Education
District casting a wide net to address bullying in schools
When it comes to combatting bullying in schools, it takes everybody: students, administrators, teachers, parents, counselors, school staff and bus drivers.
“It’s not just one person. Regardless of your credentials you cannot do it by yourself,” said Lonnie Stuckey, the director of safety and risk management for the Georgetown County School District. “It has to be complete buy-in by everybody.”
Stuckey knows something about dealing with bullying. In 2018, he completed Clemson University’s Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, which focuses on long-term changes in school environments to decrease bullying and anti-social behavior and improve peer relations.
“To reduce bullying it is important to change the climate of the school and the social norms with regard to bullying,” Stuckey said.
Once a year the district surveys students about bullying.
“It gives the administration a blueprint from the kids’ perspective about how they feel about bullying in that particular school,” Stuckey said, and helps administrators form a plan of action.
Making sure the entire staff is on board is a key component, Stuckey said. You can’t have one teacher who doesn’t allow bullying and another teacher who does allow it.
“That defeats the whole purpose,” he added.
Many administrators have told Stuckey that a lot of issues inside a school start with something that happened outside of school.
“There’s only so much you can do about the community,” he said.
Knowing the definition of bullying is important.
“There’s a lot of unwanted behavior, but I tell people all the time, every unwanted behavior issue is not a bullying issue,” Stuckey said. “I think that a lot of people don’t really understand the definition of bullying.”
The Olweus program defines bullying as when someone repeatedly and on purpose says or does mean or hurtful things to another person who has a hard time defending himself or herself. There are three components to bullying: aggressive behavior that involves unwanted, negative actions; a pattern of behavior repeated over time; an imbalance of power or strength.
People need to be educated about the difference between bullying, horseplay or boys being boys and girls being girls, Stuckey said. That’s where an investigation comes in.
“That’s what I’m a real stickler about the investigation. You have to do the investigation and it has to be done right,” Stuckey said. “I think between the administrators and the resource officers, the investigations are pretty thorough.”
If an investigation proves that a student has been bullying another student, punitive action is only part of the process.
“Our goal is also behavior modification as well,” Federick Cohens, the district’s executive director for elementary schools, told the school board. “We need to address the root causes of why someone is actually bullying and when that bullying happens how can we help that person – the aggressor – change their ways and become a better person.”
The parents of a child who is proven to have been involved in bullying have to sign off on any punitive action and sometimes they won’t because they fear their child will be labeled, Cohens added.
There are also parents who don’t believe their child is a bully, no matter what a district investigation finds.
“The only thing I can do is try to stay as transparent with you as possible,” Stuckey said. “I can’t change your ways, your views or your ideas. But I can still communicate with you. That’s the only thing I can do.”
Options for parents include taking the child to a counselor, whether inside the school or outside, and working on being a better parent.
“Whatever it takes to turn the narrative to the positive,” Stuckey said.
