LMS Students Hear Powerful Anti-Bullying Message

La Grange ISD students get a steady diet of anti-bullying messages during the course of any school year.

But none has ever been so powerful as the program presented to La Grange middle school students last Friday.

All four La Grange Lions Clubs joined together to fund a presentation by Jacki James, a Georgetown ISD teacher whose son Peyton committed suicide two years ago at the age of 13 following relentless bullying.

James began her program by asking the more than 300 middle school students, who had gathered in the gym, to raise their hand if they had ever been called:

• “weird”

• “stupid”

• “loser”

• or something worse than that.

“I’d say about 85-percent of you raised your hand and I’d guess the other 15-percent of you just don’t want to share it,” James said. 

“At some point we’ve all been called something that makes us feel bad. Peyton dealt with that kind of language for seven years, just about every day.”