West Morris’ Response to Bullying Will ‘B’ Indicated on Self-Evaluation

The West Morris Regional Board of Education offered an analysis of the impact of bullying legislation on the high schools Monday night, with the district’s anti-bullying coordinator indicating the district expects a “B” grade when it publishes its first self-assessment.

Dr. David Leigh, the district’s anti-bullying coordinator, hosted the 50-minute special meeting and micro-analyzed a comprehensive PowerPoint presentation put together for the event.

“The district does a self-assessment and presents it to the community to get input,” said Leigh. “This is the first time it’s implemented, and it’s been a lot of work to gather and complete.”

Before relaying the numbers of incidents at both schools, he described the climate that the district is striving to obtain, being a ‘community of upstanders.’ He also described thoroughly the definition of Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying (HIB), saying that it is “loosely defined and partially up to investigators, but ‘harm’ is a part of the definition.”

The number of bullying claims this past school year at West Morris Central High School was 11, with six of them being substantiated. Of those, one was determined to be under the provisions of HIB legislation as determined in the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act passed in January 2011.

At West Morris Mendham High School, 10 claims of bullying were filed, with nine of them being substantiated and two moving on to the state under HIB provisions.

Further data indicated that a majority of the bullying is occurring in grade 11. 

“Once we look for patterns like these, we establish programs that target grades/groups,” said Leigh.

He also indicated that 42 percent of the time, the bullying incidents involve cyber activity.

“(But), there were zero incidents of recidivism,” he added. “We just try to give kids tools to make it stop from happening again.”

Punishments for those that broke the school’s code on bullying were in-school and out-of-school suspension, along with one case of a student being transferred between buildings.

“We prefer outcomes that may include writing assignments,” said Leigh. “About a third of the punishments ended up on permanent records.”

Self-Assessment

Determining whether a school is a bully-free zone becomes a burden that falls on the school itself. Every year, officials must fill out a self-evaluation (of scores one through three in multiple categories) on how bullying prevention programs were implemented and how the student body, faculty and parents responded.

“We anticipate getting our letter grade some time in September,” added Leigh. “It’s public information that must be posted to our website, which his required by law…We told our teams here to be conservative with the numbers (because of the complexity of the law) and to be prepared to show auditors our documents. We’ll probably be in the B range somewhere.”

Peter Dumovic, a parent of a graduating senior at Mendham High, responded to this self-evaluation saying, “We have to make it clear, however, that we are not a B school. It is what it is, but we do everything at an A level. You (Dr. Leigh) should certainly publish with that information (with the grade), seeing as only three of the 21 total cases were deemed appropriate for HIB.”

The bottom line, as Leigh indicated, is that “We have two nice buildings and great kids whom show one another respect and civility and treat each other the right way."