Bullying And The Feds

School bullying has been in the news a lot lately with the “It Gets Better” campaign and with the Red Socks’ video. Also Connecticut just passed a new anti-bullying law (SB1138) that not only adds teeth to the existing anti-bullying but also includes cyber-bullying. What many people do not know is that the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights takes a strong stand against bullying and they also include sexual orientation and gender identity. Last October they sent out a letter warning schools that they have to protect students against bullying.

One school district in California found out the hard way…

Feds Fault District for Inaction in Calif. Bullying Case
Education Week
By Christina Samuels
By guest blogger Nirvi Shah
July 1, 2011

When the Tehachapi school district in California failed to stop or prevent 13-year-old middle school student Seth Walsh from being repeatedly teased and bullied by his peers, the district violated federal discrimination and harassment laws, the federal Departments of Justice and Education said Friday.

The finding is the first of its kind since school districts were sent "dear colleague" letters last October outlining their responsibilities in cases of bullying.

"A school is responsible for addressing harassment incidents about which it knows or reasonably should have known," wrote Russlyn Ali, assistant secretary for civil rights.
[…]
To resolve the federal investigation into the district's inaction during the two years that Seth was harassed, the school district agreed this week to revise its policies and regulations related to sexual and gender-based harassment and hire a consultant to provide mandatory trainings on sexual and gender-based harassment for all students, administrators, teachers, counselors, and other staff members who interact with students, among other things.

We all must work to end bullying. Bullying is not just a school problem, but a community problem. It ends when the schools involve the students, teachers, parents, community leaders, law enforcement and the courts to bring about a culture change to end bullying. The culture change does not start in high school or junior high, but in elementary school with teachers training in spotting children at risk and intervening, a California study found that “Teachers in Beaverton Oregon elementary schools who were trained to spot children with anti-social behaviors who were then taught how to play together. The program reduced suspensions from 175 a year to less than a dozen.”

I am a member of the Safe Schools Coalition and at one of our meetings I heard what some school districts are doing to end bullying and school violence, they have a student court. That in itself isn’t revolutionary, but what they are doing is working with other area towns to combine their student courts so that cases are not tried in the same school of the accused but the case is heard in another high school. They found that the results are more uniform and student popularity does not figure into the case as it would if the case was heard by their follow students.

We can all work together to end bullying, Hillary Clinton saying “It takes a village to raise a child” is true.