Administrators at Lincoln Junior High in Plymouth will have a chance to amend their bullying data report to the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE). The report from the IDOE denoting the incidents of bullying in each of the public schools in Indiana that was released on Sunday showed that there were 60 incidents of bullying at LJH. According to LJH Assistant Principal, Craig Hopple, the number that should have been reported was three or four incidents.
This was the first year of data gathering by the state on bullying. Data shows a total of 9,396 incidents occurred statewide.
Daniel Altman, press secretary, IDOE, said, “Plymouth Lincoln Junior High reported 60 incidents. Because schools self-report data, we can only state what was reported, not what actually occurred. However, we are allowing schools to update/amend their data because they are noting errors in their own data (another by product of this being the first year this was required).” Altman said they will be posting updates to their website weekly.
Indiana’s student safety reporting law (IC 20-35-6-1) requires school corporations to report student bullying and arrest data for each school by July 1 of each year.
Arrest data has not been released as yet.
Some of the inaccurate reports may have been due to misinterpretations of the data being required. Incidents were only to be reported after a school official determined that “bullying” had actually occurred as verbal incidents, physical incidents, social/relational incidents, written communication/electronic incidents or a combination of the other categories. Indiana law defines bullying as “overt and unwanted repeated acts, including verbal or written communications by phone or computer that creates a hostile school environment for a targeted student that places them in reasonable fear of harm or affects their mental health or school performance.”
Hopple said the majority of concerns reported by students or parents who feel there has been bullying are for verbal incidents such as name calling or inappropriate language. Hopple said, “We always investigate every report and contact students that may be involved and their parents.” He said, “There is nothing to trivial to come in and talk about. We have an open door policy.” He said each concern and any consequences is handled on a case by case basis.
The school corporation has bullying information that can be accessed on the school’s website. All staff of the PCSC are required to read and acknowledge that they have read the information. Among other information, the site spells out the definition of a “bystander” and an “upstander” that may help students understand how they can stop bullying or support others students who are having difficulties.
After the report was issued, Superintendent Daniel Tyree said, “We want every child and parent who feels that bullying has occurred to contact us. We want every complaint reported and recorded so that there is always a paper trail if a problem arises in the future.”
Carol Anders Correspondent
