Bullying Prevention and Intervention Plan (15 minutes)

Transcript (~26 min @ 6:40)

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▶ 6:54 Speaker 1: Good evening and welcome to Policy and Planning. Tonight we have one item on the agenda, bullying, prevention and intervention plan. Uh, I see that Dr. Turner has joined us in the horseshoe. Welcome, Dr. Turner. Thank you. Um, there is a presentation that goes with this, or will you just be sharing information with us tonight? Nope. So

▶ 7:10 Speaker 5: I'm just sharing information. Uh, essentially we, uh, you are supposed to be taking a look at the bullying prevention and intervention plan every other year. And we hadn't done so in quite a while here in Melrose, most likely because of the pandemic. That seems to be what threw everybody off course. And so we worked to redraft our plan. The plan is based on Desi's model plan and on the law. So there's not a lot in terms of wiggle room to make drastic changes to what is included in the draft that you have in front of you. But one of the things that we have committed to, uh, is sharing with you soliciting feedback from all of you on what we have currently in the plan, and then putting the draft of the plan out to the public for their feedback and their comment. And then once that happens, we would like to come back to you for a vote. So, so that's why I'm here tonight to answer any questions, to have an open dialogue about what we currently have in our plan. And then our next step will be to post it for the community along with a feedback form, which I also shared with you. It's an open-ended feedback form. So people may comment on, um, pieces of the plan or the plan in its entirety. We'll take all that feedback, change what can be changed. There may be things that people comment on that we're not able to change. Uh, and then we'll come back to you and ask that you vote to approve it.

▶ 8:27 Speaker 1: Very well. Are there comments or questions from the committee? Uh, Ms. Razzi Thomas, please.

▶ 8:33 Speaker 6: Thank you so much. Um, thank you Dr. Turner for being here. Uh, I have a bunch of questions, so, but you answered a bunch of them too. So the district has not yet involved parents, students, Mave, um, teachers, the police department. That's gonna be the next phase after this first.

▶ 8:49 Speaker 5: So what we're going to do, so most of what you have in front of you is, is pretty word for word from, from Desi's plan from the law and from Melrose's previous plan. Okay. So the connection with, uh, Maeve and with the other organizations was something that is carried over from the previous plan. We have certainly met with them to talk about individual, um, incidents that are happening, but we haven't yet presented this draft. Our first step was to bring it to all of you before we put it public to any other group. Okay. We did have teachers and staff members and administrators that have worked on the plan and have looked at the plan with us. And of course, Amy Linquist as well.

▶ 9:24 Speaker 6: Okay. Great. Um, so there's mention within it, there's one page where all of a sudden it flips to adult on adult bullying versus student on student or teacher, adult on student. So I'm just, I'm wondering about that. I'm wondering if it could be clearer. Like that should be its own section. So when I go through training in my district in Salem Public Schools, there's training about harassment, you know, a hostile learning, a working environment for adults, that kind of thing. Mm-hmm. Like harassment could be sexual, it could be, you know, just hostile. Mm-hmm. Hostility could be discrimination host, but that doesn't, I don't know where that lives in terms of our, of that's just in an HR module for staff. But it is mentioned at some point in there and it just felt confusing to me.

▶ 10:13 Speaker 5: Okay. Do you, are you able to tell me where it's mentioned in here? I'll find it 'cause it would live, it does live in our mandatory training that we all staff go through at the beginning of, of every year. But specifically the, the mass general law that deals with bullying, they define victim as a student. So we wouldn't necessarily, in this plan get into depth on staff. On staff that is an hr.

▶ 10:34 Speaker 6: That's why it was confusing to me. 'cause I was like, that didn't seem to really follow.

▶ 10:39 Speaker 5: But certainly if it's mentioned, I wanna make sure it's clear. Okay. So if you can let me

▶ 10:42 Speaker 6: Know, I'll find that for you. Okay. And I'll get back to you on that. But, um, so I wanted to ask you a few other things. Sure. I'd love to see the, the bullying and behavioral incident data that's mentioned in the working group that, that reviewed it on page four.

▶ 10:59 Speaker 5: Yep. So I, I, I have some data with me today, but I didn't plan on going to much in depth because we haven't had the chance to really take a deep dive yet as a team. Yeah. We submit an S S D R report at the end of each year to the state, and I have the, you know, the results from that report. But within each of those incidents, we would wanna pull them apart as a team to look at exactly what happened and what was involved in that. The other thing that can be a little bit tricky and just looking at the s SS d R report is that you might have something that is, uh, reported as potential bullying and we would therefore have to report it to the state as a potential bullying incident. But after investigation we may have determined it was not bullying, it was something else, harassment. So it would appear in two places on the report. Mm-hmm. Making the numbers look a little bit skewed. So, uh, what I would ask the committee is if it's okay for me to include that in my data presentation that I'll be giving mm-hmm. Later this winter when we talk about academic data. I'd be happy to do that and, and share a little more in depth. Um, but I do have just some general numbers. If there's something in particular that you wanted me to mention.

▶ 12:01 Speaker 6: What first, what, what does SS S D R stand for? It's

▶ 12:04 Speaker 5: The school. Um, of course I do, it's the school something discipline report State school. Yeah.

▶ 12:09 Speaker 7: But it's what we, we give to the, the state.

▶ 12:11 Speaker 5: We only have to report on certain incidents. We don't report everything. Yep. And we only have to report when the discipline itself involves suspension. And every, we Do report every incident of reported bullying.

▶ 12:24 Speaker 6: So anytime you get a report of bullying, you have to start an investigation. Correct. Right. Okay. And then you kind of rule in or rule out whether it meets the criteria to be bullying. Correct.

▶ 12:33 Speaker 5: Okay. And we, we give the state the numbers. So we got, you know, 10 accusations and then we would have X number that we determined were bullying or we disciplined the students for something else. Those sorts of things.

▶ 12:49 Speaker 6: I, I'm always, um, I'm kind of surprised in the definition, and I understand it's a legal definition, but usually there's a power differential in order for it to be called bullying and also has to be, you know, over and over again. It can't just be one, you know, awful comment or one moment of meanness. I guess I'm curious about why that's not in the definition.

▶ 13:09 Speaker 5: That's the legal definition in the law. So we took it word for word as is. I wouldn't wanna change it or amend it in any way. Certainly we do consider those things during the investigatory period, but that's, that's the way the definition is written.

▶ 13:22 Speaker 6: Um, working in a high school myself, it's, it's very hard to control online harassment, sexting, et cetera. How are you, how is the district managing that? And how do we get parents involved to take responsibility for these phones? Mm-hmm.

▶ 13:37 Speaker 5: Well, I think think the most important thing is the education that we're doing. Yeah. So, when we have presentations with students, when we have organizations come into our schools and, and educate our kids on how to use social media tools, that's really the best defense that we have for, for any of that. We're never going to be able to keep up with every new platform that comes out. And with the way in which our students are using those platforms. And even with my own teenagers, I always think if I think I know what they're posting, there's probably an account I don't know about. So it's really important to have open and honest dialogue and conversation and to provide that education. Certainly when things do rise to the level that a student has made a mistake and administration is aware of that mistake, they follow up with disciplinary consequences and, or conversation and education. Um, even if it's something that has taken place at home, often it does spill in to the school day. And that's when, you know, we are able to intervene and provide that, provide that support. But it is, it's very hard.

▶ 14:33 Speaker 6: Um, I would also like for us to get to see the results of the climate surveys that were mentioned on page four too. If we can at some point, that would be great. Mm-hmm. Um, and I'm gonna find that part of

▶ 14:46 Speaker 5: The report, please. Yeah. And if you don't find it, just let me know via email so I can make sure that wording is, is tight.

▶ 14:51 Speaker 6: Alright.

▶ 14:54 Speaker 1: Thank you. Uh, Ms. McAndrew, please. Thank you.

▶ 14:55 Jennifer McAndrew: Thanks for bringing this to us. Sure. I think it's really important that the district is reviewing this and updating it. Um, and very important that we're sharing it with the wider school community. So, um, I'm glad to hear that. Um, I have a couple of sort of processing questions and then one substantive question. So the processing questions are for sharing this with the community, is that gonna be, um, email, website, all that? Will there be like a dedicated page on the website where we can access both, where communities can access both the draft and the feedback forms?

▶ 15:29 Speaker 5: That's my hope. My hope was to post it tomorrow after this meeting on the website, along with the feedback form. And then with Mr. Eros permission, I would email it to the school community as well. Okay. Again, with the feedback form,

▶ 15:40 Jennifer McAndrew: I might consider, I might suggest also sending a blurb to the newspaper. Mm-hmm. Um, just to, uh, put, they, they tend to run notices and things if, um, with a link to that, whatever that webpage is that has that information. And I think

▶ 15:55 Speaker 4: We could put a link in our, um, when we send the good news report out Sure. On Friday, we can add that in the districtwide,

▶ 16:02 Jennifer McAndrew: That link. And some of the principals send a weekly update too. Mm-hmm. So that might be helpful. Um, 'cause I imagine you wanna get as much feedback as you can. Mm-hmm. Um, so I've, so there's, so there's the feedback form, which is how people provide feedback on this. But then there's also the online form to report a bullying incident, which is new, I think this year. The

▶ 16:27 Speaker 5: Form is not new. It's the same form we've had for many years. It's just we made an online version as well. That's to

▶ 16:32 Jennifer McAndrew: Make it easier. So the online piece is new. Correct. And that was discussed when we approved the handbooks because the online form was added to the handbooks. I see. It's at the very end of this, when you have all the different links, I think it might be useful to take a read through and see if there are places within the body where you might wanna reference the online form. 'cause there's a lot of instances where it says reporting, and you may wanna make it clear that this not just written reporting. So when you, you provide like, the address of the district, it tends to make it sound like these are written reports only. But since we now have the online form, you might wanna put it like within the body of the, the plan a couple times. Um, so the, those are my kind of, um, processy questions. I my substantive, oh, the other thing is the page numbers don't match the table of contents. Oh, okay. So just to have someone do one of those, sorry, I was trying to find something a second time around and then I can find, oops, I was not on the right page. Um, draft my question. Content question though is, and importantly is about the, um, interplay between students who are on five oh fours and IEPs and bullying investigations. So I just wanna make sure I understand it and then maybe we could take a look at that section. I understand we, you know, this is all very legal and we want legalese and need to be careful, but, um, so a student, if a student's on a 5 0 4 or an I E P, it's very clear here that if they're found to be, um, the target, um, or of bullying, um, that they could, that their I E P or 5 0 4 could be adjusted or certainly would be reviewed to make sure that it's, that they're not additional services or supports that are needed. Um, is that also true if it the perpetrator is on a 5 0 4 or an I E p?

▶ 18:31 Speaker 5: Sure. I mean, the 5 0 4 and the I E P both provide some level of service. So if we felt that a student was perpetrating an act of bullying and it was somehow related to their disability because we weren't servicing them in the correct way, then certainly we would come back to the table and say, we need to look at this plan and see what, what part of it needs to be beefed up or changed. Often that shows up as counseling sessions, um, or, uh, daily check-ins, things like that where we might identify that a student needs more than what we're, what we're currently offering. The other important piece to students that are on an I E P are 5 0 4 is if the team believes that they could potentially be the victim of bullying because of the nature of their disability, that needs to be addressed at that i e p or 5 0 4 table even before the plan is written, so that there can be preventative measures put into place to support that student before waiting till something happens.

▶ 19:20 Jennifer McAndrew: Um, that's what I would hope and thought that you would say. I will say, if you take a read through it, again, as a lay person, you might wanna see if the language matches what you're saying. Okay. Or what we're doing. Okay. And maybe it's because we, by the law, we only have to write it this way and that's what we do. But I think it, um, and then would a student, is it possible that a student who is found to be a, um, a victim of bullying is who is not on a 5 0 4 i e p may then get a review to be on a 5 0 4, for example? Like would the, could that ever be an outcome of the bullying investigation that someone would get services? Yeah.

▶ 20:03 Speaker 5: I, I, I suppose I I would, I would imagine that sure.

▶ 20:07 Speaker 7: Probably there would be other factors that would,

▶ 20:09 Speaker 5: that would impact that decision. I'm not sure that one decision like that would, would bring a student to rise to that level. But certainly it's possible, especially if we felt like there was a reason why that particular student was being targeted and we needed to bring the team together to investigate if there were a disability that were impacting their performance.

▶ 20:27 Speaker 4: Okay. Or the case of a 5 0 4, if I may. Yeah. You know, there could be a, an emotional, a attachment that could occur. And because of that being the target of what occurred, that may infringe upon the curriculum. So therefore you would take

▶ 20:43 Jennifer McAndrew: A look at that. That's, I'm thinking about school refusal in particular. Right.

▶ 20:46 Speaker 4: So I would see it being more towards, towards

▶ 20:48 Jennifer McAndrew: The 5 0 4 to emotional. Yeah. Probably like a 5 0 4. Okay. Right. Um,

▶ 20:53 Jennifer McAndrew: okay. Great. Um, so yeah, that, that was the section that to me, I felt didn't, and again, I'm not an expert. You all are, but I didn't feel like when I read that it matched up super well with what I know to be the values and procedures of Melrose Public Schools. Um, and I would just say, I hope, and I assume that we'll send this to all of the school support and advocacy groups in town, cpac, the PTOs, all of that state councils. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thanks for this

▶ 21:25 Speaker 1: Ms. Boothy. Please.

▶ 21:26 Speaker 3: Just one other process point. I'm appreciative that we have the feedback form and there's a few different ways that we're thinking about getting feedback. Would we ever consider potentially partnering up with parent university or a way for us to bring people physically together versus just via email or via a form?

▶ 21:47 Speaker 5: We certainly can. You know, I think, to be honest, we wanted to, to get this. Yep. Mm-hmm. We wanted to make sure we got this through, because currently the plan that we're working off of, it's been quite some time since it's been reviewed. And the names that are in there are people that are no longer here. So I think we had this sense of urgency to sort of really make sure that we've got a, a solidified plan in place. Um, I think what might be really valuable is to use one of those vehicles like parent University or something else to hold discussions about how it's being implemented. Yeah. Because, you know, at the end of the day, a lot of this is language from the law, language from Desi's model plan. There's not a whole lot of room to change the document itself, but there is room for us to have conversations about how it actually looks and feels when we're implementing it. So that I would love to see in more of a face-to-face dialogue. I, I Would love,

▶ 22:35 Speaker 4: We could speak with, um, Lisa Lewis. Lisa Lewis, great. And ask her if we can add that as a, a class. Yeah.

▶ 22:44 Speaker 3: I love that idea personally, just because I think to the point that you named earlier, if this is something we should be doing every other year or so. I think actually getting real time feedback about the experience, um, and just having face-to-face conversations, I think just goes a really long way. So if it's possible, I

▶ 23:02 Speaker 4: Think would be great. I can envision two great instructors in that class in my head now, I just have to convince them to do it. I can convi, I can see it. It

▶ 23:11 Speaker 6: Used to be a term we used voluntold. Yes. Voluntold a lot. We used to use that a lot. A Certain superintendent did. I wonder which one. It's true.

▶ 23:20 Speaker 4: I have a feeling I know who that was. She did that to us a lot as well.

▶ 23:28 Speaker 1: Ms. Woody, any, any further?

▶ 23:30 Speaker 3: No, thank you for the consideration.

▶ 23:32 Paul Brodeur: Mayor Broder, please. Thank you. Three, I think quick ones, uh, maybe process oriented, uh, in no particular order, cross complaints, you know, this, this, the, the paradigm here, the kind of regulatory statutory scheme, if you will, talks about, you know, victim perpetrator perfectly make, makes, makes perfect sense. But as we all know from experience these things, it's not just related to school bullying and million forms with this happens where air there's essentially cross complaints, right? Someone will be complained against. And when you interview, um, or, or investigate a little bit, the, the perpetrator, the perpetrator will say, well, actually, here's what really happened. Um, if there's a short answer to this, how does that work?

▶ 24:23 Speaker 5: I wish there were a short answer. My, my previous life as a middle school principal, that is what I lived and breathed every day. Mm-hmm. It is never clear black and white. Yeah. There's an accusation, there's a victim, there's a perpetrator, and that's the end of the story. You are always untangling a a long and complicated story that lives in social conflict and sometimes years of kids kind of growing up with each other and having lots and lots of different social conflicts. That's, that's what the investigators do. So that's why it's important that we're documenting along the way. We do have an investigation form where we're interviewing multiple witnesses, taking detailed notes on what we're hearing and, and engaging in multiple conversations, often with the same students over and over again. So one of the things I would always say when I would call a parent to say I'm opening an investigation is, you know, I'm gonna speak with your child whatever day it was today or tomorrow, and I will likely have to speak to them three, four, maybe five more times. Because inevitably, as I start to unpack what, what has actually happened, I'll have to circle back and say, so now I heard about this. Can we talk about this? So it's very complicated. Uh, the investigations do take time. It's important that there's multiple adults that are working together to really have, you know, conversations with everybody involved and do the best we can to, to untangle that. But you're right, it's very rarely a simple

▶ 25:39 Paul Brodeur: Perfect. Um, perfect. Lead into my next question is, are there any, um, reporting timelines built into the statutory regulatory sea? Because as you know, from your experience, when, when this process starts, I, the, the, the typical, um, if there is such a thing, a typical reporter or or parent will say, this is what's happening. This is what has happened, and quite reasonably, they're I impulse to go fix it now. Mm-hmm. And that is not really by necessity, that is not really the way the process can work. Right. Right.

▶ 26:19 Speaker 5: So, great question, and I will get back to you with the specific answer about the timeline for the whole investigation, because I don't know that off the top of my head. What I do know is as soon as we receive that report, the very first thing that should happen is that a safety plan should be put into place. Mm-hmm. And in the letter that goes out to families notifying them that a bullying investigation is being opened, that safety plan should be detailed. Sometimes those are fairly simple, you know, it's a matter of keeping the students away from each other while we're conducting the investigation. Other times they can be fairly complicated and might involve, you know, um, schedule changes or might involve some extra support during the school day while we're figuring out what actually happened that should take place as soon as the report comes in. So that's really the most important piece that we, that we kick off that investigation immediately with that safety plan in writing for the families to see.

▶ 27:07 Paul Brodeur: Is it fair to say the safety plan, I'm just guessing off the top of my head here, that the safety plan has the potential to get more complicated for our older students because the range of activities they participate in might be more diverse, theater, band, athletics, whatever the

▶ 27:23 Speaker 5: Case may be. Sometimes. And sometimes it's, sometimes it can be easier because you can say to them, you need to stay away from so-and-so, and, and they get that when you're dealing with little ones. Mm-hmm. Sometimes it can be harder and they don't quite understand the intricacies of what's involved in an investigation. So when you have, you know, elementary school kids who at the end of the day wanna be friends and wanna make amends, and you're saying, well, you can't, but they're at recess and they see each other. So sometimes it's actually more complicated mm-hmm. When you've got, when you've got the little ones.

▶ 27:50 Paul Brodeur: And last question, I think that I, I think must be very challenging, hopefully it doesn't happen a lot, is, um, I'll call out of district issues where, um, yeah, I'll use a hypothetical. There's a Melrose Public School student and, uh, a charter school student mm-hmm. That, um, are under investigation as an allegation, whatever the case may be. Mm-hmm. The, I would never call them easy, but districts that, I mean, complaints or investigations that are wholly within the district mm-hmm. Um, should be easier. Everyone's on the same page as kind of a single apparatus. We have our policy, how,

▶ 28:31 Paul Brodeur: how easy is it to, to make it work when it's, when it, they're outta district issues? And what do you do if, you know, there's a real philosophical difference between the way our district handles this and the, um, institution that houses or is responsible for the other student

▶ 28:52 Speaker 1: doesn't play ball or has a totally different attitude about what's the appropriate outcome. Mm-hmm.

▶ 28:55 Speaker 5: Well, that's the nice thing about Dessi giving us that model plan and the language to use, because it's called out specifically that school districts and schools have an obligation to contact another school or another school district if there's another student involved. So there shouldn't be too much of schools or school districts not wanting to engage in a conversation, in a dialogue about how to move forward. It's called out specifically mm-hmm. That they are obligated to do. So if there's a philosophical difference, I would go back to that safety plan. That's why that safety plan is really important, and it's important that it's updated at the end of the investigation. So as the Melrose Public Schools, our responsibility would be to ensure that that safety plan is really tight and that other student would be held to that safety plan for the protection of our Melrose Public School student.

▶ 29:39 Speaker 4: And if I may add, if that still didn't work mm-hmm. In that particular sense, we always have the right to then connect with the police mm-hmm. For that particular, you know, safe. Sure. You know, to make sure that the child is safe in that environment.

▶ 29:56 Speaker 5: But I, but I think that's rare. Most, when you call other schools and say, you know, one of your students had something with one of my students. Generally speaking, it's, it's a cooperative and collaborative endeavor.

▶ 30:06 Speaker 1: Thanks for the information and the answer. Sure.

▶ 30:13 Speaker 1: Any further comments or questions? I have just one. Sure. Um, so could you outline for, uh, both the public following along at home and, uh, for those in the chamber, again, what the timeline is, uh, when will you be coming back to us with what, when will the, these things I, these, uh, survey will go out to the public very quickly, but, uh, when will you close that survey? How much time will you take to process it? Just general timelines, if you would please.

▶ 30:42 Speaker 5: So, again, my hope is that we can move through this with some sense of urgency because we need a plan that's current and, and up to date. So I was hoping to put the, uh, community to put this out to the community tomorrow, both on the website and via email, and then we can include it in the suggestions that you've had, the good news and the principal's newsletters. And I wanted to come back here in two weeks, um, having collected feedback and, you know, made any changes that we can make. Again, I think the, the harder part that will require more time is how we're implementing and talking with people about what do you all think about how we're implementing the document itself? Doesn't have too much room to make major sweeping changes because so much of it is the law and, and the model plan. So I would like to do it in two weeks. Certainly, if you feel like we need to push it back another two weeks beyond that, I'm happy to wait. But, you know, sitting a month on a, an older plan, I'd rather, I'd rather not, I'd rather do it in, in the next two weeks.

▶ 31:39 Speaker 1: Okay. Very good. Ms. Razzi Thomas, I promise I'm dreading calling you because we're done with this. Go ahead.

▶ 31:46 Speaker 6: Just Quickly, sorry.

▶ 31:49 Speaker 1: And I would invite you to follow up offline afterwards, but please go ahead.

▶ 31:55 Speaker 6: Um, I think the real test is in the students, not the parents. So I hope we can figure out how to have the students give us feedback too. Mm-hmm. Sure. And, and in six months and another six months, in another six months, and really love to see student leadership work on upstanding and building. Yeah. And, you know, as, as positive culture as we can Sure. Given the limitations that we have, because lots of stuff happens when kids aren't at school, that gets brought to school. Mm-hmm. Thank you so much for the work you're doing, and thank you. Thank you.

▶ 32:28 Speaker 1: Thank you, Dr. Turner. We appreciate your time tonight. Thank you. That concludes, uh, policy and planning this evening. Thank you.

▶ 32:35 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: Thank you so much, Ms. Desel. Next on our agenda is the finance and facility subcommittee. Ms. Razzi Thomas. Thank You. Mm-hmm.

▶ 32:52 Speaker 6: Thank you for joining us Mr. Kelly.