Parents at a Pennsylvania middle school are calling out school leaders for failing to protect students after a 12-year-old was brutally beaten by a new classmate in the school cafeteria last week.
"We feel like the school district handled it wrong from start to finish," Pennbrook Middle School parent Nicole Brown told Fox News Digital. "The communication has been very little."
"To be honest with you, I feel like they're not saying a lot because they know they're in the wrong," she continued.
Several parents and students lashed out at school officials during the North Penn School District board meeting on April 18, one day after a student came up behind the female victim in the cafeteria of Pennbrook Middle School and repeatedly hit her on the head with a metal Stanley tumbler.
Some parents claimed the assailant had exhibited violent behavior while attending other schools in the district prior to the incident. They also blamed the school for not immediately addressing warnings about the student making violent threats toward other Pennbrook students leading up to the attack.
On Tuesday, parents and students held a protest outside the district building demanding accountability and answers from school leaders.
Two of the parents, Brown and Sarah Batory, spoke with Fox News Digital afterward about their frustrations with how the school handled the situation and the trauma their children are dealing with.
Batory said her son was in the cafeteria that day and witnessed the brutal attack against his friend and classmate. She said he was so shaken up that he hasn't been able to return to school.
"He told me that something had happened and there was a lot of blood. And then he texted me and said that everybody, all the teachers, were making the kids put away their phones and telling them they couldn't call or text their parents. So obviously, that sent a lot of parents into quite a frenzy," Batory recalled to Fox News Digital.
At last week's board meeting, a female student who also witnessed the assault described seeing blood flying "everywhere." She said the accused student grabbed the victim's hair and began yelling "I’m going to murder you" while "hitting her against the table."
Batory said students were forced to remain in the cafeteria for about 30 minutes during a lockdown while a janitor cleaned up the victim's blood, which her son found very upsetting.
The initial email Principal Nick Taylor sent parents after the attack also frustrated Batory since it didn't indicate the seriousness of the assault, which hospitalized the victim. She also accused Superintendent Todd M. Bauer of providing a misleading statement the same day, denying that the student had been expelled from other schools in the district over violent behavior.
"The superintendent did a lot of mansplaining with that, in my opinion, because he released to the press and sent out to everybody that it was only a rumor and a lie that this child was at other schools in the district and was expelled to them for violent behavior. And the only thing not true was the expulsion part," Batory said.
The student had only been at Pennbrook for two full days before the incident, according to Batory. In that time, both parents and students tried to warn school administration about a rumored "hit list" the student had.
"It's very frustrating," Batory said about the school's response. "The day of, there were so many failures at the school … But I think overall it's like a bigger picture of the problem of schools not knowing what to do [in these situations]," she said.
Brown, the other parent who spoke to Fox News Digital, helped organize Tuesday's protest. She said they were there to spread awareness to the community about what happened, call for accountability from the school leaders and demand safety for their kids.
She also accused school leaders of failing to communicate.
"We're getting pieces. I feel like I'm learning something new every single day. To be honest with you, I feel like they're not saying a lot because they know they're in the wrong," Brown told Fox News Digital.
She cited the principal's first email home urging parents to talk to their kids about the "consequences of fighting," as one such example.
"This wasn't a fight. This was a planned attack," Brown said.
The mom said that in the 15 years her son has been in the district, she had never seen an incident this violent before.
When reached for comment, the North Penn School District did not answer questions about the students' alleged violent history and claims from parents at the board meeting that the student was transgender.
A spokesperson said the superintendent met with Brown and another parent after the protest to address their concerns. They referred Fox News Digital to the April 20 letter sent home to parents listing the steps school officials were taking to make sure this type of attack does not happen again.
In that message, Bauer told parents that an unbiased, third-party investigation into the assault would be conducted "to offer an analysis and recommendations" going forward.
The district also offered other solutions, such as establishing school safety committees in each building, additional training for administrators and more regular visits from local police officers.
The spokesperson said there would be additional updates coming within the following week.
Fox29 Philadelphia reported that the 13-year-old student was charged with aggravated assault. Police told the outlet that the student tried to attack a sheriff's deputy during their first court hearing this week.
Fox News' Stephen Sorace contributed to this report.
