Medford schools adopts new bullying policy after lengthy review

After six hours of meetings involving input from parents, community members, administration and educators, the Medford school district has a streamlined and refined policy for handling bullying and harassment of and by students.

The policy committee had their third special meeting on bullying at the Medford Area Middle School on the evening of July 20. Unlike the previous meetings which focused heavily on community input and broader concepts surrounding bullying, last week’s meeting was more a work session hammering out the changes and balancing the suggestions brought forward in the previous meetings.

At Monday’s school board meeting, the full school board unanimously approved the revised policy.

According to policy committee chair Jodi Nuernberger, the new policy incorporates a lot of information from the model policy of the Department of Public Instruction as well as information dealing with sanctions for bullying behavior and such things as social skills interventions and supports.

In the process, the policy was slimmed down from 9 pages to its current six page length made up of three pages of policies, one on the appeals process and two report forms.

“It was a team effort, a community effort. There was a lot of support going into this,” Nuernberger said at Monday’s board meeting.

Board member John Zuleger praised the committee members for their work and for getting the level of community involvement they did. He said he holds out hope that maybe by teaching children to be more compassionate and open minded that it would eventually lead to having more compassionate and open minded adults in the future.

“I would put the congratulations with Jodi,” said committee member Aemus Balsis “She went above and beyond and did fabulous work,” he said.

The policy is subject to review each year and will be brought back each spring along with local data on the incidences of bullying and the sanctions taken.

At last week’s policy meeting, the committee reviewed the proposed changes with discussion focusing on the level of what would rise to be formally considered bullying. There was also a discussion on if the harassment portion of the policy should be separated out to its own policy.

“We would want our response to be the same,” Nuernberger said in support of keeping them combined. The district is required to have a harassment policy.

The most time was spent at the meeting discussing what would trigger the need to have written documentation.

District administrator Pat Sullivan was concerned that as the draft policy was written it sets the expectation that every incident would be documented.

“Not every time a third grader comes in saying ‘Jimmy pushed me,’ would be written up,” Sullivan said, because it would be clear to the adults involved that it was not a bullying incident.

“If someone pushes, it is a conflict, not necessarily bullying,” Nuernberger said. The policy defines bullying as being repeated actions.

Sullivan said he did not want to set up the expectation that there always would be documentation, even for things the administration determined at the time to not rise to being bullying. “I don’t want to get people in trouble,” he said.

“There has to be some discretion,” Sullivan said, noting that they need to trust the teacher.

At the elementary school level, the suggestion was to have it that when an ODR (office discipline referral) is made it would be brought to the parents’ attention.

Board president Dave Fleegel cautioned against attempting to have a one-size-fits-all approach.

“It does look different at each school,” Nuernberger said of bullying and the ways of responding to it.