School board reviewing bullying policies and procedures

Working on disconnect with definitions and communication

By Kendra Walker

The Gunnison Watershed School District school board is reviewing the district’s bullying prevention practices and looking at how to better understand, manage and communicate its bullying policies and prevention work. During the December 16 school board meeting, superintendent Leslie Nichols shared the first of three presentations about bullying prevention work and how the district manages incidents. Board members shared feedback that some parents feel the district isn’t taking bullying incidents as seriously as they would like.

This first presentation focused on a high-level view of the district’s bullying policies and restorative practices. “We aim to create safe schools that are welcoming, and kids feel like they belong,” Nichols said. 

Nichols noted that many of the district’s policies tie into bullying prevention and restorative practices, including policies on bullying prevention and education, the code of conduct, nondiscrimination/equal opportunity and suspension/expulsion of students and other disciplinary interventions. 

Using those district and state policies, Nichols explained how the district defines bullying: someone is being hurt on purpose, it’s repetitive and there is an imbalance of power. 

She noted that bullying is often misused to describe acts of teasing, conflict or mean moments. “The actual act of bullying is quite rare,” she said. “One of the more important parts around bullying is trying to land clear definition of what’s going on. A legitimate act of bullying requires quite a number of elements to be present. Frequently, a kid will go to their teacher and say they are being bullied, but we have to break it down and examine; was that something that happened just today, had it happened before, maybe it’s a mean moment, someone was hurt on purpose, maybe it’s true conflict.”

She clarified, “It’s not that bullying never happens, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that it’s become a word that our society and culture and among our kids is used frequently and has lost some of its core meaning. That doesn’t mean that we don’t still have the conversation about what happened and what we’re going to do about it anytime a kid says they were bullied or saw someone being bullied.”

Nichols explained that the district submits annual disciplinary data to the Colorado Department of Education, which includes discipline events that result in suspensions or expulsions. Last year, the district reported 104 actions for suspension, however, those are not directly tied to bullying incidents. That data is publicly available at www.cde.state.co.us/code/districtprofilereports. 

She also shared stats from the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, which are gathered every two years. For GWSD at the middle school level, 29.3% said they were bullied on school property in the past 12 months, 14.9% said they were bullied electronically in the past 12 months and 25.5% said they were in a physical fight in the past 12 months. Overall, 88.2% reported feeling safe at school.

For high school, 16.2% said they were bullied on school property in the past 12 months, 9.4% said they were bullied electronically and 13.2% were in a physical fight in the past year. Overall, 92.6% reported feeling safe at school. 

The district uses restorative practices to handle incidents, including both preventative and responsive measures. Preventative measures build and maintain relationships to prevent conflict and harm, such as positive behavior programs like Titan Traits and Seek the Peak. Responsive measures are used to resolve conflict, repair relationships and manage difficulties, and have different levels and parameters for who on staff gets involved depending on the severity of an incident. 

Board discussion

Board member Mark VanderVeer pointed out that the district’s communication of bullying prevention and definition of bullying may be difficult for parents to understand. 

“I am feeling that this is arguing down the event to something that doesn’t qualify as bullying to cover our backs,” he said. “A parent is going to be so emotionally distraught over the event, they don’t want to hear it only happened once or is not bullying. What I hear from parents is that we’re not taking it seriously and just wordsmithing it down.”

“That’s a really helpful insight,” said Nichols. “Maybe there is a bit of a disconnect where our staff feels they respond to everything, so why is the board hearing that there’s so much bullying going on? Maybe that’s part of a disconnect that we really need to address.”

She continued, “There is no intention to minimize and say that bullying is not happening. These mean moments are very real, and we respond robustly to all of them. There are no moments that don’t get a response. But if we’re having different language than what a parent uses, then it feels like we’re not listening.”

VanderVeer noted that parents often perceive restorative practices to mean that the perpetrator is being protected, rather than their child who was harmed. 

Board president Tyler Martineau agreed. “The word ‘restorative’ implies a bias. It really appears to the parent that the focus is on the perpetrator.”

“I think restorative practices can work beautifully in a lot of different situations,” said board member Anne Brookhart. “The feedback I’m hearing from parents who are maybe mislabeling some mean moments as bullying is that there’s almost constant mean moments, especially at the middle school level, and that it feels like there’s a lack of consequences and maybe if there were stricter consequences there maybe wouldn’t be as many mean moments.”

Nichols understood the disconnect. “One of the things that’s tricky is we are super careful about not going into great detail about another person’s kids,” she said. “We’re hoping to improve that communication with parents because the idea that there are no consequences in restorative practices is a false impression and mistaken. Consequences are very real and do exist. What’s being restored is actually the relationship and the community. But I don’t disagree that it can give this impression that the system is more about the perpetrator than the victim, and that’s something we’ll need to reflect on. Maybe the language needs to be reconsidered.”

VanderVeer said parents are often less focused on the consequences and more concerned with what is being done to protect their child and prevent those incidents in the first place. “It’s emotional and as a parent, we immediately want to guarantee our child is protected.”

“Maybe we can find different ways to communicate,” said Nichols. “This is just the beginning, but I hope that established some of the basics.” Nichols plans to present additional data and information surrounding the district’s bullying prevention practices at the January 27 meeting and continue the conversation.