a polite, outstanding student with a spotlessly clean record, getting excellent scholarship and citizenship grades in advanced classes.
That was many years ago and things have probably changed by now, right? WRONG! It’s worse. My friend’s son attended a few years ago. He was also a polite, outstanding student who was very friendly, quiet, and peaceful. Throughout his time there, he was constantly harassed by many, many Hispanic kids who frequently made racial slurs at him for being Caucasian, sometimes even chanting their slurs as a group. Each time that this boy and his mother tried to address the issue with some of the staff members, who happened to be Hispanic, the staff did NOTHING and simply told the mother, «Kids will be kids.» As a completely anti-​racial person, this made me sick to hear about. If it was a group of white kids racially harassing a Hispanic kid, I have no doubt that the white kids would have been expelled and probably criminally charged. I have experienced and understand that kids at that age can be mean to a kid because the kid is different, but every disciplinary effort should be made by staff to discourage bullying. ALL racism and bullying BY the staff should most definitely be completely intolerable with severe consequences.
Don’t send your children to this school unless you want to risk them being mistreated by their peers and the staff.

I am so frustrated at this point in time. I have experienced nothing but unprofessionalism and incompetence since my first encounter with student services at Bonita Middle. I have been trying to register my son for school for the past three weeks. I have called and left several messages. I received one return call with registration availability dates but when I called back to set up the date and time I had to leave a message. One week passes still no return call, I call back and actually had the luxury of talking to a live person. Needless to say I am given an appointment for the day after school starts! My son is going to have to miss the first day of school because someone in student services cant seem to get it together. I call down to Sweetwater Union school district to see if I can rectify this situation where I was told by the receptionist «the kids dont do much on the first day of school anyway.» She then transfers me to student service where I talk to another non-​helpful individual. I explain my situation to her and she tells me I need to call and talk to the principal of the school. Really? I hope after all of this is said and done that I do not experience this type of nonsense with the teacher and the remainder of the staff once the school year begins.