Youngsters who taunt others at school have underlying problems at home. Bullying often begins in the elementary school grades, peaks in the sixth through eighth grades and can persist into high school.

States, school districts and parents grapple with bullying issue
By Nancy Cicco, ncicco@seacoastonline.com

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It's not just fisticuffs on the playground anymore: As experts and parents come to grips with the fact school yard bullying can do more profound damage than what was once thought, bullying techniques continue to evolve.
But differences in the laws between New Hampshire and Maine - and differing policies among school districts in both states - may mean that not all students throughout the Seacoast receive the same anti-bullying message.

"It's all coming to a head in the state of Maine," said Deb Landry, the executive director of Crossroads Youth Center in Saco, Maine, an agency that serves children and teenagers from throughout the state. "Teen suicide is up in Maine. The governor has just appointed a task force to take a look at what we need to do to prevent (it)."

Baldacci has also ordered the state to look at the reasons why young people kill themselves, Landry said.

As a part of that effort, she has been appointed to an ad hoc committee that is looking at how the state can implement anti-bullying initiatives. One goal of her work will be to see Maine legislators pass an anti-bullying law.

Other states are casting an eye toward tightening up their anti-bullying laws and there's even a national movement to pass federal anti-bullying legislation.

These initiatives were in the spotlight this past week, as the nation marked Bullying Awareness Week. The week was designated as a way to learn from the killing rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., on April 20, 1999.

More than physical assaults, bullying may involve verbal taunts, harassment regarding race, religion or gender issues, acts of coercion, and - in the computer age - cyber threats, including hate e-mail, chat room, and text messages, and personal Web sites that include information intimidating to bully targets.

Landry's son, an 11-year-old sixth grader, recently told Maine lawmakers what it's like to be bullied. He testified in support of a bill that looks to amend Maine's student "Code of Conduct" law to define bullying and to mandate counseling for bullies and their victims. The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Carol Grose, D-Woolwich, was heard two weeks ago by the Maine Legislature's Education and Cultural Affairs Committee.

Landry's son fell prey to a bully after he witnessed an eighth-grader pick on another student. According to Landry, the bully then threatened to physically hurt and kill her son if he reported the bully's behavior against the other student.
In the aftermath of the bully's threat, Landry's son refused to get off the school bus at his designated stop. Instead, he would get off the bus at a friend's stop, so the bully wouldn't find out where he lived.

"He was scared to death to go to school," Landry said."(He) went into a three-month depression. It disrupted us..it totally changed our whole family."

"Bullying is damaging and preventable. Targets of bullying are more likely not to learn, to suffer from depression as adults, and to have trouble forming friendships if there is no intervention," said Stan Davis, a social worker from Wayne, Maine, who specializes in bullying prevention and is a trainer for the national Olweus Bullying Prevention program. Olweus is a school-based program designed to prevent or reduce bullying among students age 6 through 15.

"Bullies are more likely to continue to hurt others throughout their lives if there is no intervention," Davis said.

Children who appear socially isolated, who don't want to go to school, who are anxious and exhibit low self-esteem may be demonstrating symptoms of being bullied.

"Note that these symptoms can all have other causes," Davis said. But, when adults encourage young people to talk about their issues, root causes can come to the surface. If bullying is the problem, Davis tells adults to avoid doling out quick advice to young people such as the standard responses of "Just tell him to stop," or "Just ignore it," or the dreaded, "Just understand they are jealous of you."

"When we listen without giving instant advice, young people feel more willing to talk about what is going on," Davis said.

Bullying can be prevented when adults institute "clear and consistent" consequences for it, while at the same time offering positive role models for young people. Bullies need adults to help them reflect on their actions, victims need to have support, and even bystanders need to be empowered to take action, Davis said.

The bully's playground

Bullying often begins in the elementary-school grades, peaks in the sixth through the eighth grades and can persist into high school, according to 2001 statistics from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. According to a 2001 study performed by the Journal of the American Medical Association, almost 30 percent of sampled youth reported some type of involvement in moderate or frequent bullying, either as a bully or the target of a bully.

Julie Golkowski, a licensed, clinical mental health counselor with Seacoast Mental Health Center in Portsmouth, is the agency's director of child, adolescent and family services. She sees children who have both been bullied and have become bullies themselves. As part of the agency's outreach services, Seacoast Mental Health counselors work in the Portsmouth, Seabrook and Raymond school districts to provide services to students who need them.

"Very often we see kids who have been picked on mercilessly after years and then they are the ones...who will have an aggressive behavior at the school that leads to suspension," she said.

To stem the tide of bullying, parents and school employees need to step in early. Often, parents need to learn new ways to discipline their children. Kids who are "bullied" at home often compensate at school, according to Golkowski.

"The research is pretty clear that overly-punitive discipline styles contribute to aggressive behavior (in) kids. Parents need to learn more effective parenting intervention," she said.

Golkowski supervises an anger-management group for children. In it, members play roles to act out different scenarios related to bullying, in order to get in touch with their emotions. Teaching kids what it's like to be bullied can go a long way to prevent kids from being bullies.

"Empathy is the enemy of aggression," she said.

Suicide among teenagers - though it has many causes - can happen as a result of bullying.

Brenda High, of Pasco, Wash., felt the impact of that tragedy when her 13-year-old son, Jared, shot himself in 1998, just months after being assaulted by a school bully. High began to forge her sorrow into activism when she founded Bully Police USA, a national, nonprofit organization that advocates for anti-bullying laws and works to educate parents about such issues as bullying and teenage depression. Jared's story is posted online at www.bullypolice.org.

According to Bully Police, well-written anti-bullying legislation should:


clearly define bullying and harassment

mandate anti-bullying programs be created in the schools

involve educating superintendents, school board members, parents, school administrators, teachers and students;

allow protections against reprisal, retaliation or false accusations of bullying;

outline protections against lawsuits for school districts that comply with anti-bullying policies

require accountability reports made to lawmakers and the state's education superintendent, and

assign counseling "for victims who suffer for years after peer abuse."
On the books

Along with pushing for tougher state anti-bullying laws, Bully Police is circulating a petition that asks for federal anti-bullying legislation, according to Landry.

Neither New Hampshire nor Maine have specific anti-bullying statutes, although both states have laws that mandate student safety in the schools and require local school boards to maintain policies that address how bullying incidents will be handled.

Maine's law requires individual school boards to "define unacceptable student behavior" and develop a student code of conduct that lays out consequences for violating the code. Maine's laws also require school boards to prohibit "injurious hazing" of any public school employee or student. Violators may be suspended or expelled from school grounds.

Under Maine's Safe and Drug Free Schools Act, the state's schools are required to submit lists of violent student behavior that results in suspensions - but not to specifically tally individual acts of bullying per se, according to York School Superintendent Henry Scipione.

New Hampshire law is slightly different. It requires local school boards to adopt a student safety and violence prevention policy which "addresses pupil harassment, also known as 'bullying,'" the law states.

The law requires anyone who witnesses a student being victimized by "insults, taunts or challenges, whether verbal or physical," to report it to the school's principal. Principals, in turn, are required to report all known incidents of bullying to the school superintendent, the school board and students' legal guardians. (See sidebar story). The consequences for acts of bullying shall be determined by local school boards, under the law.

State Rep. Nancy Stiles, R-Hampton, is currently researching whether area school districts maintain policies against cyber-bullying. According to Stiles, about 70 percent of school districts in the state address the issue, either under their policy on Internet use or their policy on bullying prevention, she said.

The cyber-bullying issue is making it onto the radar screens of other leaders as well.

"We're looking at a new policy on the use of computers. Unfortunately, bullying by computer is in vogue today," said School Superintendent James Gaylord, who presides over schools in Hampton, Hampton Falls, North Hampton, Seabrook, South Hampton and the Winnacunnet Cooperative school district.

In Portsmouth, police work in concert with the schools to ensure elementary schoolchildren get the anti-bullying message. Taking over for Detective Kevin Semprini - known for years by Portsmouth schoolchildren as "Officer Friendly" - is School Resource Officer Detective Chris Cummings. Cummings teaches kindergarten through fifth-grade students how to handle bullies through the "Kids and Company" program, according to Portsmouth police Detective Sgt. Mike Schwartz. Cyber-bulling prevention is as well part of officers' lessons to students, he said.

Rockingham County Attorney Jim Reams knows of no local cases of bullying that have been prosecuted in the recent past.

"We haven't had anything come up and I haven't even heard of anything in the district courts," he said.

Still, alleged incidents of bullying do crop up, and in one recent case, a teacher was the alleged perpetrator. That incident involved a 15-year-old female, special-needs student at Winnacunnet High School, who had been sitting on the sidelines watching classmates during a gym-class game of "ultimate volleyball." Accounts of the alleged, December, 2003 incident differ, but in an interview with the Hampton Union last June, Robert Casassa, a lawyer for the school district, acknowledged gym teacher Ty Seabrooke commented that if a ball hit the girl, the team on the opposite side of the net would receive five extra points in the game.

Seabrooke, in a letter to school Gaylord, later explained his purpose was not to humiliate the student but to keep her alert and focused on the game. Seabrooke was subsequently directed to talk to his students about his teaching technique and his classes were supervised for a time, according to the Hampton Union report.

Gaylord declined to comment on the alleged incident, other than to say Seabrooke still teaches physical education at the school.

The girl's mother, Terry Goodwill of North Hampton, went public with the alleged incident shortly after it occurred, and also said her daughter had been bullied in Seabrooke's class in the past. Once Goodwill told her story, members of Bully Police USA asked her to become a spokesman for the organization. Although she declined that offer, Goodwill is grateful for the support she and her daughter have received from the group, she said.

She believes victims of bullying need to confront the bullies head-on.

"Don't tell your child to live with it; don't tell your child to walk away from it," she said.

She doesn't regret her decision to air the alleged incident publicly. Rather, she sees it as a good life lesson for her daughter.

"Hopefully, it taught her some things are worth fighting for," she said.

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