Bullying stats collected by local schools over the past two years show numbers are remaining fairly low and steady, but questions remain on how the data will be used.
After two years of collecting data on bullying incidents, local school officials say that the information is good to have and could alert them to problematic trends. But nothing they’ve seen so far has sparked a need for new policies, and they wonder how the state is using the data.
In 2015, the Indiana Department of Education mandated that all schools track the number of bullying incidents and report those figures to the state each year. The goal was to improve safety training for schools across Indiana, state officials said at the time.
For the 2016-17 school year, the number of bullying incidents at local schools ranged from four at Clark-Pleasant and Franklin schools, to 15 in Edinburgh and Center Grove schools. These numbers are similar to the 2015-2016 school years, where local schools reported their number of bullying incidents was between four and 14.
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Greenwood schools had 13 incidents of bullying in the 2016-2017 school year. While the goal is to get that number to zero, the amount wasn’t a figure that was concerning compared to the number of students enrolled in the district, Superintendent Kent DeKoninck said.
Policy changes likely wouldn’t happen unless there was a spike in the number of bullying incidents, said Andy Kline, Nineveh-Henley-Jackson Schools assistant superintendent.
While school officials agreed that tracking bullying data is important, so far the data hasn’t changed any of the ways they operate. Officials at Greenwood, Franklin, Center Grove, Nineveh-Hensley-Jackson and Clark-Pleasant schools said they haven’t made any policy, training or teaching changes as a result of their school’s bullying data. One question that remains for school officials is how the state is using this new data, and what that may mean for them.
For a situation to count as bullying, it has to be a repeated act. A single instance of harassment or misconduct, if it isn’t carried out on multiple occasions, isn’t going to be counted as bullying, Clark-Pleasant Schools Superintendent Patrick Spray said.
That means that while situations, such as when a student made a demeaning social media post about Sikh students last fall, would be concerning and require school officials to act immediately to correct it, it wouldn’t qualify as bullying, he said.
In many cases, teachers can act after the first instance of harassment or misconduct, correcting an issue before it escalates into bullying, said Center Grove executive director of human resources Nora Hoover. She helped implement the district’s tracking of bullying data when she was the principal at Center Grove Middle School Central.
Collecting bullying data allows state officials to see what areas they may want to emphasize while providing guidance to schools. The data also allows school districts to measure how they are doing in preventing bullying and help them decide whether they want to implement any new policies, said Adam Baker, Indiana Department of Education press secretary.
One area that state officials are now emphasizing when they host training seminars for local school officials is cyber bullying, which Baker said is becoming more prevalent.
Some local school officials expressed concern about whether bullying data can be accurately compared between school districts whose interpretations of bullying definitions may vary.
The definition of bullying is ambiguous and the interpretation of what constitutes bullying is going to vary, Spray said.
While the data is useful in comparing numbers to previous years with the same school, comparisons between schools could be flawed depending on how the bullying definitions are interpreted, Center Grove Schools Superintendent Richard Arkanoff said.
For example, Center Grove, which had 8,345 students enrolled last school year, reported 15 incidents of bullying. Franklin Township schools, with a slightly higher enrollment of 9,362, reported 229 incidents of bullying.
Discrepancies in how the data is being reported is something the state is aware of, and they are looking at ways to make sure that school officials are all interpreting the bullying definition in the same way, Baker said.
But the specific word used to define the problem isn’t really the issue, as teachers will still respond to correct student misconduct regardless of what it is called, Arkanoff said.
“Whether we call them bullying, discipline or behavior problems, the most important thing is that we deal with them,” Arkanoff said.
This fall, Center Grove started a character education program in its schools, something that others in the county, including Franklin and Nineveh-Hensley-Jackson, already employ. The goal of the program is to be proactive in teaching kids positive character traits, such as respect, Arkanoff said.
While the program wasn’t started in response to any concerns about bullying statistics, teaching students the proper ways to interact with their peers is another way the district can be proactive in preventing bullying from happening, he said.
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Schools are now required to report bullying incident numbers to the state, but officials say those numbers widely vary. Here is a look at our local numbers, and those in other central Indiana school districts.
SCHOOL;BULLYING INCIDENTS 2015-16;TOTAL ENROLLMENT;BULLYING INCIDENTS 2016-17;TOTAL ENROLLMENT;Incidents per enrollment
Center Grove;14;8,180;15;8,345;0.18%
Clark-Pleasant;4;6,571;4;6,767;0.06%
Edinburgh;6;911;15;862;1.74%
Franklin;3;5,004;4;5,037;0.08%
Greenwood;NA;3,902;1;4,035;0.32%
N-H-J ;5;1,828;13;1,868;0.70%
Carmel-Clay;43;16,082;26;16,17;4;0.16%
Flat Rock-Hawcreek;48;863;13;88;1.47%
Franklin Township;150 ;9,151;229 ;9,362;2.45%
Hamilton Southeastern;3;21,367;7;21,642;0.03%
Indianapolis Public Schools;188;28,767;348;27,630;1.26%
Noblesville;78;10,426;7;10,581;0.07%
Perry Township;17;16,128;38;16,608;0.23%
Westfield-Washington;11;7,590;18;7,909;0.23%
Zionsville;5;6,931;1;7,130;0.01%
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