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Recent fights at Franklin Middle concern parents

Posted at 6:31 PM, May 20, 2016
and last updated 2016-05-20 18:31:08-04

It is one of the most recent but Candace Bonnie said cell phone video circulating amongst students at Franklin Middle School captures just one of many fights like it there, especially over the past few weeks.

"It angered me the more that I watched it," she told ABC2.

Bonnie has a seventh grader at FMS.  She said her daughter tells her about incidents like that all the time.

"My child is suffering in a lot of ways. She's suffering academically but she's suffering emotionally because she's afraid and she tells me she's afraid and she tells me that before I take her to school. She tells me that via text throughout the school day. She's witnessed a lot of these fights," she said.

Bonnie said when she has gone to the school, she has not been able to get the information or answers she was looking for.

Mychael Dickerson, Chief Communications Officer, said they cannot share information about individual discipline.

"I know it's frustrating for parents if you know that students have been involved in something, you see them back in school, you think that nothing has happened but that's not the case. ...You may just think they're back in the classroom, but there could be other things that are going on. Also there's a build up, so if you get in trouble once or twice, you're back to school. If things go beyond that, there's a whole range of consequences in the code of student conduct that we can look at," Dickerson told ABC2.

He said the administration at Franklin Middle has noticed a couple of fights that look like they were planned. He said he's confident in the student code of conduct and the enforcement of that code.

"Even when they're acting out, just to kick them out of school after one or two incidents is probably not the right thing unless it's so egregious," he said.