The day before Drucilla Mendez's 13-year-old son suffered bruises and cuts at the hands of a dozen kids near his new school, she had a feeling something bad would happen to him.

THE PARENT TRAP: Drucilla Mendez is stuck between a convoluted public school system and ensuring the safety of her son, Deion. : Michael T. Regan

So the West Philadelphia resident dragged Deion downtown to visit some agencies she heard could get him into a safer school.

First stop, Parent Involved Network, a project of the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania, at 12th and Chestnut streets. "They told me to make an appointment," she says.

Then it was on to the Public Interest Law Center on Ninth Street. "We didn't even get past the receptionist."

Next, she called the school district's office of support services. The person who answered couldn't help, saying, "It's only [Deion's] second week there."

Finally she visited state Rep. Thomas Blackwell's office. They told her to sign Deion up for boxing lessons.

The next day, f

eeling betrayed by the school district, Mendez sent Deion to school only to receive a frantic call that kids jumped him and he needed medical attention. As she watched her battered son lay still for CT scans and x-rays, she vowed not to send him back to Samuel B. Huey School, a decision that triggered a litany of phone calls and frustrating conversations with the school district. Flipping through meticulous notes of the ordeal, she says, "I always end up back at the school district and they won't help me."

But it appears that the school district did everything right. It transferred Deion to a new school and even set up a meeting with the principal at Henry C. Lea School. "According to our records, the school district of Philadelphia worked and continues to work diligently on her concerns," a spokesman says.

So why has Deion been sitting home for two months? Experts say the Mendezes' situation is indicative of a bigger problem: Parents feel powerless and the school district lacks the resources to walk them though the system.

Even though the district fulfills its legal requirement to inform parents about opportunities, Dennis Barneby, education specialist with Philadelphia Citizens for Children and Youth, says that doesn't mean parents digest the material.

"There is a communication gap," he says. "It is a foreign process to many of us. People who work in this system don't see that. It's all very logical to them."

Len Rieser, co-director of the Education Law Center, says it might help to create one place to get answers. "In any huge system, there's just such a potential for people getting lost in the offices and procedures," he says. "You have to be a fairly sophisticated parent to navigate the system."

Parents like Drucilla feel isolated from the school system, explains Lucinda Post, director of the Drexel Center for the Prevention of School Violence and a school district employee. They feel their children are unsafe and unengaged with the curriculum, and parents themselves feel unwelcome, she says.

"We are working for you. You can tell them a hundred times. If they don't believe it they don't believe it," she says. "I really don't like to blame the victim. But [parents] need to step up."

How does the school district account for this disconnect? "The school district of Philadelphia has 185,000 students in 270 schools. Our commitment is to make every parent happy," the spokesman says. "If a parent is unhappy, we work with them to find a choice they are happy with."

But Drucilla won't be happy until the district can guarantee her son's safety.

Sitting in his mother's apartment above a store, Deion wears a black T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of a wrestler named the Undertaker and plays with their fluffy beige cat. His chubby cheeks reveal dimples as he talks about his first full day at Huey, a Monday.

A fight broke out in math class and he came home with scratches. Tuesday Deion called his mother from the bathroom and whispered, "Mom, can you get me out of here?" Wednesday she looked for help and Thursday he was back to school.

He was wary enough to stay 30 minutes after school ended, and when he finally left the grounds two boys approached him and punched him twice in the jaw as more children came running. The crowd pushed him toward the street and Deion tried to board a city bus, but someone tackled him and pinned him against the bus. He managed to push himself upright and run until some kids shoved him back into the street, where a truck broke his fall.

"I kind of blanked out for two seconds," he says. Someone yelled, "Cops!" and Deion looked up to find everyone had scattered. A passenger in the truck plucked him off the ground and took him home.

Drucilla, a student in Drexel's behavioral health program, took him to CHOP. "I couldn't touch his face," she says of his wounds. "I had to help him brush his teeth." Deion still has nightmares and talks to a counselor once a week.

Drucilla isn't completely without fault. Previously, she'd used her mother's Upper Darby address to send Deion to school in that district because she had been afraid to send him to Huey. That's where he learned to fight. "I didn't want my mom to find out because in her world fighting isn't OK," he says.

Although he fought back at his previous school, Drucilla says Deion,

who is Hispanic, was bullied at the nearly all-black Huey School. (Last May a white mother crashed her minivan onto the school's front doors after her children were victims of racial taunting.)

Once Deion was transferred to Lea, Drucilla learned some of the kids who had assaulted him went there. She requested another transfer. She was told the principal at Lea would help her, but Drucilla felt the district was ignoring her concerns and she decided to sever communication. Weeks later, when the district learned Deion never attended Lea, Sally Hilton, director of support services, recommended four other schools.

None of the schools meets thresholds laid out in the federal No Child Left Behind act, so Drucilla applied to some better-performing schools and now waits to hear where Deion will go this fall; she assumes he'll repeat eighth grade.

"Why should I send him there when I'm not sure if he's going to walk out alive?"

In the meantime, Deion misses out on his education. "I stay home a lot," he says. "I just want to be in school."

Dissatisfied parents can go online (www.phila.k12.pa.us/parents) or call the help hotline at215-400-4000.