In a report on another bullying study, Dr. Ronald Pitner, Ph.D., assistant professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis, concluded that schools must focus on the physical context of the school.  Dr. Pitner noted that bullying and school violence in general typically occur in predictable locations within schools, specifically unmonitored areas such as hallways, restrooms, stairwells, and playgrounds.  He stated that schools can cut down on violence if they identify the specific “hotspots” within the school where students feel violence is likely to occur.  “Although this approach will not completely eliminate bullying, research has shown that it would at least cut down on the areas where violence is likely to occur,” he was attributed as saying.  His recommendation: “This focus underscores the importance of viewing school bullying as both an individual- and organizational-level phenomenon.”

We believe these studies reinforce that having firm, fair and consistent discipline enforcement in our schools reduces the likelihood of crime and violence.  School climate improvement plans should also include anti-bullying strategies. Discipline and school climate strategies, combined with balanced and reasonable security measures targeting “hot spots” where bullying occurs, can create a safer and more secure climate.  This can in turn reduce the likelihood of bullying, disciplinary violations, violence and school crime.

See Ken Trump’s Congressional testimony (July 9, 2009) on bullying and comprehensive school safety planning:

Testimony on School Safety, House Education and Labor Joint Subcommittee Hearing on July 8, 2009

Anti-Bullying Legislation and School Safety

A number of state legislatures have proposed laws requiring schools to have anti-bullying policies and programs, and more recently a federal legislator even proposed national legislation on bullying.

“Bullying” often refers to verbal, physical, or other acts committed by a student to harass, intimidate, or cause harm to another student.  The behaviors attributed to bullying may include verbal threats, menacing, harassment, intimidation, assaults, disruption of the school environment and associated disorderly conduct, and related behaviors. When discussing “bullying,” the focus should be on the inappropriate behaviors rather than a generic, undefined label of “bullying.”  

The vast majority of schools in the nation, if not all schools, already have disciplinary policies to address these types of behavioral misconduct.  The policies may not include the word “bullying” in some schools, but the behavior we refer to as bullying is typically addressed in school policies as well as possibly in criminal laws (assaults, threats/menacing, intimidation, disorderly conduct, etc.). Schools nationwide have also implemented prevention and intervention programs to prevent and address this type of behavior, especially post-Columbine.

However, it appears as if we are on the early end of a politically-correct trend of states creating mandatory anti-bullying laws. It also appears as if some in the school safety field are moving in the direction of over-emphasizing bullying as the cause of all school safety threats. Defining bullying beyond the aforementioned behaviors (which are typically already addressed in school policy and other laws) is extremely difficult to do legislatively and it can be argued that many forms of violence could be whittled down to be labeled as “bullying” depending upon formal definitions and those interpreting what is and is not “bullying.”

Bullying is an important issue which adversely impacts school safety. But there are many other issues contributing to interpersonal conflicts, violence, and crime in our schools as well.  “He said, she said” rumors, “boyfriend, girlfriend” issues, disrespect, gang conflicts, and many other factors can lead to school violence.  Whittling all of these down to what some would like to describe as “bullying” is a far stretch and an over-emphasis on “bullying” is, in our opinion, an extreme and inappropriate approach to school safety.

Effective school safety planning requires a balanced emphasis on safe schools components ranging from prevention and intervention programs to security and emergency preparedness strategies.  Legislative and programmatic emphasis of one safe schools strategy over the others which make up comprehensive safe school planning may be popular and politically correct, but it is not the most effective approach.  A skewed over-emphasis on bullying issues is no more appropriate and effective than a skewed emphasis on security and emergency planning.

Legislative mandates requiring schools to have anti-bullying policies and programs create great election year hype around a topic that even the most rival of politicians would find hard to shoot down.  But once one gets past the “feel good” aspect of the proposal, more level heads should look at whether there is a need to actually generate new legislation specific to bullying or if the topic is already being adequately addressed.  Anti-bullying specific legislation implies that schools are doing little-to-nothing at the present time to deal with bullying and that simply is not the case in schools nationwide.

The real question is not whether bullying is an important issue, but instead whether emphasizing one component of safe school planning over the others will upset the balance needed for effective safe school planning.  While bullying is an important issue which adversely impacts school safety, school safety threats go beyond bullying and include gang violence, assaults stemming from interpersonal student conflicts, drug and weapon offenses, and even the potential for terrorism.

We also have to ask if we’re really dealing with feel-good legislation proposed more for the political gain of certain elected officials or meaningful legislation that will provide funded resources to serve documented and verified unmet needs. It is particularly odd that some elected officials are proposing unfunded anti-bullying legislation at a time when school safety funds to implement such programs, as well as other school safety initiatives that do not have to do with bullying, are being slashed.The vast majority of schools have policies to deal with harassment and disruption of the educational environment.  Fewer schools have funding to develop and implement anti-bullying specific programs — something not included in most proposed anti-bullying legislation.  While bullying is certainly one issue challenging school safety, unfunded state mandates and an overemphasis on any one component of school safety will likely have minimal impact on school safety and could potentially upset the comprehensive approach to school safe recommended by most school safety professionals.

Bullying and School Safety in Context

As noted at the onset of this page, we believe bullying to be a serious issue and worthy of reasonable attention, awareness and action. Schools, parents and most of all, our youth, need to be aware of appropriate behaviors for youth and how inappropriate behaviors should be addressed.

Firm, fair, and consistent enforcement of school discipline policies, meaningful school climate strategies which include anti-bullying initiatives, and balanced security measures can lead to school climates with less bullying and fewer safety threats to children.

For questions and comments, email Ken Trump.