BUCK DOESN’T STOP WITH TOP POLS OVER BULLYING
Attorney: 2010 law only shields schools from liability
The state’s top politicians, faced with alarming school bullying numbers that indicate a growing crisis, punted with platitudes yesterday as victim advocates said the 2010 law is weak and just gives cover to unaccountable school administrators.
The Herald reported Monday — on the anniversary of Phoebe Prince’s suicide that spurred the law — that as many as 14,000 of the state’s nearly 1 million K-12 students claimed in a 2017 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study that they had been bullied, while schools reported only 2,031 incidents in the 2017-18 school year. The CDC reported that 12 percent said they had considered killing themselves. Sunday, the Herald and the Lowell Sun reported on the October suicide of 16-year-old Anna Aslanian of Lowell, who left a letter detailing previously unreported bullying and body-shaming that destroyed her self-esteem.
When pressed, a spokeswoman for Gov. Charlie Baker said, “The BakerPolito Administration believes there should be no tolerance for bullying of any kind in the Commonwealth and is committed to working with the Legisla- ture to create a safe and healthy learning environment across the Commonwealth,” citing efforts to address cyberbullying and mental health in schools. But Baker’s office refused to comment on criticism of the current law’s accountare
ability failings.
Senate President Karen Spilka ignored questions about it, and House Speaker Robert DeLeo’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment.
When asked whether the law needs beefing up, a spokeswoman for state Attorney General Maura Healey said, “As a state, we should always be looking for ways to improve school culture for our students.”
The 2010 anti-bullying law was seen as a landmark piece of legislation, establishing a set of requirements for schools that included procedures for staff and students to report bullying, standards for reporting incidents to law enforcement, and requirements to provide annual training to all faculty. But victims’ advocates say it allows schools to withhold and hide details of potential criminal activity under privacy shields, and rules out lawsuits against school officials who fail to act — leaving a lack of any real accountability.
“Unless you have some real teeth — with financial repercussions to the schools and the towns — little will be done,” said attorney Stephen A. Roach, who has represented children claiming various types of mistreatment in schools. “It’s just going to get pushed aside.”
“It was obvious that it was not designed to actually stop bullying — it was designed to insulate schools from liability,” said Boston attorney Wendy Murphy. “If you allow a clause that would allow schools to be sued in certain circumstances, bullying would diminish overnight.”
Paul Andrews, a former Woburn schools top administrator now of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, countered that the 2010 law brought necessary attention to the problem — but went far enough.
“I don’t think the schools can do any more than what they’re doing,” Andrews told the Herald. “It’s one of the most complex issues for a school. It’s so hard to determine who is right and who is wrong.”
Data from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education also shows that few students are being disciplined for bullying — just 915 statewide in the 2017-18 school year.
The state must do a better job keeping on top of districts within the frame work of the current law, said Jerry Mogul of Massachusetts Advocates for Children.
“The reporting requirements need to be better monitored,” Mogul told the Herald. “Bullying remains a very very serious problem, and we have a long way to go.”