We've recently moved to Texas from Kansas. The area we live in is predominately Latino and we live in a city that's probaly 10 times as big if not more. My daughter is 14 and is doing a lot better as far as academics in the school she attends now. She's on the honor roll with a 3.5 GPA. She's very friendly with people and easy to get along with, but she's been into a fight already this year. She said that she and another girl were talking and she was under the impression that they were joking and kidding around but then the girl got serious and hit her. She says after the first hit, she thought they were still playing and playfully hit her back and it became serious and turned into a fight. All of this was confirmed when I and the other girls' parents had to meet. Only this girl voiced at the meeting that it "wasn't over". Now my child is 5'9" tall and 190 lbs. A big girl. She's always been quiet but will stand up for herself when pushed too far. This girl had to be at most 5'3" and not much more than 100 lbs. This incident happened a few months ago. My daughter when out with two of her friends a couple days ago to a movie and encountered this other girl and seven of her friends and family, wanting to gang up on my child and her friends. The attendant at the theater spoke with me when I came to pick them up and indeed told me that the other girls were bothering them and she even gave them free tickets to come back to the movie and enjoy it later without these girls. When I was a child my daddy always told me to fight back, no matter what. That got me into a lot of trouble because I didn't know how to talk out any problems that came up, I'd just beat your butt and be done with it (and that part of me wants to tell my daughter to do the same thing). I was always an honor roll student too, but was constantly being suspended from school. Once in my junior year of highschool some girl were bothering me and I tried to talk to the principal, teachers, and my counselor but they just brushed it off. One day she hit me while I was in the hall and what resulted was her going to the hospital and me going to juvenile detention. I don't want that to happen with my daughter and I don't want these other girls to do something as violent as stabbing or shooting her. I really don't know what to do. We're in a bigger city and things aren't like they were when I was that age. I don't think that the school is doing enough to end this. I makes me want to move back to Kansas.