Bullying drives students to online schools

DAYTON, Ohio – Krista Hooten saw "terror" in her daughter's eyes as they started back-to-school shopping for seventh grade.

Her daughter, Kelsey, had been bullied the previous year. It started emotionally: Other girls called her ugly and spread rumors about her. But it quickly turned physical: They pulled her hair on the bus and shoved her to the ground.

"It changed her personality," Hooten said. "It was a horrible, horrible year."

Hooten and her husband decided that night they had to make a change. They enrolled Kelsey in a charter school affiliated with the national education company K12.

Nearly a quarter of parents who enroll their children in K12 programs said bullying is a reason they removed their children from brick-and-mortar schools, according to a recent survey.

About 94 percent of those parents said going online helped address the issue, the survey commissioned by K12 found.

But bullying is a larger issue than that in America. One-third of all children — an estimated 13 million students nationwide — are targeted each year, according to the White House. Those students are "more likely to have challenges in school, to abuse drugs and alcohol, and to have health and mental health issues." In some widely publicized cases, victims have committed suicide.

Even when the attacks became physical, the Springfield teenager would "come home and not act like it was fine, but act like she was dealing with it and it wasn't that big a deal," Hooten said.

"All I knew at that point was she didn't want to go … she cried all the way to the bus stop," she said.

Hooten said she talked to her daughter's teachers and school administrators but, "their suggestion was: 'Just tell her to find another group of friends.' "

Now 16 and in 10th grade, Kelsey said she has been able to escape bullying since she started attending the Ohio Virtual Academy.

The academy now enrolls more than 12,600 students across the state, according to the Ohio Department of Education. It was given an "F" for the indicators it met on the latest state report card, which measures what percent of students passed achievement and graduation tests. About 42 percent of its students graduate in four years, according to its latest report card.

The online school was created in 2006, and has grown as an option for bullied students even as cyberbullying has become more prominent.

While bullying has always been an issue, one reason it is more discussed today is the rise in activity online, said Susan Davies, school psychology program coordinator at the University of Dayton.

She trains school psychologists on how to recognize, react to and prevent it.

"Because of cyberbullying, students can't escape it," she said. "It's not something that's just happening at school. They're being targeted in their home when they're not even around other kids. That has become really difficult to address at the school level because there's kind of that question: Where does our jurisdiction end when it's our students that we're caring for throughout the day being bullied through the Internet?

"The kids are so savvy that they're kind of escaping notice of the adults in their lives. As soon as we get on whatever the next hot social media site is. … Well, Facebook isn't cool anymore, we're going to move to Twitter. And we're going to move to Insta­gram. It's hard for us to monitor them."

Hooten's two other daughters also attend the Ohio Virtual Academy. Lexie, 14, started so she'd have more time for her 20-hour-a-week dance commitment. Hannah, 11, enrolled because her asthma often kept her home.

Kelsey will take college courses for free through the state's postsecondary enrollment option.

Her mother said the change in her personality was almost immediate after she left public school.

"She was just happier again," she said. "You just really underestimate, even though she's beautiful, it's amazing what peers can do when they're telling you the opposite."