Nonprofit to monitor school bullying

It didn’t take Jeff Lasater long to swing into action after his 14-year-old son, Jeremiah, took his own life at an Acton high school last month.

Within days of burying his youngest son, Lasater rounded up other Vasquez High parents and outraged citizens who had heard about the reported bullying that the teenager suffered before his Oct. 20 death.

Together, they vowed to do something about it.

The result is Project 51, a nonprofit group that will serve as a watchdog over the Acton education system’s response to reports of bullying, Lasater said. Its name is a tribute to Jeremiah’s number -- 51 -- on the school’s junior varsity football team.

A key element is a planned toll-free 800 telephone number that will be sponsored by Project 51 to enable students or their parents to report on-campus harassment. Once a report is lodged, the group will notify the school and give officials 24 hours to verify a problem and take action.

If the school doesn’t meet that deadline, the panel’s members will “let the community know what’s happening,” Lasater said.

He doesn’t object to working with the principal at Vasquez High, the school his son attended, Lasater said. But Project 51 won’t hesitate to confront administrators if necessary, he said from behind the counter of his Reseda muffler shop.

Tonight, the newly formed group will present its program to the Acton-Agua Dulce Board of Education. Lasater is hoping for a positive reception.

“Bullying is a cancer that needs to be cut out,” he said, noting that he has been flooded with calls and notes from the parents of other students from across the country who have endured their own abuse, often in silence. “The time has come. We just can’t keep waiting for the next tragedy to happen.”

On the day Jeremiah died, other boys threw chili on him in the lunch line and pulled his pants down, his father said he has learned.

Immediately after Jeremiah’s suicide, the school district’s superintendent and Vasquez High’s principal said there was no clue that the awkward, 6-foot-6 freshman was despondent. He didn’t report the bullying to school officials or his parents, they said.

But students and even teachers reaching back to his years in middle school said the boy was the target of constant teasing over his large size and passive behavior.

It all reached a tipping point right after lunch Oct. 20. As other students scurried to classes, Jeremiah entered a bathroom stall, drew a handgun that he brought from home and shot himself in the head.

Programs are already in place to train teachers to spot and put an end to bullying, said Ron Bird, the school board’s vice president.

Disciplinary measures to deal with known bullies range from suspension to expulsion, he said.

“We take bullying very seriously,” Bird said. “Our teachers and staff just received training in August.”

But Lasater’s group contends that those policies aren’t enough. The education system too often drags its feet in dealing with the age-old problem, he said.

Lasater cites a 1998 U.S. Department of Justice study showing that up to 25% of students are bullied at school and that the vast majority report their abuse.

It was only after Jeremiah’s death that Lasater and his wife learned about the constant teasing that their son had endured since middle school.

Jeremiah never complained, his father said. Struggling with a learning disability, he always was a quiet child, preferring to observe at the edges of a group rather than taking part, his father said.

The Monday that Jeremiah died started like many others, his father said. Jeremiah fed the chickens and dogs at home before heading off to school with his older brother on the bus. Lasater said his son seemed content and was eager for him to come to his next football game.

“He’d just bloomed on the football team,” Lasater said. “The football coach did a marvelous job of bringing him out.”

A 275-pound defensive tackle, Jeremiah wasn’t the fastest kid on the gridiron, his father said, but he had heart.

“He loved playing football,” his father said. “He’d just keep running. The kid just wouldn’t give up.”

Lasater thinks his son just had enough and felt he had nowhere to turn. The 800 hotline that Project 51 will establish allows students to anonymously report abuse. That could be a critical factor in stemming the problem because teenagers often don’t report bullying out of fear it will just make things worse, he said.

Bird, the school board member, agrees.

“We all were teenagers at one point and one of the problem with teenagers is they don’t talk,” Bird said. “I can’t tell you how many things I heard about this specific bullying story after the tragedy. I wish I heard them before the fact.”

Bird said he welcomes the program, calling it an added benefit to the counseling and disciplinary measure already provided.

Lasater said the group will ask that punishment related to bullying be toughened. Instead of a few days’ suspension for a first offense, an offender should get a week’s suspension, sign an anti-bullying pledge and be required to write a three-page essay on bullying, he said.

A second offense should bring a two weeks’ suspension and a 10-page essay; if there’s a third event, the offender should be expelled, Lasater said.

Project 51 also will support creation of a mentor program, pairing high school seniors with students targeted by schoolyard bullies.

Project 51 will start in Acton schools, but Lasater said the group intends to spread its message to other school districts.

Lasater, who comes across as affable and no-nonsense, said people often ask him how he is able to come up with a comprehensive disciplinary plan while grieving his son’s loss. He said the answer comes from his own tendency to tackle a problem.

But it’s also the best way he knows to pay tribute to Jeremiah, Lasater said.

“My son’s not going to die in that bathroom,” his father said. “The best legacy we can give to Jeremiah is to get programs like Project 51 going.”

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catherine.saillant@latimes.com