Boody principal calls new anti-bullying device ‘a win-win’
When Dominick D’Angelo became the principal of David A. Boody Intermediate School eight years ago, one of the key decisions he made was to confront the school’s problems head-on and not to sweep them under the rug.
At the time D’Angelo arrived, Boody had several problems, including a situation with bullying. The issue was so intense that parents didn’t want to enroll their children there, the principal admitted. “Boody was a school that nobody wanted to come to,” he candidly told the Brooklyn Eagle in a phone interview on Wednesday.
Boody, named after David A. Boody, who served as the mayor of Brooklyn in 1892, is located at 228 Avenue S in Bensonhurst.
Two years into his tenure, D’Angelo decided that he had had enough. “We got fed up with this. I officially declared a war on bullying,” he said. “Bullying goes on everywhere and a lot of people try to deny it. We decided to confront the problem. We don’t sweep anything under the carpet. You have to deal with it. If students are not comfortable, if they don’t feel safe, they can’t focus.”