It didn't take Jeff Lasater long to swing into action after his 14-year-old son, Jeremiah, took his own life at an Acton high school last month.
Within days of burying his youngest son, Lasater rounded up other Vasquez High parents and outraged citizens who had heard about the reported bullying that the teenager suffered before his Oct. 20 death.
Together, they vowed to do something about it.
The result is Project 51, a nonprofit group that will serve as a watchdog over the Acton education system's response to reports of bullying, Lasater said. Its name is a tribute to Jeremiah's number -- 51 -- on the school's junior varsity football team.
A key element is a planned toll-free 800 telephone number that will be sponsored by Project 51 to enable students or their parents to report on-campus harassment. Once a report is lodged, the group will notify the school and give officials 24 hours to verify a problem and take action.
If the school doesn't meet that deadline, the panel's members will "let the community know what's happening," Lasater said.
He doesn't object to working with the principal at Vasquez High, the school his son attended, Lasater said. But Project 51 won't hesitate to confront administrators if necessary, he said from behind the counter of his Reseda muffler shop.
Tonight, the newly formed group will present its program to the Acton-Agua Dulce Board of Education. Lasater is hoping for a positive reception.
"Bullying is a cancer that needs to be cut out," he said, noting that he has been flooded with calls and notes from the parents of other students from across the country who have endured their own abuse, often in silence. "The time has come. We just can't keep waiting for the next tragedy to happen."
On the day Jeremiah died, other boys threw chili on him in the lunch line and pulled his pants down, his father said he has learned.
Immediately after Jeremiah's suicide, the school district's superintendent and Vasquez High's principal said there was no clue that the awkward, 6-foot-6 freshman was despondent. He didn't report the bullying to school officials or his parents, they said.
But students and even teachers reaching back to his years in middle school said the boy was the target of constant teasing over his large size and passive behavior.
It all reached a tipping point right after lunch Oct. 20. As other students scurried to classes, Jeremiah entered a bathroom stall, drew a handgun that he brought from home and shot himself in the head.
