At last week’s Medford Board of Education meeting, Medford Township School District Anti Bullying Coordinator Gale Ferarro was in attendance to review this year’s reports.
The board has to create a report every six months for violence and vandalism as well as harassment, intimidation and bullying in the schools.
There are three reports conducted each year, one that covers from July to December, one that covers from January to June and an annual report that is due in September.
This report takes all reports from the past year into consideration and condenses everything into one self-report.
There are 78 items in the self-assessment, and the scores for the district range from 67 to 76, so the district average score is a 73 out of 78.
This report doesn’t focus on how many total investigations a district has, instead focusing more on prevention and what the district is doing to train its staff for these situations.
“Our counselors go into our classrooms on a regular basis and they talk about different aspects of harassment, intimidation and bullying, as well as other topics that relate to this theme, such as building self esteem,” Ferraro said.
In the fall, the board will get the report back from the state and the district score will go on its website along with the individual schools’ websites.
This year’s self-assessment was essentially the same as last year’s. The number of investigations this year matched the 14 total investigations that took place in 2013–2014.
“I think what we are seeing is once we start to do the investigation on these things that we suspect may be reported as bullying incidents, we recognize them as really more conflict. So it’s not one person having power over another; it’s really two equal parties typically having an argument or one person saying some mean things to someone but not to the level of the HIB law,” Ferarro said.
Board President Katherine Santamore asked if this law had been making a difference around the state, and Ferarro said it certainly raises awareness to bullying.
“It helps students stick up for themselves and not be a bystander but instead be an ‘upstander,’ someone who reports a case of bullying if they see it going on,” Ferraro said.
This year, Medford schools had only one incident Ferarro considered to be at the level that passed the line as a true bullying incident.
Medford has met all of its expectations and continues to exceed in many areas. Its scores have technically gone down a little bit, but that is only because there are so few incidents in the district.
Medford had three instances that had to be reported to the state from January to June, two of which were HIB confirmed.
One of these instances was a possession of a weapon where a student brought a pocketknife to school by accident. The young man did not realize he had the weapon with him, in fact he was the one who alerted the teachers that he did so, officials said.
“He did not bring it in with any malice or intent to utilize it. However, he did bring it to the attention of the teachers so she had to report it,” Superintendent Joseph Del Rossi said.
The Week Of Respect is an annual tradition of Medford schools that is always the first week of October. This year it will be held the week of Oct. 5.
School counselors have already worked on what they will be doing with their students and have all of their activities planned.
“It’s nice that the week of respect is early in the year because it carries this anti-bullying theme out throughout the year,” board member Michael Etter said.
“We don’t just do things to prevent bullying during Week Of Respect. There are numerous things that are going on throughout the year as well,” Ferarro said.
