Advocates wanted to restore straightforward mandates for reporting, investigation, discipline, and notification of law enforcement and parents. There was resistance to that approach. So instead we suggested and they agreed to add a requirement that schools adhere to the plans which are required to be developed and cover the subject areas mentioned. Moreover, the regulatory authority to the DESE was fleshed out to ensure it would accommodate strong reporting requirements, from staff to administrators, and from administrators to parents. The DESE was given a September 30, 2010 deadline to promulgate the regulations.
In collaboration with the Mass. Aggression Reduction Center at Bridgewater State College, advocates worked to develop no cost training options that made mandatory training sustainable. (State law interdicts unfunded mandates imposed by the legislature on cities and towns.) This information supported an amendment, sponsored by openly lesbian Rep. Sarah Peake, to make staff training mandatory. Legislators insisted on additional time for DESE to work out no or low cost training options for school districts, so implementation was set for the 2011-2012 school year.
Now the bill goes to conference committee, where we will be fighting hard to keep the training mandate. We are expecting this process to get underway as early as next week, with a clear desire by the House and Senate Chairs of the Joint Education Committee to move expeditiously.
While over 50 organizations endorsed the legislation, 6 groups took the lead in the intensive advocacy on Beacon Hill. The lead advocate was the Anti-Defamation League, with the collaboration of the Mass. Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, Mass Equality, the Anti-Violence Project/Join the Impact MA, and Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders. Special shout-outs go to Derek Shulman and Rob Trestan of the ADL, Arline Isaacson of the Caucus, Scott Gortikov and DeeDee Edmonson of Mass=, and Sam Bickett, Karen Loewy, and Nima Eshghi of GLAD.
Thank you for all of the effort on this, and thanks to those who kept the pressure on. This is such an important issue. It will have a resounding impact on the future of so many children: the bullies, the bullied, and the bystanders. It should help to curb the drop-out rate. It will send our children off into adulthood with the knowledge that we are all equal, and there is no such thing as an excusable reason to abuse anyone.
to be from MA: That we’ve decided that there’s a standard for schools on dealing with the issue.
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p>Hellz yeah.
A special thanks to the legislators who worked to toughen this bill up. Especially Reps Clark, Peake, Walz, and Michlewitz (among others) for taking a stand on this one.
Marty Walz, Katherine Clark, Sarah Peake, Carl Sciortino, Aaron Michelwitz, Tom Stanley, William Brownsberger, Alice Wolf, Denise Provost, John Rogers, Peter Koutoujian, John Scibek, Lori Ehrlich, and Ruth Balser all deserve special accolades. They turned the Speaker and the House around in a very short time, and the bill is much stronger as a result.
The bill is better than the gutted form proposed by Ways and Means. But this remains an unenumerated bill, which research shows is not nearly as effective as enumerated bills in protecting kids. The advocacy groups are split over the value of the bill, with groups such as PFLAG and GLSEN finding it seriously deficient. This is not a bill deserving of a big self-congratulation. This is the bill you get when advocates pander to legislators who don’t want to have to have “divisive” conversations (I think that means say “gay” “lesbian” or “transgender” in a conversation involving schools.) Maybe it’s better than nothing, or maybe it’s just a cynical way for MassEquality to continue to justify its existence, but this is not the bill it could have been if advocacy groups and progressive legislators were willing to show a little more fight.
I wanted explicit mention of groups at heightened risk for bullying and lobbied for it, as did Mass Equality, but the Education Committee argued that its definition of bullying absolutely covered harassment of LGBT and disabled students, as well as students generally. Co-Chair Marty Walz pointed out that there is no intent requirement for bullying; the focus is on the conduct of the perpetrator and the impact on the target, not the state of mind of the bully. Divining bias motives is always a tricky business, especially when you have things like 7th graders calling other students “gay” as an insult but without a clear sense of what sexual orientation is. Unlike in the anti-discrimination and hate crimes contexts, bullying is not more or less prohibited based on the motive of the actor. No legal consequences turn on the bully’s state of mind.
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p>The rationale for enumerated categories was to make sure that certain groups weren’t left out of the bill’s protections, and that training covered issues surrounding groups at heightened risk. LGBT advocacy orgs will monitor implementation in the unlikely event some think a clear-cut objective definition of bullying doesn’t protect gay and transgender students. And training is required to be comprehensive.
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p>All in all, Chairman Walz made a compelling case for her definition, and advocates from the 50+ groups in the ADL-led coalition are satisfied.
The “inclusive definition” of bullying (with no need to prove intent, hence purportedly no need for enumeration) is a law-enforcement perspective. It’s not the mindset of those who do anti-bullying prevention and training work in schools, such as PFLAG, GLSEN and the FEC. These groups know that prevention programs only work if you talk openly about what can make kids targets, and that some types of targets, because of social stigma and disinclination of school personnel to intervene, need to be called out for protection, or – research shows this – it doesn’t happen. Those who do school-based anti-bullying work are not impressed with this bill.
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p>It is also clear from the direct reports I received from legislators, staff, and advocacy group leaders involved in this process, that a key motivation of legislators, abetted by certain of the advocacy groups (let’s just say I will not be in a hurry to write a check to MassEquality or the MGPLC anytime soon) was to avoid a “divisive” conversation about protected groups. These “courageous” leaders didn’t want to say “gay”. They don’t deserve a big attaboy for that, nor do the advocates who pandered to that motivation. Effective bullying prevention programs need to educate about who gets targeted. Effective laws need enumeration.
we should all hold a moment of silence.
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p>Our society has reached a point where we are dealing with 5th graders as criminals, and passing laws to stop them.
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p>Something is really really wrong with all of this. I guess its good(?) that this passed, but uhm, why did it need to get passed in the first place? When I bullied someone in elementary school, I got pulled aside by a teacher and was shamed into apologizing and never doing it again.
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p>Because I was raised to have shame. Woe be to the Union.
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p>/rant.
How to respond, not criminalizing 5th graders.
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p>Sheesh.
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p>I think the bill fails by not enumerating, and the unanimous votes in the House and Senate provide evidence that the content was watered down to the point where it challenged no one, but criminalizing 5th graders is not the bill’s problem.
because you can have the best teachers in the world, but if you bully a kid into killing himself then mom and dad fucked up somewhere in your rearing. Pardon my language, but it’s absolutely bullshit that we didn’t drag the parents of those kids into court and made them explain to a judge how they failed to raise their children with THAT MUCH of a lack of empathy. “things are different now though!” whatever. Take the computer and phones away. Tell jimmy and jenny to deal with it.
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p>I’m not so opposed to the actual law but rather the situation in which we put ourselves where we even NEEDED to pass this law.
that you’re going to have your Representative introduce, which will criminalize bad parenting, and set standards to judge said parenting. Perhaps you’ll also require training, examination, and licensing of prospective parents. If you do, I am curious as to what measures you favor when such parents fail some aspect of those requirements.
Reading online comments on recent Globe articles, it’s clear that some people think it is indeed a rite of passage and that depriving kids of going through it robs them of learning how to stand up for themselves. That’s like saying that wearing bulletproof vests deprives cops of learning how to heal from gunshot wounds or that vaccinations deprive us of learning how to heal from smallpox, polio, mumps and measles. Duh.
On the other hand, a list of things on another thread that this law would require seemed to be a lot of, “We need a law to tell them that?” in my mind.
I think the whole reason for it is that people just don’t do the kinds of prevention and intervention around bullying that should be common sense. Reasons for the latter include the pernicious “rite of passage” culture, not having the skills to deal with it and also that school administrators and staff are extremely busy with many demands on their time and resources. The law will force them to pay attention to it. Once this is incorporated into the school culture, maintaining an anti-bullying ethos should become progressively easier and much grief, damage and silent suffering will be avoided.