FITCHBURG — Growing concern over bullying has led the state to require school to begin tracking when allegations of bullying are made, and Fitchburg looking to update its policy to reflect that.
The School Committee on Monday looked at a potential policy update that would require individual schools in the district to track when a claim of bullying is made against another student.
According to the rules, the schools are currently only required to record when there is an incident of bullying.
State law defines bullying as the repeated use of written, verbal, or electronic expression to cause physical or emotional harm, create fear of harm, create a hostile environment at school, infringe on the rights of the victim, or to disrupt the education process.
The change would effectively provide data to the state regarding when allegations are made, though it is unclear how the state plans on using this new data set.
“Now, we have to record both sets of data,” said Roann Demanche, administrator of Pupil Services. Demanche said the district will have to wait and see what the state want to use the data for.
Mayor Stephen L. DiNatale noted that children face unprecedented types of bullying nowadays when it comes to social media and the internet.
“It doesn’t stop at the end of the school day,” he said. “It happen throughout the night, and the next morning, and on the weekends.”
Demanche said any student can come forward and make a claim of bullying, regardless of if it’s through cyber bullying or direct contact.
School Committee member Aiden Horgan said he was concerned the data could be inflated if too many allegations are made which don’t fit the district’s definition of bullying.
Sally Cragin, another committee member, said some of the concern should mitigated by the social and emotional learning happening inside the classroom.
“We have our social and emotional classroom and professional development for our teachers so that our teachers can handle what comes forward,” said Cragin.
Assistant Superintendent Jonathan Thompson said reducing the number of false claims starts with informing parents about what is or isn’t defined as bullying.
Demanche added that every allegation would be taken seriously, but the schools need to make sure they handle each report carefully.
“By collecting the data from the allegations, you’re kind of collecting the history to see and do an investigation,” she said.
Committee member Rosemary Dooling-Reynolds expressed concern over the move, saying that the word allegation can sometimes be charged.
However, Demanche said individual schools already try hard to take allegations seriously, the only difference now is they are reporting the data to the state.
