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Lansing School officials have been paying a lot of attention to bullying and how the school social climate can be improved, partly in response to the suicide of former Lansing student Will Czymmek a day before he would have turned 18, partly because of Beth Hogan Callister's demand last September that district personnel enact more effective responses to bullying incidents, partly because bullying has become a major topic state-wide and across the US, and finally because that is what school districts are supposed to do.  A series of surveys were distributed among district residents recently to get a handle on how bad the issue is, and a 'School Climate and Culture Improvement Initiative' has resulted in a task force and discussions across the Lansing campus.

"We've been talking about this comprehensively," Lansing School Superintendent Chris Pettograsso said at Monday's Board of Education meeting. "We have curriculum and things on how to improve climate and culture in each building.  And we're looking at it for our facilities about improvements and program.  So it's really a district-wide K-12 initiative.  We'll have to embed this into our planning and our goals as we move forward.  It's there, but I would like to include a specific goal for school culture and climate improvement.  You'll see that more and more for school districts because it's a state initiative."

Pettograsso said the task force met last month, with a school attorney talking about bullying measures and providing definitions to base a plan on.  She said that building faculties have indicated the presentation would be helpful.

"We're going to start spreading out a little beyond our task force so it's not just task force members getting professional development," she said.

	A couple of parents asked whether we would report on individuals who either were responsible for bullying (including unnamed school employees), or responding to it.  We don't -- for reasons of privacy including children's privacy -- because these incidents are appropriately dealt with by school district officials, not a newspaper.

Clearly the issue of bullying has caught the attention of many district residents.  This fall three parents reached out to the Lansing Star complaining that school officials were not doing enough to address bullying.  Each said they had a child who had been bullied and that the schools were not responsive.  One parent said her family had already taken action to protect her child when school officials responded unsatisfactorily.

Pettograsso said the district is responding on many levels, looking for ways to improve the school culture both through programs and presentations, and by integrating social and emotional learning into the curriculum.  'Social and Emotional Learning' is the latest buzzword in education that describes a process for teaching children and adults how to manage their emotions, and to achieve positive goals and relationships.  It can be boiled down to 'be kind to others' or, as it was known in the past, 'The Golden Rule' (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matt. 7:12)).

Pettograsso says the district is trying to collect accurate data with surveys officials hope students and others will answer frankly about their experiences in the schools, and develop programs that will help prevent bullying and better address it when it happens.  She also pointed out that New York State will be requiring schools districts to conduct annual surveys on school culture and climate.  Pettograsso said the state has a pilot program this year, and Lansing was invited to be part of it.  But the district had already done its surveys, so Pettograsso says the district will start administering the surveys next year.

"We've been hearing an awful lot about themes of kindness and caring and concern for one another," said Lansing Director of Curriculum Lauren Faessler. "That's been a large part of what we've been trying to embrace and reflect in our curriculum and instruction work so far this fall and winter.  We've been in conversations in departments trying to look at the social and emotional learning competencies, and focusing our efforts there and trying to identify needs.  We're combining that information with information from the school climate surveys and we're trying to get an understanding  of where to put our efforts toward learning and growing this way."

Faessler said her group is working with local, state, and federal resources.

"We're working with regional and community partners using the Community Dispute and Resolution Center trying to build a conflict resolution learning opportunity that we hope to address in the middle school if the weather permits," she said. "We're also working with BOCES resources.  There will be some mental health curriculum writing later in the year.  We also use development specialists working on conflict resolution pieces in a number of our schools.  We also have the opportunity this year to work with state and national resources.  We've met with LCI a few times and have a plan moving forward to work district-wide on integrating more explicit social and emotional learning into the instruction that we're already doing."

The individual schools are also taking steps to address their school culture.

"A group of sixth grade students have been promoting acts of kindness around the building," reported Middle School Principal Christine Rebera. "We've been having kindness-themed quotes in the announcements each morning."

The issue of bullying and Social and Emotional Learning have been a strong and recurring theme in Lansing school board meetings this school year.  But children who are bullied are not likely thinking about programs and initiatives that may reduce bullying.  They are left to deal with their feelings about verbal and sometimes physical attacks that are 'up front and personal'.  Bullying is unlikely to be eradicated.  It has plagued school children since the dawn of schooling.  If the various committees and initiatives are successful in reducing school bullying and its close sibling, online bullying, the hope is that those children who are bullied will have effective recourse, trusted adult help dealing with bullies, victims' own emotional well-being, and feel safe in their schools.

"We're right in line with what we should be doing," Pettograsso said. "There are some good things happening.  The emails for the next task force meetings have all gone out to make sure we have a series of meetings set up for the building levels, athletics, and special education.  We'll come back together as a task force to share information, and school groups will come together to discuss which recommendations are viable and which way we want to go.  I want to be clear the task force is giving us recommendations that will come back to the school board and administration so we can see what's best for the district."

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