{"id":11447,"date":"2017-08-11T02:01:11","date_gmt":"2017-08-11T06:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=11447"},"modified":"2017-08-11T02:01:11","modified_gmt":"2017-08-11T06:01:11","slug":"bullying-up-in-brick-schools-report-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2017\/08\/bullying-up-in-brick-schools-report-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"Bullying Up in Brick Schools, Report Finds"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"School<\/a>

School Lockers (Photo: Rafael Castillo\/ Flickr)<\/p><\/div>\n

The number of bullying incidents in Brick Township schools is up as the district, like others across the country, struggles with the social media revolution and its effects on students.<\/p>\n

\u201cI told the school board that we\u2019ve been seeing a bit of an increase,\u201d said\u00a0Earl Mosely, the district\u2019s anti-bullying coordinator. \u201cWe\u2019ve had more racial comments in the schools and religious comments coming from these kids. We have not had that before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mosely presented a report at Thursday night\u2019s Board of Education meeting outlining the number of incidents covered under the district\u2019s \u201cHarassment, Intimidation and Bullying\u201d (HIB) policy over the last several years, as required by state law.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During the 2016-17 school year, HIB incidents rose to 42 from the 30 the prior year. Before that, bullying had been on the decline. In 2012-13, the first year HIBs were tracked, the district reported 62 instances. It then dropped to 26 the next year, followed by 23 in 2014-15, as the district developed several programs for both teachers and students to combat bullying.<\/p>\n

This year,\u00a0Mosely said, staff members \u2013 from teachers to secretaries \u2013 were specifically trained in suicide prevention.<\/p>\n

Not every conflict between students is represented in the HIB report. In many instances, Mosely said, school staff must determine whether an altercation between students reaches the legal definition of a HIB violation or whether it is something that can be solved more easily.<\/p>\n

\u201cOftentimes what we find is that you get an allegation that \u2018so and so did something,\u2019 but it takes two to tango,\u201d Moseley said. \u201cIt might not be bullying, but it\u2019s a conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bulk of the HIB incidents were recorded in the district two middle schools. The most \u2013 13 in all \u2013 took place at Veterans Memorial Middle School and the second-most, 10, occurred at Lake Riviera Middle School.<\/p>\n

Mosely said students sometimes feel \u201cisolated\u201d and turn to social media to air grievances publicly instead of resolving the conflict directly with the other party. The district is continuing to develop its anti-bullying curriculum this year and has already gotten to work on the 2017-18 \u201cweek of respect\u201d event that has now become a district tradition.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The number of bullying incidents in Brick Township schools is up as the district, like others across the country, struggles with the social media revolution and its effects on students. \u201cI told the school board that we\u2019ve been seeing a bit of an increase,\u201d said\u00a0Earl Mosely, the district\u2019s anti-bullying coordinator. \u201cWe\u2019ve had more racial comments […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6986,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[3029,24,1068,1067],"class_list":["post-11447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brick-schools","tag-anti-bullying","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-bullying","tag-hib"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3644385607_381642d8ff_b.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-2YD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}