LOCAL NEWS

City Initiative Protects Students Against Bullying
Brochures and posters educate students and staff about harassment, and bias incidents will be monitored. But some advocates say the new regulations aren’t strong enough.

By Joelle L. Quartini
Friday, September 05, 2008

City officials announced a new initiative to protect students against harassment and bullying in the New York City public school system.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein announced the regulation aimed at protect students from harassment based on sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability and other characteristics.

“If you’re a child in a school, and you’re not safe because you’re being harassed, you’re being bullied, you can’t possibly learn. You’re sitting in your seat, and your mind is elsewhere,” Quinn said. “It’s hard to learn under the best of circumstances, but if a child is suffering a situation like that, it can become impossible for them to learn.”

The Department of Education’s new regulation, called A-832, builds on the city’s current “Respect for All” initiative, a staff training program enacted last year to help teachers identify and address bullying, harassment and intimidation.
The regulation requires schools to make standards clear to students and staff, track and monitor all bias incidents, investigate complaints within five days and file a written report for the alleged victim within 10 days. The schools must also provide a way students can appeal to the education department if they’re not satisfied with the school’s response to the bias incident.

Brochures defining harassment and bullying were passed out to students the first week of class. Similar posters are displayed in schools.

Offenses, whether taunts, stalking, writing slurs, online offenses or other verbal or physical harassment, are to be tracked and will be made public and broken down according to each school online at the end of the year.

“Up until now we really had no way of knowing whether harassment in our schools was getting better or worse,” Mayor Bloomberg said.

In 2004, the City Council passed the Dignity for All Student Act (DASA), but Bloomberg fought against it on the grounds that the council overstepped its bounds—such legislation, he claimed, is the realm of the chancellor. DASA was never implemented.

The New York Civil Liberties Union, which defends the principles of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, commended the new anti-bullying initiative, but called the city to enact DASA because it is a stronger, better bill.

Unlike DASA, the chancellor’s initiative does not cover harassment by school administrators, teachers and other individuals, only student-to-student harassment. The organization also faulted the new regulations because its staff-training and reporting requirements are too vague.

Still, many other advocates and organizations support the new regulation, including the United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, Council of School Supervisors and Administrators President Ernest Logan, the Sikh Coalition, the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families, GLSEN and The Hetrick-Martin institute.

“We meet lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students whose academic performance suffers and whose physical safety is threatened by hateful and intimidating words and actions in the schools,” said Drew Tagliabue, executive director of the local Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) branch.

In a previous job, Quinn became familiar with school bullying. “When I ran the [New York City] Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, I took too many phone calls from parents who didn’t know what to do, who felt their children’s education slipping away and had very few places they could turn to,” Quinn said. “This chancellor’s regulation and this act by the mayor tells those parents, they have a place to turn to. That place is City Hall and the Department of Education.”

A Harris poll commissioned by the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) in 2005 found that less than half of New York students felt safe in their schools and 40 percent of students in New York State say bullying is a problem in their school.

More than 1.1 million students attend the city’s 1,500 public schools.
Eleven states have passed anti-bullying legislation, including four out of the five states that border New York: Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey. Verbal harassment of LGBT students is one third higher where there is no law protecting them from bullying.

The chancellor’s regulation comes at the beginning of the school year and shortly after the New York State Senate Republican Majority introduced in August a Safe Schools for all Students Act.

Similar anti-bullying legislation, the Dignity for All Students Act, has passed the State Assembly seven times since it was first introduced in 2000, most recently in February 2008.

Democratic Sen. Thomas Duane, who is openly gay, is Dignity’s prime sponsor in that Republican-controlled chamber and was present at announcement of the city’s new anti-bullying regulations.

“It is a travesty that while [Dignity] passes the Assembly every year, the Republican controlled State Senate refuses to act. This is wrong, and I will fight to make sure the Dignity for All Students Act becomes a reality in New York State.”

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