Partly cloudy skies. Low around 55F. NW winds at 10 to 15 mph, decreasing to less than 5 mph..

Partly cloudy skies. Low around 55F. NW winds at 10 to 15 mph, decreasing to less than 5 mph.

Lisa Hufnagel knew her son struggled with bullying at school, but she never imagined her child was in serious danger. That changed in mid-April.

Hufnagel’s son was in class this year with another boy who bullied him throughout elementary. She said she reported the bullying and requested that the two boys be separated, but they were put in class together again this school year.

Things came to a head on April 18 when Hufnagel’s son was in the lunch line with the other boy. The boy walked up to Hufnagel’s son and showed him a handgun hidden in his pocket. According to a statement Hufnagel’s son wrote after he got home from school that day, the boy told him that he had three bullets and planned to use the gun to intimidate another child who bullied him after school. At no point did the boy tell Hufnagel’s son that the gun was not real.

“The gun was silver and was a little bigger than his hand.” Hufnagel’s son wrote.

His mother carries a small registered handgun and educated him about gun safety, so after he finished eating his lunch, Hufnagel’s son told his teacher about the gun before his class left the cafeteria.

The other student was called down to the office after math class started. He did not return to class that day, but his friends confronted Hufnagel’s son before school ended.

“After (the boy with the gun) was gone from class, four of his friends told me that (he) told them I told on him and that I was a snitch,” Hufnagel’s son wrote. “One student told me (the boy) was telling her (another student) told on him and (he) planned to kick his a--. She then told me (he) would do the same to me for snitching because snitches get stiches.”

The 2021-2022 school year was a difficult time for students and educators.

Being the first full year back in the classroom since the start of the pandemic in 2020, it was fraught with difficult decisions about when to stay home from school and whether to mandate masks. Students' anxieties combined with the daily pressures of school only served to further complicate an already challenging year.

Amidst the confusion, reports of concerning situations involving fights, disrespect, and acts of violence between children flooded headlines across the country. News articles from Oregon to Chicago quote teachers, parents, school administrators, and students who say fighting has become a bigger problem than ever before.

Even though Logansport has a small population of less than 18,000 people, the city has seen its fair share of disturbing juvenile activity. Two 12-year-old girls were accused of torturing another child at a sleepover in February. In April, two middle school students were arrested in one day for intimidation and brining a weapon to school. Also in April, three juveniles and one 18-year-old were arrested for demolishing both of the bathrooms at Riverside Park. The situation that occurred with Hufnagel’s son was a separate incident from those listed above.

Following the initial reports of the two 12-year-olds who tortured another child, it was revealed that one of the alleged attackers was arrested for another assault earlier in the day before the sleepover occurred. Parents began to reach out about their children's experiences, and the Pharos-Tribune sat down with school officials, police and other experts about the growing behavioral problem.

Despite the shocking incidents of violence, juvenile referrals in Cass County have actually decreased. According to data from the Cass County Juvenile Probation Department, juvenile police and school referrals have generally declined since 2016.

“Those things make it sound like it’s getting worse,” Cass County Chief Juvenile Probation Officer Will Scott said. “There’s still not a very big number of kids doing those kinds of acts. We’ve had some severe acts, but not a large number of them.”

There are two different types of offenses juveniles can commit. The most common are status offenses, which would not be considered a crime if they were committed by an adult. Examples of status offenses include truancy, running away, staying out past curfew, and underage drinking.

The second category includes delinquent offenses. Delinquent offenses are considered crimes when they are committed by adults and include battery, theft, and possession of marijuana.

In 2015, the most common juvenile offense was truancy followed by battery, theft, running away, and possession of marijuana. Scott noted that most of those offenses besides battery are not “person-on-person” crimes. In 2016, the most common offense was theft followed by illegal consumption, possession of marijuana, battery, and truancy.

Juvenile probation referrals decreased from 304 in 2016 to 172 in 2021. They reached a low point in 2020 when only 146 referrals were made, and they have increased only slightly since then.

The number of children supervised by juvenile probation in the fourth quarter of each year has followed a similar trend with a high of 90 children under supervision in 2015, 41 children under supervision in 2020, and 52 children under supervision in 2021.

The number of children admitted to secure detention dropped from 123 kids in 2015 to a mere 27 kids in 2021. The only numbers that remained the same were the number of juveniles who entered residential placement.

According to Cass County Juvenile Probation, residential placement describes six to nine month long rehabilitation programs where children live on a campus that provides treatment and schooling. Residential placement is typically reserved for more serious offenses.

Despite some slight fluctuations in the intervening the years, nine Cass County children were admitted into residential placement facilities in 2015, 2020, and 2021.

Even though the number of juvenile offenses has not increased dramatically since the pandemic began, Scott said he has recently seen changes in the kids going through the juvenile probation system.

“We’ve had a lot of mental health needs,” he said. “If there is a trend, that is actually one that I think is present in the last few years. Mental health needs seem to be really standing out to me, especially with some of the school referrals we’ve had. Not necessarily with just the heavy crime, but even with the ones like truancy.”

Scott said there are many kids who do not have basic needs like housing fulfilled. His department tries to meet children’s’ needs any way they can by connecting kids to programming, youth mentors, support systems, healthy family members, and therapy. However, therapy is in high demand and there are not enough counselors to keep up.

“Sometimes there’s not very good turnaround time with meetings and they don’t get to see their therapist as much as they should because there are a lot of people using the same place,” Scott said. “Adult probation uses Four County too, so they’ve got hundreds of people.”

Scott said community involvement, good role models, and stability are very important to kids. He encouraged community members to get involved with youth mentoring programs like Adolescent Intramural Mentoring (AIM) to surround Cass County children with positive role models and reduce acting out behaviors.

Despite decreases in the number of juvenile offenders, schools are still noticing an increase in problematic behaviors between students.

J.D. Sommers is a corporal at the Logansport Police Department and has been a school resource officer at Columbia Sixth Grade Academy for the past 12 years. He said that that while most people refrain from saying hurtful comments they post online to someone’s face, the current sixth graders do not have that filter and often say very hurtful things to each other.

“It’s socially unacceptable, and I don’t think they quite grasp that,” he said.

Officials at Logansport schools have implemented strategies to teach kids about bullying and encourage students to treat each other kindly.

The school is required to teach students about bullying each year, and Andie Nicoles, a school social worker at Franklin Elementary School, said Logansport schools teach anti-bullying each fall before giving students a small refresher at the beginning of the spring semester.

CSGA Principal Justin Herrold said the school learns about cyberbullying and participates in the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program.

“The bullying lessons are all about defining bullying and then also establishing what students can do to prevent bullying from becoming a problem, and to help stop it and report it when it does occur,” CSGA math teacher Adam Thompson said. “It’s not just meant for students, but also for teachers and staff to kind of raise the overall awareness of bullying issues.”

Additionally, Herrold said the school participates in PBIS and Lions Quest programming. PBIS stands for positive behavioral interventions support and encourages positive behaviors among students.

According to Harvard University’s Easel Lab, Lions Quest is a school program that “…integrates social and emotional learning, character education, drug and bullying prevention, and service learning to build 21st century life skills.”

“It starts the foundation for the bullying curriculum that we use (in kindergarten through sixth grade) across the corporation,” Nicoles said.

Nicoles added that Lions Quest programming is helpful because it gives students a common language and makes it easy for teachers to check what lessons their students have learned through the program already.

In addition to those curriculums, students also participate in a daily ‘See Me, Hear My Voice’ survey. At the beginning of the day, students use the survey to share their struggles with their teachers and school administrators. Staff members can see which student sent a specific survey, but the surveys are completely anonymous to students.

“That’s an opportunity for them to tell us whatever might be going on with them if there is an issue with another student, if they’re hungry, if there’s something at home,” Herrold said. “We do that every day.”

He also mentioned weekly meetings between teachers and the school social worker to be proactive about student issues.

Logansport schools give students a foundation to treat others respectfully and discourage bullying. However, it is ultimately up to students to utilize the programming they are taught and to treat others with kindness and respect. In an environment where popular social media trends encourage theft and vandalism and some kids increase their popularity by fighting other children, it is an uphill battle for educators to impress the importance of anti-bullying programming upon their students.

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