National Bullying Prevention Month Comes To Wayne Schools

WAYNE, NJ -With National Bullying Prevention Month underway, local students are being reminded of the importance of respecting themselves and others.

To kick off the month, the first full week of October has been designated as a “Week of Respect,” during which schools put together lessons that address intimidation and harassment in order to make kids more aware of the causes and effects of bullying.

Under the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights, schools in New Jersey have some of the toughest bully prevention regulations in the country. In 2011, the state updated the law to protect all students and to include cyberbullying, as well as incidents that occur off school grounds.

The law requires schools to have concrete plans that outline how it will address bullying, how long administrators have to investigate reports of bullying and for teachers and administrators to be trained on how to recognize and respond to bullying.

By law, schools must address instances of harassment, intimidation and bullying (known as HIB incidents) and they must be reported to the state, along with detailed information about each school’s bullying statistics. Those numbers are made available to the public through the state department of education.

Click here to access your school district’s overall performance report.

According to the most recent data, which is for the 2017-18 school year, HIB incidents continue to rise in the Garden State, from 6,419 to 7,522 with students who are Asian, black, female or have disabilities being the most likely to be targeted.

In Wayne, the PK-12 district of 8,002 students reported 39 confirmed HIB incidents for the 2017-18 school year.

• Race-related: 6
• Religion-related: 3
• Ancestry-related: 2
• Gender-related: 8
• Sexual orientation-related: 5
• Disability-related: 2
• Other: 13

Proactive Approach

However, the law also requires schools to take a proactive approach to bullying by having an anti-bullying specialist and school safety team tasked with making the campus climate a safe and welcoming one for all students.

It’s not only up to staff and teachers, though.

In Wayne, the district's harassment, intimidation and bullying policy encourages students to support their peers who:

• Walk away from acts of harassment, intimidation and bullying when they see them.
• Constructively attempt to stop acts of harassment, intimidation or bullying
• Provide support to students who have been subjected to harassment, intimidation or bullying
• Report acts of harassment, intimidation and bullying to a designated staff member.

The problem of bullying isn't isolated to just New Jersey.

National statistics vary, but an aggregate of 80 different studies on bullying suggests one in five American students between 12 and 18 is bullied at some point during their middle or high school years.

Traditional bullying — name calling, public humiliation, isolation, physical violence and that sort of thing — occurs most often, with 35 percent of kids reporting they've been targeted in one of those ways.

The studies cited by the PACER Center, which established National Bullying Prevention Month, show that 15 percent of kids surveyed report being cyberbullied.

Among the marquee National Bullying Prevention Month activities is Unity Day, observed on Wednesday, Oct. 24, when everyone is encouraged to wear and show orange to send a message that no child should ever experience bullying.

"Orange provides a powerful, visually compelling expression of solidarity," Paula Goldberg, the executive director of the PACER Center, said in a statement. "Whether it's hundreds of individuals at a school wearing orange, store owners offering orange products or a community changing a landmark to orange, the vibrant statement becomes a conversation starter, sending the supportive, universal message that bullying is never acceptable behavior."

And while New Jersey's Anti-Bullying Bill Of Rights is one of the strictest anti-bullying laws in the nation, we could soon see the laws become even more stringent.

"Mallory's Law,"which aims to strengthen the current laws by forcing parental involvement, was recently approved unanimously by the State Senate.

Under the new bill, parents could face civil liabilities if they show "blatant disregard of supervising their child, [or] if their child has been judged to be delinquent of harassment or cyber harassment," a press release says, and parents would be subject to anti-bullying education classes.

With reporting by Deb Belt and Katie Kausch, Patch Staff

Numbers To Know

• In the next 7 minutes, a child in the U.S. will be bullied, however only four in 100 adults will intervene. And 85% of the child’s peers will do nothing, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System.
• 19% of students in grades nine through 12 said they were bullied on school property, while nearly 15% of students surveyed said they were cyberbullied.
• Nine out of 10 LGBTQ students experience harassment at school and online, according to STOMP Out Bullying.
• 5.4 million students stay home on any given day because they’re afraid of being bullied, STOMP Out found.
• Depending on the age group, up to 43% of students have been bullied while online. One in 4 have had it happen more than once, according to STOMP Out Bullying.

THE MENACE OF BULLIES: PATCH ADVOCACY REPORTING PROJECT

As part of a national reporting project, Patch has been looking at society's roles and responsibilities in bullying.

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