Eradicating Bullying within Santa Clara County Schools

Bullying is not a new topic. It’s not a new phenomenon. When Campbell Patch drove out to local parks a month ago and did a quick survey of , all said they had been bullied as a child and that it was one of their top concerns for their own children. Some even went as far as saying those years of childhood trauma has followed them into adulthood.

Decades ago, “sticks and stones” was popular saying to explain away this behavior, but bullying’s consequences have changed, morphed into something more fatal. Throughout the nation's school districts, teachers and parents are trying to find ways to curb, if not erase, bullying.

"The Moreland administrators take bullying seriously," says Destiny Ortega, director of student services for Moreland School District. "They believe that all students have the right to an education in a safe environment, and their actions support this belief. If bullying is brought to their attention, they take the steps necessary to address it."

These include interviewing the students involved, contacting parents so everyone is made aware of the situation and taking action such as establishing anti-bullying contracts or implementing progressive discipline measures. Administrators then follow up on these conversations to ensure that their actions have resulted in terminating the bullying behavior. This includes checking in with students, parents and teachers, Ortega says.

Joseph Di Salvo, Santa Clara County Office of Education board president, says he thinks he knows how to solve the bullying problem throughout the county and has created a new Advisory Committee on Bullying with a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender focus.

“These kids feel like no one really has their back,” Di Salvo says. “They believe their teachers wouldn’t understand, that administration wouldn’t understand. When children deal with sexual orientation at an early age, it’s imperative to allow them to talk it through with an adult.”

Di Salvo, who worked as a principal at Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School in Palo Alto for 20 years, met with various people he thought would work best in this new committee and considered John Lindner, a Franklin-McKinley School District board member and Oak Grove School District teacher, a perfect fit.

“He is the only ‘out’ member of school boards in Santa Clara County that we know of,” Di Salvo says. “He’s a gay educator.”

The goal of this new advisory committee is to come up with "outside the box" recommendations for things that the county can do, including the formation of Gay/Straight Alliance clubs on school campuses to help eradicate or at least reduce bullying.

"It’s important that the county take a collective stand against bullying," Ortega says. "By creating such an advisory committee, districts can come together to identify ways to effectively address this problem and thus create safer schools for all of our students."

As for the end-result of the committee's recent formation, Di Salvo says it could eventually translate into the creation of a pilot project at one of the campuses and professional development of its educators and administrators.

“I know it’s going to be very controversial, but I think that we need to approach it,” he says.

Several high-profile, bully-related suicides in the county in 2010 brought this ugly side of campus life to the spotlight.

"We had three, four, five suicides that were bullying-related last year, but it's always fleeting," Di Salvo says. "People talk about it and then it goes away. We as a county board of education need to see what this advisory counsel can do."

Several programs are already in place to help curb bullying, including Project Corner Stone, Peace Builders and PBIS, but Di Salvo says more needs to be done.

"Just to have environments free of this kind of bias and prejudice and hateful and hurtful behavior is important," he says.

Di Salvo also notes that litigation that costs school district in the millions over lawsuits, like the 1999 Morgan Hill case, can be avoided if parents and educators are made aware of the laws surrounding bullying, including a new bill proposed Feb. 17 that aims at bullying of LGBT students at the college level. He also notes that the No. 1 reason for students staying home from school is bullying, which also translates into a revenue loss connected to daily attendance.

“Having lived in a school environment most of my life, words do hurt, and the old adage of 'sticks and stones' are just not true and needs to be tossed out the door,” he says. “Words are very hurtful.”

The committee is due to go back to the board with recommendations the third Wednesday of April.