After being bullied, a Philly student was threatened with deportation by his principal. Here’s what happened next.
The interim principal of Taggart Elementary chastised a boy who was being bullied and the student who was harassing him. "Are these two legal or illegal?" she allegedly asked.
When Leslie Hernández’s son experienced bullying at his Philadelphia public school, he asked his mother: Who will protect me?
Go to the principal, she told her son. The family, immigrants from El Salvador seeking asylum in the United States, were new to the city, but Hernández believed her child would get help at Taggart Elementary, his school at Fourth and Porter Streets in South Philadelphia.
Instead, the principal asked the boy what his immigration status was.
Then, “the principal said if he did not behave, the principal would call ICE and deport all of his family,” said Hernández.
Eventually, Hernández, with the help of advocates, sent a demand letter to the Philadelphia School District, who avoided litigation by entering into a settlement with Hernández this month, agreeing to more training for staff, a mandated social-emotional curriculum for students district-wide, and an outside review of the district’s harassment and discrimination policies.
Hernández hopes that her fight keeps any other families from going through what hers has endured. But she still worries for her son — the effects of the bullying, and the principal’s threat, still linger.
“His physical injuries disappeared and healed,” Hernández said through an interpreter, “but he carries scars that I can’t heal, that can’t be healed.”
Bullying and intimidation
Hernández’s son loved to learn: “He was very excited for school, and he would even wake up early,” she said.
Soon after they arrived in Philadelphia in 2021 from El Salvador, Hernández enrolled her son, whose name The Inquirer is withholding due to safety concerns, in eighth grade at Taggart. Hernández knew about the Philadelphia School District’s “sanctuary schools” policy, which promises to protect immigrant students and families from federal immigration authorities and provide robust training for staff and emotional support for immigrant students. Its existence made her feel comfortable sending her child to district schools.
That feeling was short-lived.
Her son spoke only Spanish but was placed in a traditional eighth grade class with inadequate English-language learner supports that meant he could not understand what was happening in class, Hernández said. He quickly fell victim to bullying which began as teasing based on the boy’s inability to speak English, and on his perceived sexual orientation. Classmates made him take off his shoes and run around a track.
Her son was bullied to the point that he “started going late to school so he wouldn’t have to be in the schoolyard,” Hernández said. In February 2022, Hernández’s son asked her what to do, and she told him to go to the principal because “she’s responsible for the safety and security of all students,” Hernández said.
On Feb. 28, 2022, Taggart interim principal Charlotte Buonassisi called Hernández’s son and the student who bullied him into the school office. With two other adults present, Buonassisi chastised both students and asked “are these two legal or illegal?” Hernández said. Then, if “they continued with their bad attitude she would call the authorities and ICE so that they would deport not only them but their entire families,” she said her son recalled.
Buonassisi’s actions violated the sanctuary schools policy and also federal educational privacy laws.
Hernández’s son went home from school that day terrified. “Mom, can she deport us?” Hernández remembers the boy asking.
» READ MORE: In charged climate, Philly teachers learn how to keep immigrant students safe
She wrote a letter to school authorities asking for help.
“This is not fair, there is insecurity in the streets and now our children who have the right to education do not feel protected in their place of study and now they are exposed to this kind of discrimination and intimidation,” Hernández wrote in Spanish.
Buonassisi took no action on the bullying, and the physical and verbal abuse escalated, Hernández said — her son was scratched with a metal nail, and had pencils thrown at him. On March 22, 2022, he was pushed up against a wall and kicked repeatedly in the head. He was not treated by the school nurse, and Hernández was not offered an interpreter to help understand what had happened. Hernández asked to file a police report that day, but Buonassisi told her that was impossible because there was no Spanish speaker available to assist her, she said.
Ultimately, Hernández had her son examined at a clinic and filed a police report.
Still scared
Even after Hernández filed the police report and wrote a letter, no action was taken by the school or police. But soon after the March 22 incident, Hernández connected with Juntos, the Latino advocacy group. Erika Guadalupe Núñez, Juntos’ executive director, contacted the district on Hernández’s behalf.
By the end of that month, Buonassisi had been “removed permanently from Taggart School,” according to an email from district staff. The district’s office of Family and Community Engagement launched an investigation.
District staff suggested that Hernández’s son change schools, and though they requested a bilingual counselor for Hernández and the alleged main aggressor, none was available. Hernández rejected the notion that her son move schools, and instead, Taggart placed him in a special education classroom, despite the fact that he had no special education plan.
For the rest of the year, Hernández’s son “learned little to nothing,” according to documents.
Hernández, in an interview, said that while her son is now in a different district school — he has since moved on to high school — the effects of what happened to him at Taggart are still with him. When a class has a substitute teacher, he’s especially worried, because the worst of the bullying at Taggart happened when he had a sub.
“My son is still scared to this day,” said Hernández. “He is scared of being threatened for not having status, for speaking another language. My son is in a different school, but I can’t say that he’s happy.”
Eventually, lawyers with the national civil rights nonprofit Advancement Project, the nonprofit legal action agency Public Justice, and two law firms sent the district a demand letter and negotiated the settlement.
‘We’re just one of many cases’
The legal settlement, finalized Dec. 4, awards Hernández damages which she and lawyers declined to name. But the money is secondary to her, she said. She and her son want their distress to prevent other families from being treated the same way.
The agreement calls for a number of changes, including stressing to staff the availability and importance of in-person and virtual translation services for students and families who speak languages other than English; tweaks to the district’s restorative justice guidelines and its Title IX and VI training; mandating social-emotional anti-bullying lessons for all students; and an outside review of the school system’s discrimination and harassment policies.
“I hope that the settlement helps, and that the district stays accountable to more responsibility,” Hernández said. “When this happened, I felt abandoned. They didn’t listen to me until Juntos was involved. This isn’t an isolated case; we’re just one of the many cases.”
Núñez, the Juntos executive director, said it was extremely disheartening that the incident happened years after the district passed a sanctuary schools resolution, and displays “the lack of the commitment by the Philly School District to really ensure that schools are welcoming.”
Hernández came to the U.S. from a volatile situation in El Salvador, seeking asylum with ideas about what living with dignity would be like. The Taggart situation shifted her view, Núñez said.
“The district only took action after the fact,” Núñez said. “How many families have to get hurt? How many children have to be traumatized? This is just really heartbreaking.”
School district spokesperson Monique Braxton said the system “has reached a mutual agreed upon resolution that reflects our emphasis on student well-being.” She declined to say whether Buonassisi is permitted to work in other district schools.