Immigrant leaders seek tougher anti-bullying plan

African- and Caribbean-immigrant leaders said yesterday that the Philadelphia School District isn't doing enough to stop the bullying of immigrant students and hasn't honored commitments made nearly five years ago to address the issue.

The leaders spoke at a City Council Education Committee hearing yesterday, held in response to a number of recent incidents, including the attack last month on Nadin Khoury, 13, in Upper Darby. The teen, of Liberian descent, was shoved into a tree and hung on a fence in an incident caught on cell-phone video.

After a brutal attack on a Liberian teen in Southwest Philadelphia in 2005, African and Caribbean groups made several recommendations to the Philadelphia School District, such as to use community liaisons between students and administrators, according to J. Shiwoh Kamara, president of the Liberian Association of Pennsylvania.

Kamara said that the recommendations weren't followed and that bullying problems for immigrant students continue.

"The school district cannot [combat bullying] by itself," he said.

Shana Kemp, a district spokeswoman, said in an e-mail that the discussions happened before the current district administration and the majority of executive staff were in place.

She said the district has implemented an anti-harassment policy and developed new investigation and complaint procedures as part of the agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, stemming from the bullying of Asian students at South Philadelphia High School in December 2009.

But, according to a report on the incidents at Southern to be released next Tuesday by the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, the school district's bullying programs are inconsistent from school to school.

"Testimony revealed that too often the district is not doing enough to prevent and resolve such conflicts," Rue Landau, executive director of the Philadelphia commission, told the committee. "On the other hand, we heard about several models that work."

These models included programs in which students from diverse backgrounds came together through shared interests, and schools where faculty and staff were actively involved in anti-bullying efforts.

Immigrant leaders also complained yesterday that anti-bullying materials have not been made available in certain African and Caribbean languages and that there has been no push to hire African and Caribbean teachers in Southwest Philadelphia, where many of the students reside.