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 Posted - 10/19/2006 : 04:40:00 AM
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October 18, 2006 - The Journal News.com, NY - Rockland - Police spent a day last week ticketing drivers who pass stopped school buses. We applaud school bus safety efforts, but wonder, who is making sure the buses are safe inside?
At some point every year, at PTA meetings, school board meetings and other places parents congregate, complaints come up about bullying and bad behavior on the bus.
It's a major problem among children, and it needs a coordinated solution from all those involved in the school experience. Everyone on a campus should know what bullying looks like, and sounds like because it's often verbal, and how to stop it and prevent it. Students must understand that their district's "Code of Conduct" extends to the bus.
In recent years in Rockland, the issues have been serious, especially at the middle school level. In Ramapo last week, a 12-year-old was shot under the right eye on a school bus ride home. Last spring, a sexual bullying incident on a middle school bus in Nyack district landed three boys in Family Court facing misdemeanor charges of harassment.
Not that Rockland has cornered the market on bullying in the school bus. Forty-six percent of bullying incidents take place on the bus, according to surveys performed by Kamaron Institute, which offers bully prevention to schools across the country. The nonprofit institute also found 41 percent of elementary school students and 52 percent of middle school students report that bullying happened on their bus the very day they were asked about bullying.
Parents will ask for monitors on buses, and schools will say that's not affordable. Schools will put in video cameras, but students will figure out, especially by middle school, that the bus cameras aren't always running, and even if they are, they don't capture everything. And, besides, is every second of tape being reviewed?
Bullying appears to be endemic to the elementary- and middle-school culture, but it isn't. The issue needs to be taken seriously be every single person who comes in contact with a pupil during the school day - from principal to custodian to secretary to student.
New City Elementary School Principal Gail Nachimson has been piloting a schoolwide bullying education program based on Clemson University's Olweus program. It's been so successful it's being adopted throughout the Clarkstown schools.
Nachimson is convinced that just any supervision doesn't help. Everyone in the school environment, including the students themselves, should be trained. Bus drivers, she said, are extremely important members of the school community. In Clarkstown, she said, they are treated that way, giving much credit to district transportation director Peter Brockmann.
The state mandates anti-bullying training for school bus drivers, Brockmann said. That training, though, can't happen in a vacuum. Drivers need to be supported, so they are seen by both the administration and students as part of the team. On Clarkstown buses, special magnets with the school district's logo and statements like No Bully Zone and Not On My Bus help remind everyone that expected school behavior extends to the bus.
It is beyond a warm-and-fuzzy "character-building" exercise. Bullying behavior damages both the victim and the perpetrator. The cost to the victim is well-documented: school shootings tied to a victim-seeking-revenge scenario, a child's suicide after teasing and bullying at school. The bully suffers too: 60 percent of those who are characterized as bullies in middle school have at least one felony conviction by age 24.
By changing the attitude at every level, it becomes the norm to speak out against bullying, rather than ignore it. As Nachimson noted, peer pressure, especially in middle school, "is everything." When anti-bullying training starts in kindergarten and continues through elementary school, Nachimson said, by middle school, "you have a response, 'we don't stand by, we take action.' " Imagine.
By the way, today is School Bus Driver Appreciation Day in New York state. The proclamation notes that 2 million children are transported to and from school in school buses in the state. Think of how many are bullied, or bully another child, each day during that ride.
Schools in Rockland are, like Clarkstown, acting to prevent bullying, not waiting to react to it. We are encouraged by proactive measures that include everyone, especially other children. As Nachimson noted, the witnesses to bullying are victims as well. Intervention by peers is especially in a "transition" place where supervision is minimal and bullying most frequently occurs, such as a school bus.
After all, bus drivers are supposed to be watching the road, not the riders.
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NY - Editorial - Keep school bus ride safe
