Walt Whitman High School Principal Alan Goodwin is not about to start monitoring students’ Facebook pages to make sure they aren’t bullying others.
But it seems that is exactly what the Department of Education expects him and other Montgomery County public school administrators to do to help reduce bullying among students.
In an October letter sent to school districts across the nation, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights reminds school officials that they need to consider whether an incident of bullying may also be considered discriminatory harassment that violates federal civil rights laws.
To that end, the letter states that “harassing conduct may take many forms, including verbal acts and name-calling; graphic and written statements, which may include use of cell phones or the Internet; or other conduct that may be physically threatening, harmful or humiliating.”
Here’s the part that’s worrisome: “A school is responsible for addressing harassment incidents about which it knows or reasonably should have known.” That’s a change from the standard of actual knowledge set in 1999 by the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a letter that the National School Boards Association wrote to the department.
That means that Goodwin and other school administrators are somehow supposed to know whether students are harassing others not only at school, but away from school as well. The school boards association thinks that “misguided litigation” could result.
To Goodwin, who oversees a student body of nearly 2,000 at his Bethesda school, the change in wording seems “absurd.”
“It’s hard to fathom that language. It seems unreasonable to hold someone responsible for something they don’t know,” he says. “Once again, schools are being pressed upon to be social agencies, to right all wrongs.”
MCPS spokesman Dana Tofig says the school system has not changed its policy concerning bullying because of the Department of Education letter. Nor does it expect school officials to keep an eye on students online. MCPS offers guidance about dealing with cyber bullying at http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/info/cybersafety.
“Staff is trained on bullying prevention and prevention programs are to be implemented in schools,” he said in an e-mail. “We have not instructed staff to monitor [a student’s] Internet usage outside of school—how could you do that? However, if staff becomes aware of any cyber bullying related to school, it should be reported.”
And that’s exactly what happens, Goodwin says, when school staff hears about students harassing one another through texts or online.
If students complain to Whitman staff members about harassment occurring off school grounds, such as on Facebook or Twitter, parents are notified, Goodwin says. If the harassment continues onto school grounds, “then it becomes a school issue for sure,” he says.
Preventing bullying is a hot topic. After President Barack Obama convened a summit on the issue in March, Facebook announced it would be enhancing its existing system to keep inappropriate content off the popular social network site by introducing a new safety feature “that lets people also report content to someone in their support system (like a parent or teacher) who may be able to address the issue more directly.”
Goodwin says cyber bullying isn’t a huge problem at Whitman, although school officials have dealt with some instances. He thinks that’s because students may be more aware that they leave behind a record in the form of texts or online messages.
“Fortunately, there’s written text,” he says. “It doesn’t become, ‘he said, she said.’ We’ve got the evidence.”
