Historically speaking Ferndale High School has had a bit of a bully problem.
In the eighties, at my job in Southfield, I was discussing Ferndale High School
with a lady I called "the Vice President in Charge of Reception". She reached
a point in the conversation where she stopped, tight-lipped. I said, "the big
black girls in the bathroom who won't let little white girls in there to pee?"
And that was it exactly! This was what happened both to my tiny youngest
sister and also to her daughter back in the eighties. They didn't know each other
at the time. Besides this, at a later point, maybe in the nineties, I read an
article about a student named Chandra that didn't graduate from there
[[and never did graduate from high school, but maybe eventually obtained a GED)
because she couldn't take the bullies any more. The bullying included hitting and
kicking and pouring paint in her hair. Chandra, for her child, was going to try
to help to change the bullying culture there. I hope she succeeded. My brother
who is gay and blue collar lives and works in Ferndale not far from Chazzano
Coffee Roasters. He has no children so I can't pass along what their experiences
at the schools have been.