State officials have their first look at how recent anti-bullying legislation is working in schools.
A report released by Lt. Governor Matt Denn (D) and Attorney General Beau Biden (D) assess how well Delaware's public schools are implementing laws passed in 2012 seeking to lessen the serious impact of bullying on students.
One of the two pieces of legislation required the state’s public and charter schools to adopt the state’s uniform cyberbullying policy, and also required those schools to notify students and parents of the policy itself, and of specific sites where content would be considered public.
The Delaware Department of Education policy outlines the rules, definitions and regulations of the recently emergent behavior that has grown along with the rise of information technology and social media use. And Denn said that rise has changed bullying in a number of ways that make it much more difficult to deal with.
“It’s made it seem easier to kids to do it because you're not staring your victim in their face,” said Denn, “people tend to be a little bit more bold when they’re at home on the computer. And it spreads more quickly and stays around longer. In the old days a playground incident was a playground incident. Now something goes up on Facebook or Twitter, everyone sees it, and it doesn't really come down once it’s up."
The report found that two public school districts – Polytech and Sussex Vo-Tech - have not fully adopted the policy, though Polytech took immediate steps to address their compliance. The reports notes two other districts, Seaford and Woodbridge, adopted the rules, but offer information on how they made students aware of the new policies. And among Delaware's charter schools, at the time information was being gathered for the report, twelve did not appear to be conforming with the DOE standards.
The other law passed in 2012 made several changes to the state’s bullying law, most notably requiring all public district and charter schools report all incidents of bullying to the Department of Education, whether proven true or not; and also allowed for random audits by the DOE to ensure that reports of incidents were being made to the state and to parents, which the Lt. Governor says is not just an issue of legal requirements.
"If you really want to deal with the problem, then the parents have to know about it, have to be involved,” Denn stated. “And nobody, in my opinion, can have more of an impact on a kid who's misbehaving in school than the parents who are dealing with it at home. But if they don't know what's happening, then they can't do that."
But while some schools are cooperating, others are reticent with their reporting, to which Deputy Attorney General Patricia Daily Lewis said her office is going to be more vigilant in ensuring that schools get with the program.
"How do we expect our children to abide by school rules and regulations when the school is violating the law?” Daily Lewis asked. “The law is not complicated; part of the law has been the law for the longest time. They just didn't have anybody looking over their shoulder making sure they complied, which is why we had to change the law.”
Schools are also being required to prominently place contact information for the Attorney General’s ombudsman to assist parents and students unsatisfied with a school’s incident resolution. And again, while public schools seem to adhering to the regulation, charter schools once again, are lagging behind, as fewer than half showed compliance.
The final result of the legislation requires schools to report identifiable reasons for incidents to determine if any particular student groups were being inordinately targeted by bullies.
While over half of the 713 incidents reported in 2012-2013 listed "no reason" or "other" as an underlying cause, 57% of the remainder cited "physical appearance", with the next-most identified motivation being "disability", which came in at just under ten percent.
Nevertheless, Denn believes that ultimately the schools where anti-bullying efforts work best are the ones “where students take the lead, where they create the environment where they don't tolerate bullying from other kids, where they make a real explicit effort to include kids who are different from them.”
“If they make space at the lunch table,” he continued, “or include kids in a conversation, you'd be amazed how very, very small things like that that don't require a lot of effort by the kids change the culture of the school, and schools like Springer where that's encouraged and where it happens, it has an impact.”
Speaking at Springer Middle School, well known for their school-wide anti-bullying culture, Brandywine School District Superintendent Mark Holodick says most schools are working to deal with bullying effectively when it occurs, while trying to foster an environment of zero-tolerance.
“You can create a school climate where bullying is frowned upon and students, when they see it occurring, are willing and ready to be courageous and step up,” Holodick insisted. “And we know that’s difficult at any age, let alone in middle school.”
Yet that is exactly what the BARK (Best effort/Academic achievement/Respect for others/Kind gestures) Builders, a peer group at Springer Middle, advocates.
8th grader and BARK Builder Barry McGuiness says a healthy learning atmosphere is a right that all students deserve.
"We want a good environment,” McGuiness said. “We want people to have a good future, and having a good future isn't feeling bad about yourself at all."
