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"You have to respect, listen, and talk to them if something doesn’t seem right but it all comes down to reinstalling that sense of security you have in your own home and then transplanting it over to the school,” he said.
State Senator Bruce Tarr, a Gloucester Republican, concurred.
“There’s no right answer about how to talk to your kids about this but the most important thing is to to talk to them,” he said.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by Rockport police Monday after he allegedly stabbed a fellow student at Rockport Middle School. The female victim was taken to the hospital with serious injuries that were not believed to be life-threatening, according to Rockport police.
The suspect was arraigned Monday afternoon in Salem Juvenile Court in connection with the stabbing, according to the Essex district attorney’s office. Juvenile court proceedings are private. No further information was released regarding the arraignment.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Superintendent Robert Leibow defended the communication methods used by officials to update parents in the minutes and hours following the violence, saying “our first priority is the kids, it always is, and always was.” Leibow said the district would review how the incident was handled.
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“By the time we sent out the message [to parents], the individual who caused the issue had been apprehended so we knew it was a totally contained situation and then our focused shifted to getting information out," he said during the forum that lasted about two hours.
Kelly Reardon, a 40-year-old from Gloucester who has a son in the 7th grade at Rockport Middle School, said she did not have a problem with how officials conveyed information after the stabbing, but wanted authorities to keep the community abreast of further developments in the legal case.
“My problem now is not the communication that happened that day, but the communication from now on and that the legal system is saying they can’t talk about anything," she said. "There’s stuff that has to be talked about.”
She said she was disturbed by how the boy accused of the stabbing was being portrayed.
“It’s been a big bother to me the amount of demonizing that has happened with the child," she said. "It’s awful but he’s not a monster and I feel like you can’t get a straight answer with how they’re portraying him in the school. I think its really important for them to be able to talk about this kid.”
In response, Leibow told her they couldn’t speak about the case in classrooms because of a legal gag order.
“We are in this legal restricted situation but you are certainly not in that restricted situation," he said. "I would encourage you to have that conversation with your child if you think that’s useful. Your greatest power as a parent is to talk to your child.”
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Selectwoman Sarah J. Wilkinson, who has two children at Rockport elementary school, thought that “a lot of our kids have gotten past the point where positive affirmations are effective.”
"They’ve heard the words ’stab’ and heard about the knife and they’ve seen a lot of things so this week I think it would be helpful for us to learn what to say to them at different levels for elementary, middle, and high school students,” she said.
Paul F. Murphy, chairman of the town’s board of selectmen, said the forum was important because it allowed concerned parents to get their questions answered.
“This is a small community and so when something happens it ripples throughout the community,” he said. "We’re on the healing process and this was a good start.”
In a Tuesday statement from the school district, the parents of the stabbing victim thanked school staff and first responders “for their quick actions” and indicated that their daughter is on the mend “and looking forward to seeing her classmates and teachers soon.”
“We feel blessed to be part of such a great Community; and this opinion has only grown stronger with the outpouring of support from across Cape Ann,” they said in the statement. “We ask that you extend that caring spirit to all parties involved.”
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Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @Danny__McDonald.
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Parents pack forum to discuss concerns about stabbing at Rockport middle school - The Boston Globe
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