California District Settles With Parents Of Student Who Committed Suicide After Bullying.

The Sacramento (CA) Bee (9/4, Kalb) reports the parents of Ronin Shimizu, a 12-year old boy who committed suicide last year after being bullied, have settled a lawsuit with the Folsom Cordova Unified School District in California for $1 million. According to the parents’ mediation brief, Shimizu was “taunted, ridiculed, and physically assaulted on multiple occasions over his perceived gender identification while attending elementary and middle schools in the district,” before being “placed under the care of a psychiatrist and diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, ADHD, anxiety and depression.” Shimizu’s parents then began homeschooling him in the fall of 2013. He then committed suicide on December 3, 2014. Reuters (9/4, Bernstein) highlights Shimizu’s parents many attempts to address the bullying by contacting and meeting with school officials. The parents’ attorney Mark Meron said their many meetings with school officials “yielded little if any action.”