Districts are required to annually assess their implementation of state’s anti-bullying legislation.
The Evesham Township School District has released figures for its latest self-assessment under the state’s Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act.
Per state law, school districts are required to annually assess their implementation of state anti-bullying legislation by using a state rubric to judge 26 key indicators across eight core elements for a period of July 1 through June 30.
Those core elements include establishing Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying programs, approaches or other initiatives, training on the BOE-approved HIB policy, additional staff instruction and training programs, curriculum and instruction on HIB related information and skills, HIB personnel, school-level HIB incident reporting procedure, HIB investigation procedure and general HIB reporting.
The maximum score a district can receive is 78, as each of the indicators can be scored with a score of three for exceeding expectations, a score of two for meeting expectations, a score of one for partially meeting expectations or a score of zero for meeting expectations.
According to this year’s self-assessment, each school in the ETSD met or exceeded all standards.
Beeler Elementary, DeMasi Elementary, Rice Elementary and Marlton Middle schools received a score of 75. Evans Elementary, Jaggard Elementary and Marlton Elementary received a 77. Van Zant Elementary received a 76. DeMasi Middle School received a 74.
Overall, the district’s average score was 75.6.
District director of curriculum and instruction Danielle Magulick, who serves as the anti-bullying coordinator, said each school was also required to have its own anti-bullying specialist at each building, which for the ETSD is each school’s counselor.
As in past years, Magulick said district officials would continue to meet, review and analyze any data collected between her, the building specialists and school principals.
“We’re always looking to see trends, patterns, programs we have, initiatives that are going on in the school, and how can we enhance them,” Magulick said.
From the meetings, Magulick said the group would develop and share recommendations for the new school year, and then counselors and principals would turnkey the recommendations to each school’s safety team.
“If one school did something related to our Kindness Challenge Program, let’s say, we might have talked about it in one of our meetings, and now another school might try it out,” Magulick said.
According to Magulick, the district targets schools and programs based on where a school’s scores are, with the goal always to improve.
“A way to think about the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Law is a way to promote and improve a positive school climate,” Magulick said.
Overall, Magulick said the district was trending down in the number of HIB incidents, although every school is different every year.
“The more we’re able to train on what things are a conflict versus what’s bullying or a HIB incident, we’ve seen a decrease,” Magulick said.
