District forms anti-bullying panel
Oversight commission prompted by recent student suicide
ROYERSFORD >> As officials in Spring-Ford continue to grapple with how best to respond to a student’s suicide earlier this month — an alleged victim of cyber bullying — the district’s top administrator says he’s putting a plan in place to confront growing criticism of his office.
Superintendent David Goodin has announced the formation of a new administrative oversight commission tasked with ensuring the district’s bullying policies and best practices are applied consistently across the district for all reported cases.
“As a result, my office will receive regular reports of all reported bullying issues and how they were addressed within the district,” Goodin said. “That’s not to say that I will be handling bullying issues. That is to say that issues will still be handled at the building level by our administrators. But I will review those to make sure we’re being consis-
tent. Also if a parent feels a reported bullying situation has not been addressed, I ask that they contact my office and we will review that for them.”
The biggest criticism Goodin has seen on social media and in messages hasn’t been focused on the types of programming being offered to prevent bullying, it’s been the administration’s response to reported cases of bullying, or the alleged lack thereof, he said.
“There’s a growing perception of mishandling or downright ignoring or not paying attention to bullying situations brought to administration’s attention,” Goodin said. “Some of these I knowabout. I don’t knowabout all of them. That seems to be the criticism.”
Goodin wasn’t about to sit back and let that criticism go unanswered, though, that’s why he announced the oversight commission, he said.
Goodin later told Digital First Media that a parent or guardian may not always like the outcome of the commission’s review process.
“It’s not necessarily amatter that its being addressed to your satisfaction,” he said.
The announcement comes just one week after Goodin discussed the district’s numerous programs and policies already in place that attempt to address bullying and cyber bullying. That discussion itself was a response to the reported suicide of a ninth-grade student — two weeks ago. In the days since the student’s suicide, Goodin’s office has been flooded with suggestions about how to properly respond. He said this plan was how he would do it.
Not everyone was satisfied with Goodin’s proposal though.
School board member Mark Dehnert, who in a statement last week called the district’s bullying policy a failure, had his own proposed solution to the problem. He called for the formation of a commission of stakeholders, who could offer new ideas on how to best address the situation.
“I think with having people with different perspectives involved we can get more out-of-the-box thinking, better suggestions on some of the things we can do that a smaller group may not think of,” Dehnert said.
Dehnert also criticized the district’s cell phone policy saying the negatives of cell phone usage outweighed the positives. The policy needed to be revisited.
Board President Joe Ciresi said the district has a strong cell phone policy in place and there was no need for generalizations. He said the majority of students follow current cell phone policy without issue and cell phones have become an important educational tool for students and teachers to utilize.
“Students are learning differently,” he said. “If we don’t reach them, we’ll lose them.”
Board members Kelly Spletzer and Colleen Zasowski agreed, saying parents need to be monitoring what their children are doing.
“If you take the phone out of their hand it won’t change their behavior,” Spletzer said.
“It’s not going to stop,” said Zasowski. “We need to reach them where they are.”
Spletzer also felt strongly that by the district simply focusing on antibullying, it diminished the important mental health issue that caused the student to take their life. The district needed to look at the whole situation, she said.
“I feel passionately about this,” she said. “I have children small and in high school. I’m concerned on a daily basis about the stress they are going through.”