Education Law

Safe and anonymous

According to the National Institutes of Health, bullying is widespread in American schools, with more than 16 percent of U.S. school children saying they had been bullied by other students during a single term (semester). The U.S. Department of Justice reported, in a 2001 survey, that 29 percent of students in grades 9-12 reported that someone had offered, sold, or given them illegal drugs on school property in the previous year. Twenty-six U.S. states have either enacted or are considering anti-bullying legislation. Twelve states, including Florida and Michigan are currently reviewing legislation designed to curb bullying in schools.

What?s a kid to do, with bullies and peer pressure on one side and the desire to avoid the stigma of being a ?snitch? on the other side? Go online of course! According to a story released by the Associated Press yesterday, schools are now using web sites to allow anonymous reporting of bullying, crime, drugs, and harassment. Justin Bergener, creator of SchoolTipline says that he hopes students who might otherwise be too scared or shy to speak up will be willing to post on the site. "There really is this culture and code of silence that's particularly prevalent in middle schools and high schools," Bergener said.

School administrators sign up for a subscription service and are receive text or e-mail messages with incident reports. Depending on how the service is established, tips can be provided with no personal information or students might have to create a logon and password to access the system, but would still allow them to be anonymous.

Regardless of how the information is sent, schools see a benefit in using these online systems as another tool in preventing some really unfortunate events. "They'd rather have 10 good ones and one false one than none at all," Bergener told The Associated Press on Monday. And BoardBuzz thinks that, as Martha Stewart would say, "This is a good thing!"

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on October 15, 2008 (boomark / email).