Bullying

IS YOUR CHILD BEING BULLIED?

Joseph Van Deuren, a nationally-recognized expert on bullying and suicide prevention, is creating a wonderful website to educate AACPS parents, students and educators about bullying and what can be done to prevent it.  View videos and learn about the free classes he offers to parents, students or educators.  Dr. Van Deuren taught an extremely informative Bullying Prevention Workshop to members of the Parents Advocacy Network on 11/12/12, and we recommend his trainings highly.

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Children being bullied in school was the 2nd highest concern of the 4,263 Anne Arundel County parents and citizens who took the Citizen Advisory Committee survey in March/April 2011.  56% of the respondents indicated that bullying was an issue they were very concerned about.  Concern was greatest among parents of middle school students:

Impact of Age of Student on Concern About Bullying

The school system shares this concern and has been surveying each school on the level of bullying being experienced for several years, although the level of response by school varies tremendously.  You can look up the prevalence of bullying by school on the AACPS web site.  County-wide, 29% of the middle school students reported having been bullied two or more times during the previous month and 64% felt that bullying was a moderate to severe problem at their school.

The CAC’s survey found that concern about bullying varied widely by high school feeder system:

PAN’s bullying committee plans to study the bullying incident rate by school and see how AACPS’ bullying policy compares to that in other jurisdictions with a goal of reducing the incidence of repeat bullying and providing more resources for victims.