Harassment, Hazing, and Bullying Prevention Advisory Council to Hold Second Meeting
The Commissioner’s Harassment, Hazing, and Bullying Prevention advisory council will hold its second meeting on Wednesday, October 24, 2012 from 1 – 4pm in the UVM Room at the Howard Dean Center, 307 South Street, Springfield VT. This meeting is open to the public.
The council will work on developing process and outcome goals and action steps for the top three priority issues: pre-service and in-service training for staff as well as training for students and parents; student leadership programs that support anti-bullying, anti-harassment efforts; and improving data collection systems for reporting incidents of bullying, hazing, and harassment.
Information about the Commissioner’s Harassment, Hazing, and Bullying Prevention Advisory Council is available online: http://education.vermont.gov/new/html/council_bullying.html.
For more information, contact Tracey Tsugawa, Council Chair, at (802) 828-2493 or tracey.tsugawa@state.vt.us.
Source: Vermont Department of Education
Source: Vermont Department of Education
they should offer a private class for the local municipal leaders and do goooders.
ReplyDeleteSounds like more do-gooders with too much time on their hands.
ReplyDeleteThere's often a compelling reason bulling occurs. Our schools now condone and even encourage overt, queer and bizarre behavior under the guise of personal expression. This, exhibitionist,in-your-face behavior is offensive to those who exercise a measure of decorum in public.
Most of us were taught early on, show others respect by assuming a manner of modesty, behavior, dress, and expressed values and you'll make friends where ever you travel in the world. Act like a freak and you'll be treated as such.
The schools need to follow their policies for EVERY child, not just the normal children who are already ready and willing to learn. Children who have behavioral issues need to be held accountable for the harm that they inflict on other children. Those children who consistently disrupt the classroom and emotional lives of others do not have more of a right to a "free and appropriate education" than any other child in that school. Favoritism to those disruptive children is rampant, fed by the reluctance of our Special Ed Admin to realize how harmful bullying is in our school system. This is why she has no business being involved in investigations of bullying... she protects her "own" students at the expense of all others.
ReplyDeleteChildren deserve to have a bully-free zone that is safe and consistent at school. This should happen regardless of whether their parent is the type to advocate for them when other students threaten and harm them.
Staff should be held accountable for not reporting instances of bullying, physical aggression, threats and emotional harm that happen in front of them. This is is especially true of the "specials" teachers, many whom do not know how to manage a classroom. Children who are abusive need to separated from the main classrooms, otherwise the schools become a venue to normalize violence and fear.
Our children deserve a safe environment in which to learn. I hope that this meeting is a step in the right direction. If the district administration and staff cannot start taking this seriously, then we owe it to our children to hire people who can and will.
This is getting out of hand.... bullying has been around since before the first schools where created. It's all part of growing up... liberals...geeze...
ReplyDeleteDisrespecting anyone for any reason is not acceptable! Just because bullying has been around since the dawn of time does not make it right. It is attitudes like yours anonymous 7:39/8:37 that are making our society dysfunctional. We should be teaching our children tolerance of others beliefs and lifestyles. We do not have to agree with those beliefs or lifestyles, but to teach a child to disrespect or even cause harm to another person just because they are not like you is repulsing. I find your ideology to be on the same level as an extremist muslim who blows himself up or even a christian who blows up an abortion clinic because he doesn't agree with it. Intolerance is never a good thing!
Delete@8:37am...It was also acceptable to own slaves and for women to be second class citizens. I think it is time you start living in the present not the past. Too many people like you in Springfield want to bury their head and pretend that it is 1950 still. A good example is the drug and gang issues. You all pretended and made excuses (including your schools and police) that it wasn't a problem and you declared it wasn't happening. NOW LOOK at what you created and contributed to with you denial. Get over yourself and look around at the world. Look at your taxes which are going up yearly (some of the highest in New England) because your town and people like you keep "pretending" there isn't an issue with whatever the problem is. So far that attitude had gotten you a burnout town with a fading grand list and delapidated old eyesore buildings whose only employers are the government ie the schools, state agencies, town offices and services, a prison and a hospital system. GOOD JOB. Better yet try to sell your house...you cant and your children wont be able to either when your time comes.
DeleteSo this has nothing to do with the GREAT RESSSION we are in, or our town becoming a "prison town". That was voted in knowing this would be the outcome.
DeleteThis does have the potential to get out of hand. I can remember being bullied all through school, and while I think the school could have intervened to stop some of it -- I am not sure that forcing teachers into making judgment calls on a minute by minute basis as to whether something constitutes bullying or whether someone has or has not crossed the line into harassment is necessarily the way to go. I never thought highly of tattle taling or parents who were constantly whining that their kids were being abused -- sometimes the kids whose parents are constantly screaming abuse of their kids, have the most abusive kids in the system. Time to get over it -- if they are being physically harmed that is another thing, but this has the potential to just create another nightmare for the schools to deal with. Then of course when they struggle to deal with all of this stuff we complain they cost too much money and vote down there budgets.
Delete"Mommy, Billy called me fat"
ReplyDelete"Not to worry son, we'll just call the police and have Billy arrested"
and posted on facebook
DeleteBack in '79 or so, Pat Graves had a particularly bad class of third graders. She completed the year by having half of them held back. Quite a few of them became the Big Boys gang, up in the then-deteriorating Westview. They committed no small number of crimes, including burgling my establishment-- twice. My son made it a point to wear his "lucky sweater" to school for protection from those classmates; evidently it kept him off their radar.
ReplyDeleteWe have to remember that public schools are obliged to take all students, and that in any public school, "all students" means "with all their baggage."
Forty percent of kids in any public school classroom have a family member with an alcohol problem. Readers might remember the stats I pulled up about what alcohol does to a society. Half the kids in that classroom most likely are not in contact with their biological father, and between one-fifth and one-quarter are from a single-mother (never married, or divorced) household.
Scratch a bully, find underneath a child with problems he deals with by acting out, which was certainly the case with the Big Boys. To change him is possible, but we have to commit the resources to do that. Schools can do that, but we have to equip them. If we don't do that, then whom will we empower to do so?
If the problems are not dealt with, they will in sixty percent or so of the cases develop into adults who will repeat the behaviors their parents engaged in, producing the bully in the next generation.
It's not a simple problem, and the question is whether we have sufficient resolve to change things the way we want to.
so what pat did wasnt bullying? when you abuse power its called bullying. she got them didnt she. funny how when you support something its ok.
Delete?????????
DeleteEarth to Chuck: Now hear this, schools are not social service agencies. Maybe if you do gooders would advocate directing school resources on enhanced math & science for students that want to learn, we'd see something positive produced for a change. That is all.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, it's called "the social fabric" for a reason. You can't pick or poke one part of it without sending ripples through the whole thing. Schools have a very, very strong social component.
DeleteWhat good is it to have former students be munificently employed in the fields of math and science if they have to build around their middle-class home a wall topped with shards of glass? I suggest you read the first five pages of chapter 2 of "The Fatal Shore" to see what happens when you sacrifice public education for individual excellence. It wasn't pretty then, and it isn't pretty now.
Whoahhh Chuck.... what's with the socialism reference?
Deleteyou all should attend
ReplyDeletePublic schools are obligated to take all students that is true, however schools are not obligated to keep students who bully or are violent. In most notable public schools those students are expelled after one or two incidents. Then the burden falls on the parent as it should. Harsh maybe but that is one aspect. The second problem is that we have administrators who favor certain children because their parent is a staff member, a policeman, a neighbor, a coach etc etc. Once that starts to happen you have problems. Because the bully becomes the untouchable by administrative standards. What a shame this isn't being advertised by the PTA, what a shame that every parent that came out over the Elm Hill issue or the gang issues at the select board will more than likely be visably absent. Don't complain if you are not going to be part of the change that can happen. It takes effort on each families part. And there is great strength in numbers in this town. Come out and voice that opinion. If not shame on you and you will get what you deserve then.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, those expelled and suspended students DON'T become the burden of the parents; their parents had a lot to do with making them the children they are. They become the rootless idle, with nothing more to do than what the impulse of the moment dictates. If the community does not have an alternative plan to deal with them, they usually make even more trouble. Springfield, by the way, does have an alternative plan in effect.
DeleteYou make a good point about "Lead, follow or get out of the way" on this issue.
Words that have been so over used by the liberal media that they lack any sort of meaning and are open to interpretation: Hero, Bully, Diva, Racist.
ReplyDeleteand anonymous
DeleteOh, yeah!
DeleteIn response to Chuck Gregory: I have blogged before about being a single parent (divorced) whose children had no contact with their biological father. They all turned out
ReplyDeleteto be great adults. I did not expect the school system to raise them and teach them common sense or manners. They were not then, or are they now, bullies nor are their children. I might not have been financially rich, worked in the school system, had a policeman, neighbor or coach who favored my children, I just made them responsible for their actions...in school and out. Everything in my childrens life was against them (percentage wise, Chuck) yet they came out on top.
wow.... your kids are perfect!
Deleteask them to run for the Selectboard and get rid of the weasels that pollute our town with bullying
this blogspot needs therapy
ReplyDeleteLisa, no not perfect but not in jail or on probation or on parole.
ReplyDeleteAnd even if they lived in Springfield...our selectboard would be too
corrupt for them to be involved with.
You know what is funny about all of this? My son is VERY small compared to other kids in his class. I have RAISED him (I know weird concept) to ignore people who call him names and pick on him.
ReplyDeleteWe don't call the police everytime someone picks on him. He handles it. He either ignores the kid or eventually he will deal with it. He has friends from sports that he can turn to if he needs to talk or whatever. I'm not saying to fight but to protect in case a bully takes it too far.
The next thing I see wrong with this picture is that people expect to drop their kids off at school and have the teachers raise them.
Try having a family meal where everyone in the family sits down together and has dinner. Make a family meeting out of it. Ask your kids questions, include them in conversations about issues at home or work. Have them decide what the next dinner should be. Have them do chores around the house (so they feel like part of it) and expect them to do it.
Suggest they join sports or boy/girl scouts (or both!)Then GO SUPPORT THEM at games or camp!!! Coaches are not there to raise your child either. They help teach teamwork and promote physical fitness.
Being a parent isn't always easy but you need to remember you are a parent first and a friend to them second. It doesnt mean you love them any less if you take their Xbox away for disobeying you.
I got beat up all my life, moved to Springfield where the Adults beat up new comers...
DeleteLet the kids fight.
Raise people worthy of leading the Union.
I tend to agree with Parent. I am not sure that it makes sense to bubble-wrap these kids. One, all these rules eventually become a trap whereby we wind up losing otherwise great teachers because they get caught up in someone's idea that they should have reported something or someone or whatever. Two, once they get out of school they aren't going to be bubble wrapped and mommy and daddy aren't going to be able to pick them up everytime somebody does or says something unkind, insensitive, and rude to them. Society requires a little bit of tough skin and kids develop that tough skin in school, or at least they used to. This is simply not something that really deserves the amount of time and money being spent -- if there is physical violence involved, okay -- but otherwise get over it.
Delete