Maybe it’s time to bully the schools a little. Or past time.

For years, we’ve given plenty of coverage to the various anti-bullying efforts in local school districts.

There have been initiatives and assemblies. There have been state grants and policies and revised policies. There have been PATHS (Providing Alternative THinking Strategies) and a host of other clever acronyms designed to nip little bullies in their budding aggression.

Why is it, then, that whenever a particular family goes public about their struggle, suddenly there are dozens of others who want to tell their own stories? Why do so many parents and students say their own school’s anti-bullying policies are just jokes?

Our recent story about an East Berlin family had barely been posted on our website when the reaction started. We heard stories from all over our area, from every school district.

But what most of these people wanted to share was not just stories about the bullies , but about school officials who didn’t do enough – or anything. Some parents even claimed they had to inform certain school administrators about the content of their own bullying policy.

And yet, when we talk to school officials, they cannot seem to say adamantly enough just how serious they are about the problem.

How can we explain that divide between what educators tell us and what parents experience? Are all those anti-bullying policies just window-dressing?

At a town-hall meeting last year at the Hanover YWCA, local educators talked about how hard it is to deal with bullying. But as always, each pointed to his or her own program and stressed how relentless they are in addressing bullying behavior.

Why, then, did our recent story draw comments like these?

– “I pulled my kid out because the school failed him.”

– “(A)ll the teachers do is have the bullies ‘flip their cards.'”

– “(I) haven’t gotten any straight answers on what the policy is there.”

– “My daughter received a written threat from a boy and nothing was done.”

– “I’ve been bullied in my homeroom since freshman year … Teachers see it every day and they don’t say a word. And when they do, and they take it to administration, the administration just gives (the offender) a ‘warning'”

And that’s just a sampling, folks.

Our recent story involved a fourth-grader whose parents withdrew her from Bermudian Springs School District in February and enrolled her in private school.

From kindergarten on, Mackenzie had been targeted, even injured, by her classmates. Repeated efforts by her parents didn’t seem to get much response from school administrators. (School officials refused to discuss the case with us, with the superintendent saying he wouldn’t comment even if the parents waived privacy restrictions.)

The parents said they had come to realize that the district’s policy has a major flaw: it contains escalating consequences for repeated bullying by one offender, but not much guidance at all for dealing with an ongoing pattern of bullying by various offenders.

The girl in this case, say her parents, is somewhat socially awkward, probably an effect of her autism.

Socially awkward. A bit of a misfit. Anyone who has ever attended school anywhere knows what that means. We all remember the kid who got picked on. We all remember the kid for whom every single day of school must have been pure and simple misery.

And we remember this, too – the teachers and principals also knew who those kids were.

A teacher knows which students are the misfits. A teacher knows which ones draw snickers and snide asides from the others. A teacher very often sees the foot that goes out to trip someone, or the “accidental” jostling that shoves someone into a wall.

Yes, bullies can be sneaky. But no teacher is so clueless that he or she doesn’t see which kid is constantly being ridiculed or harassed – or even assaulted.

We do believe that dealing with bullying is tough and time-consuming and probably never-ending. But when we see the kind of reaction our recent story drew, we find it very hard to believe the schools are doing everything they can do.

We also realize that no program or policy will ever stop bullying completely. As long as children congregate in groups, there will always be one or two who don’t quite fit in. And there will always be those who shore themselves up psychologically by tearing someone else down.

But instead of getting defensive with us and with every parent who wants action, school officials need to take a much more honest look at what’s working and what isn’t.

Just one more thing about Mackenzie. Some of her former teachers, whenever there was a problem between two students, would make each write a letter of apology to the other. Mackenzie was made to do that so often that now, whenever her parents correct her – for even the smallest thing – she writes a letter of apology to them.

This little girl believes there’s something bad about her, or that she’s to blame for just about everything. That was perhaps the most heartbreaking part of the story.

And just who was it that bullied her into that belief?

 

Written by Wanda Murren, editorial page editor, The Evening Sun, Hanover, PA