School districts are required to annually assess their compliance under the state’s anti-bullying legislation.
The Evesham Township School District recently released its latest self-assessment for determining grades under the state’s Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act.
According to ETSD officials, under the district’s self-assessment for the 2017–2018 school year, each school met or exceeded all standards.
Under the act, school districts in New Jersey are required to annually assess their compliance under the state’s anti-bullying legislation through the use of a rubric provided by the state that measures eight “core elements,” which can each be broken down to 26 “indicators.”
The core elements includes training staff on the BOE-approved HIB policy, implementing Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying prevention programs, approaches or other initiatives, including HIB-related information and skills in the district’s curriculum and instruction, having a school-level reporting procedure for HIB incidents, employing personnel with HIB responsibilities, undergoing additional staff instruction and training programs for HIB prevention and having general HIB investigation procedure and reporting methods in place.
The data recently released by the ETSD measures a period from July 1 of last year through June 30 of this year.
By using the state’s rubric to measure the 26 indicators across the eight core elements, the maximum score an individual school or a district can receive is 78.
That figure is determined by examining each of the 26 individual indicators and assigning a score of zero to three, with a score of zero for failing to meet expectations, a score of one for partially meeting expectations or a, a score of two for meeting expectations and a score of three for exceeding expectations.
When examining scores for each of the district’s individual schools, Jaggard Elementary School, Marlton Elementary School and Van Zant Elementary School all received a score of 77, Beeler Elementary School and Rice Elementary School each received a score of 76, DeMasi Elementary School and Marlton Middle School each received a score of 75 and DeMasi Middle School received a score of 73.
Overall, the district’s average score was 75.7, which was a slight increase from the district’s overall average score for the 2016–2017 school year of 75.6.
According to ETSD director of curriculum and instruction Danielle Magulick, who also serves as the district’s anti-bullying coordinator, the district’s release of the self-assessment information to the public was actually only one step in a several months-long process.
Each school year in May or June, Magulick said the district would hold a final school safety team meeting for the school year focused on annual trends and patterns.
Then, usually in June, the state releases guidance documents on determining self-assessment grades for a given year, and in July, each school must submit its self-assessment summary reports to the district for a district-level review
Then, in late August, the district publicly releases information on its schools, and by the end of October, the district must submit its school reports to the state.
Once the information is reviewed by the state and released by to the district, Magulick said the district would have 10 days to post the final grades to its district and school websites.
