Superintendent To Discuss Anti-Bullying Law With Community Tonight

Bullying. You’ve seen it portrayed in television shows and movies. You may have witnessed it at one time or another, or were perhaps even a victim. More recently, you’ve probably heard about teen suicides across the nation as a result of bullying.

To protect students in New Jersey, the State Senate and General Assembly enacted the “Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act” earlier this year, which is considered to be the strictest law passed in recent years.

Tonight, Superintendent of Schools Dr. David Miceli will explain this new legislation with members of the community at an informal forum in the New Providence High School Media Center, beginning at 7 p.m.

“It’ll be an opportunity for parents to come out, to ask questions about it, and to have a dialogue about how the district is going to approach it,” Miceli told Patch during an interview in August.

During the summer months, Miceli said it took a tremendous amount of time to prepare for this new law, develop the policy and put all of the protocol in place to facilitate the new process.

“We’ve always had a process in place, but it certainly requires a lot more than it had so there will be just more discussion about it, there will be more people involved,” he said.

In the past when incidents have occurred, Miceli said the administration and staff handled it and Board of Education members then heard about it at a later date. Now, board members may potentially have a more active role. Even the New Jersey School Boards Association has a larger role in an advisory capacity, helping Board of Education members across the state better understand the new law.

Under this legislation, each school district is also required to have a Anti-Bullying Coordinator and each school is required to have an Anti-Bullying Specialist. Those individuals in the New Providence School District are:

—Dr. Deborah Feinberg, District Anti-Bullying Coordinator
—Lauren Zirpoli, Anti-Bullying Specialist,
—David Chango, Anti-Bullying Specialist,
—John Richter, Anti-Bullying Specialist,
—Dr. Joseph Harvey, Anti-Bullying Specialist,

Each school is also required to have a safety team, consisting of the school principal, Anti-Bullying Specialist, a parent in the community and other staff members as designated by each principal.

“Each building has to have a school safety team that will evaluate the incidents and circumstances within the building in terms of bullying and can come up with new types of programs, interventions, suggestions, recommendations — whatever the case may be,” Miceli said. “But I think they have to meet twice annually to have dialogue with respect to what’s happening within the building on an annual basis.”

Each school district is also required to identify incidents of bullying occurring within school as well as incidents outside of school that impacts how a student functions during school hours.

“If there are incidents of bullying that occur outside of the school that then have influence on things that happen in the school, then we will become involved in that matter,” Miceli said.

While this new legislation is taking effect in each school district around the state this year, Miceli said the New Providence School District has had a process in place for years to deal with any incidents of bullying.

“My approach has always been and will continue to be that you have to have a framework in place in the district to be able to address the issues and prevent the issues,” he said. “But there’s nothing we’re going to be able to do to stop this entirely. It’ll continue to occur, but you try to be as proactive as you can with programs and interventions, and I think our Character Education Program in each of the schools has been an example of what we’re trying to do to prevent this from happening.”

While this new legislation was not supposed to cost school districts any additional funds, Miceli said it is costing the New Providence School District money to implement this year.

“It’s an ongoing topic for everybody depending upon each district and every school’s resources that they currently have will change the dynamic about how to go about addressing this because there are no additional funds for this,” he said. “The intent was that it would not cost anything, but certainly whenever you’re trying to implement a new initiative, there’s got to be some kind of money involved. Simply the training itself costs money. But it’s certainly a challenge for all schools to figure out how to best utilize their resources to manage the investigations and the entire process.”

Miceli said the administration and some Board of Education members went to a three-hour training in June, which was shared with Westfield, Springfield and Summit School Districts and ultimately saved money for all four districts.

Further, every staff member in the district, including substitute teachers, custodians and aides, would receive additional training on how to identify any incidents of bullying and how to investigate it, Miceli said in August. This training took place during the Professional Development Day on Monday, Oct. 10.

“It’ll be interesting to see, over the course of the year, how the new law is implemented and whether or not there will be changes, whether it’s the law itself or the actual implementation of this or how districts will approach this,” Miceli said. “Time will tell.”

All community members are welcome to attend the Superintendent’s Forum tonight at 7 p.m. in the High School Media Center to learn more about the new "Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act."