In Peabody MA, a middle school student recently committed suicide and among the known causes was his being bullied in his school. Horrific by any measure, and this young student is, sadly, not the only student struggling to navigate school and life. As an educator who specializes in trauma, this event in my geographic backyard reminds me of the critical role schools can and should play in the lives of their students.
It is for this reason that I had a visceral, almost nauseating, reaction to the letter the Peabody School Superintendent, Josh Vadala, circulated to the community about this event. This letter is publicly available and dated May 23, 2025. See: https://peabody.k12.ma.us/news/letter-to-our-community/ (I am not going to reference other missteps taken since the suicide; I leave those for a later date but they include a mal-timed field trip to DC for Middle School students, despite recognizing that travel to a new place without parents invokes separation anxiety, with death being the ultimate separation.)
The letter, in short, is totally wrong-headed and is, in truth, offensive. Hard to believe this letter was critiqued by a qualified team of professionals familiar with mental health, suicide, trauma, race and crisis management.
Rather than parse the offending letter word by word, line by line or paragraph by paragraph to show how misguided it is in both tone and content, I want to focus on two sentences that I now quote:
“As educators, we often have to remind ourselves that we have Peabody’s children only a small percentage of the day. We rely on our families to work alongside us, especially at a time like this.”
First, these two sentences deflect blame being foist onto the school system (and its support or lack thereof) for its students. While I most assuredly see the value of parental and community engagement, now is most assuredly not the time to allocate blame or responsibility. Whether one decodes the statement or not, its underlying message is about blame shifting.
Second, the focus on the “small percentage of the day” students spend in school, suggests that schools do not bear the brunt of the blame for bullying and what occurs within their walls. How callous and how passive-aggressive a stance is that? How about sentiments like: “We need, and I as superintendent need, to own what happens within our schools.
Third, let’s look at the data on time students spend in school during the school year — while awake. Yes, the number depends on the particular student and school system. Yes, it depends on before and after school offerings, neither of which are generally calculated into the data. Yes, it depends on whether and how one counts the travel to/from school each day. Yes, it depends on whether students get added support programs during vacations and summers.
But, however we calculate the number of hours a student spends in school, that percentage is not “small,” the characterization provided by Superintendent Vadala. The actual data speak.
It is estimated that during the school year, students spend between 18–20% of their waking hours in school. That is not a trivial number. That is not a small number. That is a number with gravitas. To ground this point home: It is estimated that we spend under 2% of our day eating but no one would even suggest for a nanosecond that what we eat is irrelevant since eating constitutes such a small portion of our day.
Fourth, with at least a fifth of one’s waking hours in school, there is plenty of time to both be bullied (if one is a student) and prevent bullying (if one is a teacher/leader). Yet, best as I can tell, the Superintendent’s letter does not reference bullying. Neither does it reference the race or gender of the student who was bullied. Nor does the letter address tensions rising within the community. Nor does it use the word “suicide,” instead using different terms, some of which are misguided.
In sum, Superintendent Vadala’s letter totally misses the mark. Any superintendent, whether in Peabody or elsewhere, who tries to duck responsibility rather than face issues head on, cannot lead a school system that is honestly trying to address bullying, suicide, community relations, race and mental wellness.
Instead of what was written and a new letter, we need to be asking and disclosing the data on harassment within the Peabody Middle School, the steps taken when harassment occurs, the follow-up on incidents of harassment, the training of educators to identify students in need and the concrete efforts to address these issues before the end of this school year (not an “appropriate” time as the letter references, including plans for memorials and remembrances. Pretending a suicide did not happen is an error. A grotesque error.
Our school leaders must do better. They have to do better. How else can we improve the lives of our students in real time, in the real world with real world problems?
Karen Gross
