Superintendent George Rafferty said the district once again had a low number of instances to report for a district of its size.
The Mt. Laurel Schools Board of Education at its meeting this week reviewed the district’s Violence, Vandalism, Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying Report for the district’s most recent reporting period of Jan. 1 through June 30.
Per state law, school districts are required twice each year to publicly report statistics on incidents of violence, vandalism, harassment, intimidation and bullying covering six-month periods from Jan. 1 through June 30 and from July 1 through Dec. 31.
As the district reported to the state Department of Education on July 14, Superintendent George Rafferty said there were 15 investigations into potential incidents of harassment, intimidation or bullying in the district from Jan. 1 through June 30, with seven of those incidents confirmed as actual HIB cases.
“We had more reporting going on than we were able to determine were actual HIB incidents, which is really the way it should be — we don’t want to deter reporting,” Rafferty said. “We want to make sure every report that we get we investigate thoroughly, but not all reports are determined to be HIB once investigated.”
During that same time period, Rafferty said there were no incidents of violence or vandalism, no substance offenses and just one incident involving a weapon being found at a school.
“Any object that student will bring in from home that can be used to harm someone else, if it’s brought to the school’s attention and we do obtain something of that nature, we do report it and it’s submitted as part of this report.”
Overall, Rafferty said the district had a total of eight instances to report to the state during the recent period, which he described as positive for a district the size of Mt. Laurel.
“For a district with eight schools, kindergarten through eighth grade, and 4,200 students, any one instance is unacceptable, but to be able to report on eight incidences during that period of time is pretty remarkable, and I would say well below average for what we would expect to report with that many students,” Rafferty said.
Rafferty also noted the district had one HIB training during the recent reporting period, and the district has 33 ongoing HIB-related programs running throughout all of its elementary schools, Hartford School and Harrington Middle School.
Rafferty said the full list of programs are available for review by the public on the district’s website.
“It is always a challenge to isolate individual activities that support designated weeks due to the fact that Mt. Laurel is so proactive in efforts to meet the social and emotional needs of all our students,” Rafferty said. “It is our ultimate goal to establish a climate of mutual respect that is honored every day,” Rafferty said.
However, Rafferty did make note of the specific weeks throughout the year set aside by the district to focus on HIB issues, such as Violence Awareness Week, Week of Respect, Red Ribbon and American Education Week.
Moving forward, Rafferty said the district would report on data from the current violence, vandalism and HIB porting period of July 1 through Dec. 31 at a BOE meeting later in the year.
