State's Tough New Anti-Bullying Legislation isn't Just for Kids

While all the focus has been on incidents between students, New Jersey’s new anti-bullying law has a little-known flipside: It also applies to how adults treat children.

A new legal decision by state Education Commissioner Chris Cerf and at least two recent tenure cases invoked the new Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights in seeking disciplinary actions against teachers. In the two tenure cases, school districts accused teachers of bullying students, as defined under the law. It turned out that the allegations were not deciding factors in either case.

(At the beginning of August), Cerf reversed an administrative law ruling and demanded that a Cumberland County school district show that it had followed the law’s strict requirements for investigating a family’s complaint that a teacher had bullied their child. The fact that teachers are covered under the law is not new. 

The prime Assembly sponsor of the law said it was never her intent for the law to apply only to student-on-student bullying. The state’s guidelines issued to districts also clearly state that staff-on-student bullying will be treated the same as student-on-student incidents. Staff-on-staff bullying is not covered by the law.

“Certainly our primary focus in the beginning was on student bullying,” said state Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle (D-Bergen). “It’s why we wrote the law.”

Read more at NJSpotlight.com

NJ Spotlight is an issue-driven news website that provides critical insight to New Jersey’s communities and businesses. It is non-partisan, independent, policy-centered and community-minded.