Month: February 2022

How Schools Can Address Bullying

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Amanda Verba, chief operations officer for the Ithaca City School District, urges school personnel to take measures when they see serious acts of discrimination, harassment, or bullying that may be violations of New York State’s Dignity for All Students Act.

Amanda Verba, chief operations officer, Ithaca City School District

Verba spoke at the 2022 United in Kindness Symposium, “What to Do About Cyberbullying,” on January 27 sponsored by the Tompkins County Bullying Prevention Task Force.

“When we see something, we have to do something, when it’s around the Dignity Act work,” Verba explained. “Kids do have an opportunity to work it out. When they run out of skills, when it really looks like it’s creating this threshold of harm, that’s when we need to say something. Everyone has a right to not just be welcomed, but to belong. We want to be in a community with one another.”

In a presentation titled “Creating Safe and Caring Schools via the Dignity Act,” Verba reviewed the purpose, definition, and operation of DASA, as the law is known.

The goal of DASA, she said, “is to create a safe and supportive school climate where students can learn and focus, rather than fear being discriminated against, harassed, or bullied.” She noted that the act took effect in 2012, and was amended in 2013 to include cyberbullying and again in 2018 to include gender identity and expression.

She said DASA protects against discrimination based on race, color, weight, national origin, ethnic group, religion, religious practice, disability, sexual orientation, sex, gender, and “other.”

Harassment is defined as the “creation of a hostile environment by conduct or by verbal and non-verbal threats, intimidation, or abuse,” she said. More specifically, she added, the behavior qualifies as harassment if it interferes with a student’s educational performance, opportunities, or benefits, or mental, emotional, and/or physical well being; causes fear for personal safety or may cause physical or emotional injury; or risks disruption of the school environment.

Bullying, Verba said, is defined as using an imbalance of power, involving the use of physical strength, popularity, or access to embarrassing information, to hurt or control another person; occurring or having the potential to occur more than once; with the intent to cause harm. Cyberbullying is simply bullying that occurs through any form of electronic communication, she said.

WATCH: “Dignity for All Students Act (DASA)”

Verba explained that under DASA school staff have a responsibility to provide instruction to students on civility, citizenship, and character to address the prohibition against harassment, discrimination, and bullying and cyberbullying. School staff must orally report incidents within one school day, and follow up with a written report within two school days, she added.

As for school administrators, they must provide students, staff, and families with information about DASA and how to contact the school’s DASA coordinator, Verba explained. She said administrators lead or supervise investigations into all reports of DASA violations.

A case rises to the level of a “material incident” that is reported to the state, Verba explained, if  it is a single or series of related incidents involving harassment, discrimination, or bullying that created a hostile environment to interfere with education, well being, or physical safety.

Verba acknowledged that school personnel sometimes grapple with the line between bullying by an aggressor against a victim, and conflict where all parties are affected. And, she added, there is a line between bullying and behavior that, though unfortunate and needs to be addressed, is rude or mean.

She said that when school personnel interpret incidents of rudeness or meanness as bullying, they may fail to give students the space to work out the issues on their own. “Many of us have done some self-reflection on that,” she said. “I probably called things or misdiagnosed things because of my urgency to make something right.”

Another struggle Verba described is when parents and school personnel disagree about the seriousness of an incident affecting their child. “Parents will respond often in a way of, ‘You don’t care about my child, you’re not going to do anything,’” Verba said. “It does not build the bridge of relationship and parent as partner.”

She stressed that it is important for schools to respect the lived experience of the child and parents. “I really need these parents as my partners,” she said. “If they’re telling me that this met the threshold of something that created a hostile environment for their young person, am I really going to tell them that they’re wrong?”

The 2022 United in Kindness Symposium was made possible in part through grants from the Tompkins County Youth Services Department and The Sophie Fund.

DOWNLOAD Dignity for All Students Act in Tompkins County

What Parents Can Do About Cyberbullying

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Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, advises Tompkins County parents to “take a deep breath” and consider the appropriate response when their child is a victim of cyberbullying.

Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center

Hinduja was the keynote speaker at the 2022 United in Kindness Symposium, “What to Do About Cyberbullying,” on January 27 sponsored by the Tompkins County Bullying Prevention Task Force.

“When your child is a target, stay calm, and make sure that they’re safe,” he said in a presentation titled “Addressing Cyberbullying and Unwise Social Media Use: The Role of Parents, Youth, and the Community.”

In cases of severe cyberbullying, he advised, parents should collect evidence, including taking screenshots of the offending behavior. Parents can contact their child’s school, but should be aware of constraints such as confidentiality rules and concerns about reputational liability.

“I know we want answers immediately, but give them time to do their investigation, to follow the rules,” he said. “They’re not going to be able to tell you how they discipline the aggressor after the investigation.”

Hinduja said that parents should resist any urge to vent about the bullying on social media. In severe cases, he added, parents can consider contacting the relevant social media platform or even the police.

Hinduja suggests options in which a bullied child can respond in empowering ways that promote agency, such as using the tools in social media apps to control who can see posts and who can comment on them. Kids can also be encouraged to memorize self-affirming phrases to keep in mind when they are feeling targeted.

WATCH: “Addressing Cyberbullying and Unwise Social Media Use: The Role of Parents, Youth, and the Community”

Research indicates that bullying is a problem that can seriously impact a child’s development, Hinduja said. He cited surveys where more than half of those who dealt with cyberbullying said it deeply affected their ability to learn and feel safe at school.

He cited a national survey of 9-12-year-olds where 51.7 percent of boys and 48 percent girls reported being bullied at school; and 14.8 percent of boys and 14.2 percent of girls reported being the targets of cyberbullying. Surveys of 13-17-year-olds indicated that cyberbullying is on the rise in that age group, with 16.7 percent reporting being a victim in 2016, 17.2 percent in 2019, and 23.2 percent in 2021.

Hinduja cautioned parents not to overreact if they discover that their child is being bullied “Many forms of bullying and cyberbullying are minor, they’re mild, they’re moderate, they’re not severe,” he said. “Most of it is mild name calling, insults, rumors, a mean-spirited comment, etc. We would want our children to understand that this is just part and parcel of life. You’re going to deal with it in the workforce with with co-workers.”

Hinduja advises parents not to get overwhelmed trying to learn about every digital platform their child may be using, but to stay focused on inculcating the family’s values for raising decent human beings with a moral compass.

When it comes to addressing a cyberbullying problem, he said, it is important for parents to know how to best communicate with their child and to foster resiliency and empathy in them.

For example, he cautioned against just telling a child to stay off a social media platform, or stay off their smart phone altogether. “That’s very dismissive,” he explained. “It trivializes what’s going on and it doesn’t help the problem. Youth move seamlessly from one realm to the other, offline, online. There’s no distinction, it’s just their life.”

Hinduja encourages parents to find ways to be involved in their child’s digital world in the way they may be fully involved in their offline lives. One example may be slowly engaging the child in non-judgmental discussions about social media use to learn about how they are living in that digital space for better and worse.

Hinduja stresses the importance of promoting resiliency and empathy in children, which can help young people put bullying behavior into perspective and lower the temperature of emotional responses. Children can learn to model resiliency through books and films, and he encourages parents to discuss the stories with them afterwards .

“For kids with the highest levels of resilience, when they were bullied it didn’t deeply affect them emotionally, it didn’t make them really struggle at school,” he said. “Whereas those with the lowest levels of resilience when they were bullied or cyberbullied, it wrecked them and they weren’t really able to function well at all in school. They struggled mightily when it comes to their emotions.”

Hinduja recommends that parents model good online and digital device behavior for their kids, and set up some household rules such as evening cut off times and linking phone use to school performance.

Task Force Co-Coordinator Bridgette Nugent said that the symposium was “an effort to not only bring awareness to the issue of bullying with a focus on cyberbullying but to hear from both national and local experts on strategies to put into practice whether you are a parent professional or a concerned community member.”

She cited a 2021 report indicating that 21 percent of Tompkins County middle school and high school students participating in a survey reported being bullied on school property and 21 percent reported being bullied bullied electronically via social media, texts, and emails. Only 37 percent of respondents reported that in general students treat each other with respect, she said.

The 2022 United in Kindness Symposium was made possible in part through grants from the Tompkins County Youth Services Department and The Sophie Fund.