A couple of weeks into September, Dara was driving her son home from his new middle school, happy he seemed to be settling into Grade 7, when the 13-year-old made a startling confession: He was petrified of using the school washroom.
“There are bullies in there; there are kids vaping,” the Mississauga mom recalls him telling her in the car last fall. The teen had already witnessed several fights. He described damaged toilets and sinks, deliberately clogged and overflowing.