The law should be amended to include a non-inclusive list of categories of students who are at a disproportionate risk of being bullied. The inclusion of this language would reflect a greater focus on bullying prevention by acknowledging the fact that certain students with actual or perceived differences are more at risk. According to the 2009 national climate survey by the Gay and Lesbian Straight Education Network, more than 84.6 percent of the almost 10,000 students surveyed stated that they had been verbally harassed at school because of their sexual orientation.
Put safeguards in place so students aren’t inadvertently outed
The coming out process for LGBT students is very individual and personal. Though students may be out to friends and peers at school, they may not be out to their family. Parents should be notified when a student has been bullied based on sexual orientation or gender identity or expression, but a student’s privacy interests also should be taken into consideration. Revealing a student’s status to his/her parent/guardian may put that student at risk within the home environment. Research has shown that youth who experience rejection by their families when they reveal their sexual orientation are more than eight times as likely to have attempted suicide and nearly six times as vulnerable to severe depression as those whose parents respond positively. The consequences of familial rejection are at cross purposes with the intent of the Commonwealth’s anti-bullying protections, and great care is required to determine when parent notification is safe and appropriate.
Fund the program
As it stands, the state’s anti-bullying law is an unfunded mandate on the Commonwealth’s cities and towns, which are currently struggling with tightened municipal budgets. The statute requires that the anti-bullying plan include an important provision for ongoing professional development to build the skills of all staff members in combating bullying, and it requires a robust list of what should be included in the professional development offerings for each district. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has put forth $1 million to help school districts fund this professional development work until June of 2011. But once this funding is depleted, there are no monies attached to the legislation to help school districts pay for professional development. A bullying prevention fund needs to be created that would pay for school districts’ professional development programs for teachers and staff.
Measure results and make improvements
The statute requires periodic review school districts to determine whether they are in compliance with this act. However, the legislation is not specific as to what this evaluation will entail. The statute should be amended to be more specific about how school districts will be evaluated. For example, the legislation could require the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to develop survey instruments for distribution to a variety of stakeholders including students, parents, administrators, staff, and other experts to gauge how effective the plan is in the anti-bullying efforts of that particular school district.
With these changes, the Commonwealth’s commitment to ending bullying in our schools would be enormously strengthened.
This post was adapted from testimony given by Carly Burton, MassEquality’s Director of Public Policy and Political Affairs, at a February 17 public hearing held by Attorney General Martha Coakley’s Commission on Bullying Prevention.
Our schools are inadaquately prepared for emergency incidents and while the bullying legislation is a step forward, what about school violence prevention and response; natural and man-made hazard mitigation; abuse prevention, safety improvements and proper design, etc. We are clearly way behind and, similar to what was mentioned above, schools do not have the resources to address the various school safety issues.
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p>Representative Kate Hogan has filed legislation that requires DOE and EOPSS to create regional school safety councils that would be a valuable technical resource to school districts that want to design safe schools from the beginning and implement measures to address a variety of hazards, emergencies and incidents.
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p>The bullying plans can’t just sit on the shelf, it must be an active document. In addition having comprehensive safe school plans must be a priority because to date, we have been lucky here in MA. Lets identify the safety issues at our schools, whether it’s the bully, the easily accessible schools we have, sexual and physical abuse incidents, weather related disasters, man made safety hazards (ever see how we design the roads and parking lots that our most inexperienced drivers are using at schools?), etc. and provide a resource for schools to implement safety measures to address these.
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p>Rep Hogan legislation creates this technical resources that will be a valuable tool for schools.(has not come out of clerks office yet but entitled An Act Relative to the Protection of School Children)
Bullying is just plain wrong and should be handled with the same seriousness against the aggressor and compassion for the victim regardless of the target, perpatrator, or “reason” of bullying.