Alan Mauldin
MOULTRIE — With the realignment of Colquitt County Schools this year the system has boosted its emphasis on bullying, along with a revamping of its Internet use policy to include a new section on cyber-bullying.
In 2008, 31.9 percent of students surveyed reported being bullied or bullying others, according to information the school system released to the state. The responses were from 1,589 students in grades six, eight, 10 and 12 who responded in the 2008 Georgia Student Health Survey.
For the previous school year 636 incidents of bullying, threatening or aggressive behavior were recorded in student discipline records, accounting for about 13 percent of total student discipline incidents, the system said.
Most of those disciplinary cases occurred in grades six through nine, which are “transition years” when students are moving to new schools, said Fritzie Sheumaker, the school system’s director of human resources with oversight of student services.
The system has specifically targeted those transition years but the anti-bullying effort is system-wide, she said. This year all school personnel received training in prevention of bullying.
“We’ve really been trying to put additional emphasis on bullying prevention,” Sheumaker said. “Every employee from bus drivers, cafeteria workers, teachers, everybody had to have an orientation for recognizing bullying and what to do when they see it. It’s not just a matter of teachers and administrators. Anybody can say ‘stop, don’t do that, it’s bullying.’”
Some school counselors also are getting additional bullying-prevention training this week from a nationally recognized group, the Owlets Bullying Prevention Program, Sheumaker said.
While the typical conception of bullying is physical violence or intimidation, it also can include such behavior as excluding someone from an activity, she said.
Among the other tactics the system has employed is having bus drivers talk with students who ride their buses. Administrators also have been on buses to stress the need for good behavior.
“I think part of it is just that, relationships that staff members form with the students, to know as many names as they can, building the social norm that’s against bullying,” Sheumaker said.
Anti-bullying posters are up in all schools, and school officials are telling students that reporting bullying is not “tattling.”
“We emphasize that part of our job is to keep you safe,” Sheumaker said. “We can’t know everything that goes on, so you need to report things when we need to get help for a student. The idea is to report things to keep someone from getting hurt.”
Sheumaker said that forms were sent home to all parents of elementary school students to educate the parents on the signs of bullying and encourage them to report those behaviors.
Depending on the circumstances of a case of bullying or other aggressive behavior, students can face disciplinary action ranging from a conference with parents to suspension or alternative school placement. In extreme cases it can lead to expulsion.
The Internet use policy presented this week to Colquitt County School Board includes a new section that requires providing instruction to students on the dangers of social networking sites and the characteristics of cyber-bullying and how to “appropriately respond” to that activity.
Social networking sites are blocked by filtering software in the schools, but Sheumaker said that many students have access to those sites, some of which have been used in bullying incidents, at home. Students also should not be able to access most private e-mail accounts from school but are allowed to have cell phones on campus.
“We really have to encourage parents to know what their children are doing on the Internet (at home) and check text messages,” Sheumaker said.
