On Nov. 28, Edgewood Junior High School held a community meeting on bullying.
It was originally scheduled to be held in the EJHS library but had to be moved due to overwhelming interest in the event. Inflammatory reports from five parents, one student and one former student during the Nov. 19 Richland-Bean Blossom Community School Corporation school board meeting of an alleged beating at the junior high that may have resulted in a seventh grader going into seizure, as well as other incidents at the school, were the cause for the increased interest.
The conclusion of the meeting saw parents in an uproar as they were told there would be no public comment segment. Rather, they were asked to discuss among themselves and write suggestions to the school on a piece of paper located in the middle of each of the cafeteria tables.
When one parent, Heather Collins, who pulled her daughter out of EJHS after she became concerned that her daughter was developing an eating disorder due to alleged bullying on her cheer squad, tried to comment, RBBCSC Superintendent Steven Kain interrupted her and said the meeting was over.
At the beginning of the meeting, both EJHS Assistant Principal Donna Atkinson and EJHS Principal Melissa Pogue reminded attendees that they would not and could not speak to specific incidents due to a policy of confidentiality, though Atkinson did dispute information people may have heard.
“There has been multiple false information given,” she said, adding that parents could call the school and speak with them in private regarding specific incidents.
“We get a lot of reports at school that we have to sort through,” Pogue said. “We do not always have the time to report back to people that have made the reports. And also, again, we’re tied to confidentiality.”
Her PowerPoint presentation began with the definition of bullying provided by the state of Indiana and on page 16 of the RBBCSC school handbook.
“Over repeated acts of gestures, including verbal communication transmitted, physical acts committed, or any other behaviors by a group of students against another student with the intention to harass, ridicule, humiliate, intimidate or harm the other student.”
As previously reported in The Ellettsville Journal, Pogue also used the definition of bullying found in the book “Bullying and the Brain: Using Cognitive and Emotional Intelligence to Help Kids Cope” by Gary Boyd. In that book, Boyd describes bullying as such:
- It is aggressive and intentionally harmful.
- It is carried out repeatedly.
- It occurs in a relationship where there is an imbalance of power.
- It usually occurs with no provocation from the victim.
A relatively new issue that has come into schools is cyberbullying, or bullying that happens through the aid of technology like the internet.
“Cyber messages can be posted anonymously and distributed quickly to a wide audience, and it can be difficult and sometimes impossible to trace the source,” Pogue said.
She continued stating that parents or students could report bullying incidents through the school’s bullying hotline.
“I will tell you that we’ve only had three reports this year, and one of those, we couldn’t decipher the information, so we want to make sure that people are aware that that is an option,” Pogue said, noting that students who did not feel safe needed to be vocal and tell an adult. She then continued, “This year, our data shows that we’ve had six incidents of bullying.”
She said the junior high level experiences many incidents as students try and figure out where they belong and who they are. That means that students sometimes report things that do not fall under the definition of bullying.
“It does not mean we do not investigate,” Pogue said. “It does not mean we don’t talk to those students about those issues, because we do.”
Pogue explained that the consequences for bullying are warnings and out-of-school suspensions.
Some strategies for prevention that the school has explored and done in the past include convocations, a leadership group that meets with counselors, and ongoing education on bullying activities such as videos.
“We cannot just talk to kids about bullying,” Pogue said. “We have to teach kids about empathizing with each other and how to listen.”
EJHS practices strategies that have an impact on students’ lives beyond bullying alone. To that end, it has worked on establishing more effective communication lines between teachers and students and training teachers in Well-Managed Classroom techniques, which focus on actions rather than traits, following through with behavioral expectations, and working to build empathy and social skills. There is also a group of social workers called Circle of Friends, which focuses on developing friendship skills.
Pogue said something the school could try is making situational videos that pose an issue, such as bullying, and encouraging discussion in homeroom that way.
Another idea posed to Pogue was a supportive group for girls who feel mistreated. That group was slated to begin on Nov. 30. Adding to that idea, the school thought it might use student council to expand the idea so that it is not just for girls but all students.
Peer mediation will also be brought back. According to Pogue, the reason it was discontinued was that too few students took advantage of the opportunity. She said it will be made available again so that students who choose to do so may try to work out issues among their peers.
Emotions ran high at the conclusion of the meeting as many parents were upset they were not given the opportunity to speak.
Nicole Sparks, mother of one of the girls implicated in the incident reported at the Nov. 19 school board meeting, said that her daughter was afraid to go to school.
“I’m sorry that this other little girl’s hurt, but she was the one that was doing the bullying,” Sparks told WXIN-TV, Fox 59. “The little girl snatched my daughter up, slung her up against the locker, left fingerprint bruises, punched her in the throat.”
Another parent, Heather Collins, expressed frustration with the school.
“I feel like I have lost my daughter, and I feel like they’re to blame,” said Collins, whose daughter now lives with her father and attends school in Salem, Indiana. “They’re to blame for me missing experiences I should be able to have with my daughter.”
RBBCSC School Board Vice President Jimmie Durnil also appeared on Fox 59.
“You have to remember some of this is blown out of proportion,” he told the TV station. “We have got to make sure we get to the bottom of it and make sure we don’t overreact, but we do have a problem. There’s no doubt about that. We do have a problem.
On Dec. 4, Kain sent out a statement from the district stating that he had commissioned an anti-bullying task force.
“Their assignment is to collect evidence of occurrences of bullying, review the adequacy of current policies and administrative guidelines, and propose an action plan to the school board for implementation of suggested changes at the earliest possible date,” Kain said in the statement.
Members of that task force include: task force Chair Jerry Pittsford and EJHS teacher, RBBCSC School Board Secretary Dana Kerr, community member Bob Shanks, RBBCSC Assistant Superintendent Carol Gardiner, Stinesville Elementary School Principal Bill Buxton, Edgewood High School Assistant Principal Jerry Bland, Durnil, Atkinson, and Sharlet Doyle, who was one of the parents at the Nov. 19 school board meeting.
Originally published in Ellettsville Journal, 2012. Republished here for archival and portfolio purposes.