Schools take proactive approach to bullying
Date: 2/1/2010
Feb. 1, 2010By Courtney Llewellyn and Debbie Gardner
Assistant Reminder Editor and Assistant Managing Editor
The suicide of a South Hadley teenager from being harassed by fellow students have prompted parents and school administrators alike to question how schools handle the issue of bullying.
The Reminder asked school administrators in its circulation area how they protect their students and how they prevent bullying from happening.
The East Longmeadow Schools In the East Longmeadow Public Schools, policies and programs are already in place to combat the issue of bullying, but the administration is not complacent when it comes to this serious issue.
"We started discussion with our admin team [on Jan. 22] to find out what's going on in each school and if there are any areas we need to address," Co-Interim Superintendent Elaine Santaniello said. That team is made up of the principals and assistant principals from each of the five schools, Director of Student Services Dr. Joanne Welch, Santaniello and her co-interim superintendent Terry Olejarz.
"We want to be as proactive as possible," Santaniello stated. "What happened in South Hadley was horrible, and we're not naive enough to think it can't happen here."
Santaniello noted the programs already in place at the elementary, middle and high school levels that help students work through their differences. The Peaceful Playground program, which is utilized at Meadow Brook and Mountain View schools, teaches students to settle arguments in creative, fun ways, and the Second Step violence prevention program is used at all three elementary schools.
At Birchland Park Middle School, a school adjustment councilor identifies issues and helps students deal with them -- especially social issues, which start to become more defined in middle school.
A year-long transition program is in place for freshmen at the high school, and presentations are also made in health class that tackle the topics of bullying, depression and suicide. Santaniello added there is always an open door policy in the high school guidance department as well.
Several administrators along with Santaniello also recently attended a cyber bullying workshop and they can use what they learned there to teach others how to deal with that issue.
The East Longmeadow Public Schools do post their Code of Conduct on their Web site and parents receive hard copies of the code at the beginning of each school year. The code includes the Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 269, 17-19 definition of hazing as "any conduct ... which willfully or recklessly endangers the physical or mental health of any student or other person."
Additional policies are in place for sexual harrassment and bullying ("All persons have the right to be free from sexual harassment/bullying; therefore, sexual harassment/bullying in any form is strictly forbidden in school, on school grounds or at school related activities") and cyber bullying ("Remember, cyber bullying is now considered a criminal act that can be investigated by police and state/federal law enforcement agencies").
Policies are also in place for hate crimes and civility.
The East Longmeadow Public Schools do have a Safe School Hotline which can be called 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This ia an anonymous recorded line for students to report unsafe school issues or violence. The hotline can be reached at 525-5324.
The Longmeadow Schools Longmeadow's Super-intendent of Schools E. Jahn Hart noted that at all six schools in the district there are programs and procedures in place to improve the health, safety and wellness of students.
"We have policy and strict discipline codes to guide our responses to any incidents that threaten the safety and well-being of children," Hart said. "However, our anti-bullying efforts are proactive as well as reactive."
A few of the ways in which the elementary schools are engaged in bullying prevention include:
- Students are engaged through physical education in non-competitive and cooperative activities
- Elementary schools provide non-competitive play options during recess and encourage activities such as the Peaceful Playground and recess staff are directed as to where to position themselves during recess so they can more effectively monitor students and assist or intervene with students
- The Second Step curriculum is utilized at the elementary level. Second Step is a violence prevention/social skills program that teaches children problem solving and empathy, and
- Elementary teachers are trained or engaged in training in the Responsive Classroom, an approach that research has shown reduces behavioral problems in schools.
At the middle schools, programs for both students and parents about bullying, including presentations related to misuse of the Internet and texting.
District wide, several of the schools have regular assemblies to build community and to discuss issues such as safety and respect, and the school PTOs have provided funding for assemblies on the topic of bullying. Schools have collected data on the time of day and the locations in which behavioral incidents occur in order to target interventions and staff support in those locations and at those times.
In addition, all of Longmeadow's principals have received a copy of resources from the Office of Health and Human Services, including "Direct From the Field: A Guide to Bullying Prevention."
"In reaction to the recent incident in South Hadley, Longmeadow High School has taken the following steps," Hart said. "The high school administration has met with the guidance counselors and the rest of the pre-referral team to plan for school-wide discussions [this] week. The entire faculty will be engaged with the administration in planning these discussions, which will include a review of procedures for students to use to let an adult know that someone is being harassed or bullied. Our district-wide Substance Abuse Coordinator and LHS health teacher will be assisting with this effort."
Hart added that the LHS educators discuss such issues on a regular basis at their faculty meetings and are regularly reminded of how important their role is in watching for student harassment, bullying and/or ostracizing.
"While we have procedures in place for both prevention and response, we believe that there is always room for improvement and will continue to be vigilant about the safety and wellness of all of our students," she added.
Bullying is not a problem at any one level of schooling in Longmeadow, according to Hart, but research indicates that bullying begins in elementary school and that it generally peaks in middle school.
"Nevertheless, we are all aware of the growing use of electronic media, including social networks and texting, and the ways that such tools can and are used in destructive ways," she stated. "We combine prevention efforts with quick responses to any incidents that affect the safety and well-being of our students."
The Hampden-Wilbraham School System M. Martin O'Shea, Superintendent of Schools for the Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School District (HWRSD), said his school system takes a very comprehensive approach to reports of student bullying and harassment.
"You have to hit it from all angles, " O' Shea said. "I think it's important to have a strong policy and tight policy around bullying and harassment, but you have to deal with it through curriculum and instruction and counseling and disciplinary intervention."
O'Shea said it's difficult to provide a broad definition of what constitutes bullying and harassment because these types of behaviors "manifest themselves in different ways at different age levels."
"At the high school level and maybe at the middle school level as well you might see [bullying] linked to inappropriate use of electronic communication," O'Shea said.
This type of electronic bullying can range from text messages to emails to postings on Facebook or Myspace, he said.
At the elementary level, O'Shea said bullying generally manifests itself "in the schoolyard or cafeteria, those sorts of everyday activities."
Regardless of the level at which an incident occurs, O'Shea said HWRSD has a specific procedure for handling the occurrence.
"We track office referrals of all types of categories of discipline, bullying and harassment being two of them," he said. The administration then acts quickly to deal with the incident.
Beyond a well-defined policy, O'Shea said his system has also taken a "proactive and preventative" approach to confronting the bullying issue.
"We have introduced at the elementary level an approach called the responsive classroom," O'Shea said.
This combination of curriculum and instruction has elementary students participating in a morning meeting at the beginning of every school day.
"During the meeting students learn how to listen, how to be tolerant [and] how to greet one another in very positive ways," O'Shea said. This helps to build a "very positive, tolerant school and classroom culture."
O'Shea said the middle school curriculum builds on this approach through the use of a programcalled developmental design. At the high school, the school system's anti-bullying message is reinforced through peer mentoring and other programs.
He also said the HWSD emphasizes "open lines of communication so that students feel like they have a trusted adult they can speak with at school, and that parents feel free to alert us of situations."
Though O'Shea did not have immediate access to exact figures on the incidents of bullying and harassment in his school system at the time Reminder Publications spoke with him, he did say that "it appears disciplinary referrals for bullying and harassment have gone down in recent years." He attributed this decline to "our counseling program that has been bolstered by some federal grants . to the interventions and instructions that are happening at the classroom level and the administration that acts firmly and quickly when presented with bullying situations."
HWRSD's policies regarding harrassment, including sexual harrassment, hazing, bullying, the misuse of electronic devices and the punishments for infractions of any of these policies, are outlined in the district's student handbook.
