AKRON, Ohio — A 14-year-old boy stabbed a 16-year-old boy during a fight in a boy’s bathroom at Firestone CLC in Akron, according to a news release from the Akron Police Department. The 16-year-old boy was taken to Akron Children’s Hospital and is being treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
Pat Shipe is Akron’s Education Association president. She said the stabbing, is not the first violent incident in Akron Public Schools this week, just the most serious.
“This week, alone, we had a gun in one building, we had three teachers assaulted in another building, we had another teacher assaulted in a third building and at Firestone we had the stabbing,” she said.
Shipe said she and their association members have been sounding the alarm for years regarding the increase of violence throughout school buildings.
“Our members, our educators believe we have been raising concerns for quite a long time and we are being ignored,” she said. “ We are not being heard. We are not being heard from this administration. We believe they are not engaging with us and those are people on the ground in the building and dealing with this day to day.”
An Akron Public Schools' parent, with one student at Firestone High School, said her family has had enough.
“I am no longer willing to send my children to school, and every day getting text messages that they’re in lockdown continuously,” she said. “It’s not okay. I mean, my child texting me seeing a child being taken out of school on a stretcher, being stabbed in school.”
RELATED: 16-year-old boy stabbed by another student in bathroom at Firestone CLC in Akron, police confirm
She didn’t want to share her name because she is worried about retaliation for her children but said she is ready to take her children out of the district.
“This isn’t something new. It’s definitely escalating and it’s definitely getting worse,” she added. “I, as a parent, cannot send my child to school every day wondering if they’re going to come home.”
Shipe said district leaders and the administration sweeps the violence under the rug.
“Everybody should be concerned. The community should be concerned,” said Shipe. “We have to have a true dialogue about what is happening in our schools and what our teachers are faced with everyday.”
Shipe said there are far too few consequences for the students who act out.
“We have staff, teachers and other students that are the majority of Akron Public Schools that are the victims of what is going on in our buildings by a small percentage of repeat students,” she said.
The mom who spoke to News 5 echoed her sentiment.
“The kids will come home and say, you know, this happened at school or so-and-so got in a fight and then the next day they're right back at school,” she noted. “It has to stop. There has to be accountability. We have to teach parents and children that there are rules and the rules will be enforced. It has to be a zero tolerance policy. This can't happen. This can't continue to happen.”
News 5 asked Akron’s Superintendent Christine Fowler-Mack for a comment regarding violence in schools but we didn't get an answer, instead we were sent this as a response:
"Two male, freshman students fought in a first-floor bathroom at Firestone CLC shortly after 1 pm today. One student was stabbed, is in the hospital, and appears to have non-life-threatening wounds; the other student has been taken into police custody.
We are grateful for the quick actions of our student resource officer at the school who responded instantly, went into the bathroom, and apprehended the suspect while summoning aid for the victim.
Akron police are working with our security teams to assess what led to this senseless act of violence and how a weapon ended up in a student's hands while in school.
Our school administrators at Firestone have been in communication with Firestone families conveying everything we know about what happened today.
We pray for the student who was attacked and will be reassessing security procedures as we prepare for class next week."- Christine Fowler-Mack, supt. Akron Public Schools"
