Pa. schools need healthy relationship awareness, training

JULIANNE SILLER and Tristan Stahley were friends; she was a senior at Spring-Ford Area High School and he was a former student at neighboring Perkiomen Valley High School. She was 17; he was 16.

Last May 25, just weeks before Julianne was to graduate high school, she was brutally stabbed to death on a park trail with Tristan. He is awaiting trial for first-degree murder.

Court records have referred to the couple as boyfriend and girlfriend, but, according to Julianne’s family, that may have been wishful thinking. The Sillers said in a recent interview that the pair had not dated, but instead were part of a group of friends.

While grieving the loss of their beautiful daughter, the Siller family is trying to help prevent teen relationship violence from

affecting others. The family is among those advocating for more instruction in schools on healthy relationships. The goal is to teach teens how to manage their relationships and to be aware of warning signs for violence so they can get help.

Currently in Pennsylvania, the healthy relationship curriculum is set out as a guideline not a mandate.

That puts Pennsylvania among the 15 states that do not have laws which specifically provide for a school response to teen dating violence, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. On the other end of the spectrum, there are also 15 states that do make dating violence education mandatory in schools.

“Relationship violence is a form of bullying…And yet, bullying education is mandatory; sexual aggression awareness training is mandatory, but dating violence isn’t and that doesn’t make sense because they are all part of the same thing,” said Pauline McGibbon of the Montgomery County Women’s Center.

THE STATE BOARD did construct in 2012 a set of standards to help guide schools toward curriculums that would focus on aspects of self-awareness, maintaining relationships, and decision making. Area schools, including Spring-Ford where Julianne Siller was a senior, acknowledge the need for raising awareness about healthy relationships, but, without a mandate, few schools include it in their curriculum.

The “Standards for Student Interpersonal Skills” from the state Board of Education is “not a curriculum but are used as a foundation for creating a curriculum that is specific to each district’s student population.”

The Siller family and others would like to see the relationship course become mandated for all schools in Pennsylvania.

Their reasoning is quite simple: Teens are vulnerable within their relationships. No one knows when friendship can become obsession and turn violent. Teens need to know warning signs and the resources available to help them.

State Sen. Stewart Greenleaf calls it a public safety issue. But for the Sillers, it’s personal.

They want their daughter’s life to be unforgotten, and they want the circumstance of her death to be a lesson for others.

Relationship violence can happen to any teen. The importance of resources to deal with it must be made available.

WE URGE ALL area schools to establish in their curriculum a course that follows the guidelines laid out by the state, and we urge the state Legislature to mandate this learning.

If one life is saved, the effort is more than worthwhile.