LAWRENCE: Schoolyard bullying subject of hearing aimed at revising outdated policies

By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
Seeking to crack down on bullying in New Jersey’s public schools, Gov. Jon Corzine signed legislation last year that created the New Jersey Commission on Bullying in Schools.
    Last week, a handful of commission members spent three hours at Lawrence High School in the second of a series of three public hearings designed to get input on the effectiveness of current bullying laws and policies. The commission is expected to deliver its report in July.
    One by one, audience members took the microphone at the Feb. 18 meeting and unloaded their fears and frustrations with schoolyard bullying as the commission members listened quietly.
    Fay Reiter of Hopewell Borough told the commission that her son, who attends Hopewell Valley Regional High School, has been taunted by other boys because he does not dress the same way they do.
    Ms. Reiter said that when she and her husband met with school officials to discuss a fight between her son and another boy that was initiated by that boy, they did not take the issue seriously. She said the officials told them they did not think of the incident as bullying.
    “I think it’s important to explain that I was told by the vice principal, ‘We don’t have problems at this high school. It’s a wonderful place,’” Ms. Reiter said, adding that there is a “tremendous amount of denial” by school officials.
    Stephen Reiter added that his son does not feel safe and he is afraid to go to school because there is no one to control the students. He attributed the lack of control to improper training, or the lack of training.
    “Either get your act together to guarantee the safety of the children or open a cigar store. You are not doing the job you are supposed to do (to ensure that children feel safe in school),” Mr. Reiter told the commission.
    Rena Jacobson of Jackson Township told the commission that her adopted son was threatened frequently during his high school years. He was exposed to verbal harassment, heckling, bullying, threats against his life and two physical attacks, she said.
    Because her son was thin and preferred Latin music to American music and he did not follow team sports, “to other students, he was obviously gay,” Ms. Jacobson said. She added that her son would hear students threaten to beat him up or kill him.
    When he asked to meet with administrators to propose a program to be delivered at school that would stress diversity and tolerance, the request was denied, Ms. Jacobson told the commission.
    “The message for our son was, ‘No one is going to help stop the bullying and harassment.’ We taught him to respect those in authority, such as the police and school administrators. They are there to protect you and uphold fair and equal standards for all. Yet this was not what he experienced from them in our school district,” she said.
    “There was a part of me that said, ‘If we don’t talk about it or address it, it will stop.’ I can tell you unequivocally that did not work. Passive obedience is good as long as everyone is being treated fairly. If not, we must all speak up or we are all guilty of permitting the abuse and bias to continue,” Ms. Jacobson said.
    Barry Jacobson supported his wife’s statements, and added that although the school district subsequently adopted a bullying policy, it was never distributed until he challenged school district officials. The policy was put on the district’s Web site, but it was difficult to locate — unlike the district’s dress code policy, which had a prominent link on every school’s home page, he said.
    Mr. Jacobson urged the commission to require all school bullying policies to be distributed annually and to be published in the local newspaper twice a year. Each school district should be required to have a link to the policy displayed prominently on the home page of each school’s Web site, he said.
    Bruce Novozinsky told the commission that his daughter came to the aid of a special needs child who was being taunted by two girls. Upper Freehold Regional School District officials initially hailed his daughter as a hero for her actions, and the two girls were punished, he said.
    But the two girls sought revenge against his daughter, Mr. Novozinsky said. Rather than deal with the parents’ claims that their daughters were innocent, school district officials told the victim’s parents that the incident was unsubstantiated — despite the fact that the two girls were punished, he said.
    “How do we teach our children to not stand by when school officials are bent on burying the actions of punk bullies in an effort to keep district report cards and school evaluations above a benchmarked line that will not raise red flags within the state,” Mr. Novozinsky said.
    Mr. Novozinsky acknowledged that as a child, he committed an act that would be considered a hate crime today. But the nuns at his parochial school, as well as his parents and the community at large, held him accountable for his actions. He did not detail his punishment, but he said it was swift and by no means a parallel to a “time out” or the revocation of recess privileges.
    However, children today know there are no penalties and that their parents and the school administration will coddle them, he said. They are protected, but the victims are not, he said, adding that school district officials need to be held accountable for protecting the children and not their own reputations or the district’s report card.
    But parents were not the only ones to weigh in on the issue of bullying.
    Paul Winkler, executive director of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education, said that “in our work, we see the outcome of bullying. It’s not just words, but actions.”
    Terrorism and bullying have many of the same components, Dr. Winkler said. Whether it is on the playground or in the world, it involves picking on someone else and putting them down and hurting them, he said.
    Afsheen Shamsi, the public relations director of the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NJ), said Muslim students are bullied by other students and occasionally by teachers.
    Muslim students have been called terrorists by other students, Ms. Shamsi said. Some children threw a porcelain piggy bank at one Muslim student in the school bus and when he tried to defend himself, he was suspended for 10 days, she said.
    To combat bullying, Ms. Shamsi suggested educating students and parents about bullying laws. Parents should be taught to look for signs to determine if their child is being bullied, and teachers should be trained to identify the students most likely to be bullied — Muslims, overweight children or skinny students, for example, she said.
    “There should be role playing at assemblies to demonstrate the different forms of bullying,” she said. “The consequences of bullying should be clearly spelled out and the adult or counselor that a bullied student can go to should be clearly identified.”
    Attorney Barry Fulmer of Freehold Township pointed out that although state law provides guidelines for school districts on how to deal with bullying and harassment, the statutes and regulations “lack enforcement teeth to compel compliance by a school district.”
    Mr. Fulmer said state law requires school districts to adopt anti-bullying policies and to provide training on the anti-bullying policies “to the extent that funds are appropriated for these purposes.” It is up to the districts to provide funding — or not — to provide training, he said.
    Under state law, school districts also are “encouraged” to establish bullying prevention programs and other initiatives involving staff, students, administrators, volunteers, parents and police — but they are not required to provide them, he said.
    And even if a school district does adopt anti-bullying policies, Mr. Fulmer said, there is no requirement that the school board should submit its policy to the state Department of Education or to the county superintendent of school for review.
    Schools must be required to provide mandatory programs to administrators, teachers and students that teach tolerance, understanding and respect for those who are perceived to be different from the majority, Mr. Fulmer said, adding that the programs should be available to parents, as well.
    “Cosmetic changes alone will not end the harm children suffer in the school setting when they are singled out for bullying and harassment because they are perceived to be different,” Mr. Fulmer said. The key is educating children and adults about the different cultures, religions, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation and gender identification that students represent, he said.