By Michael Oliveira
The North Attleborough Schools aim to improve the method for reporting bullying, with the goal of reducing a trend that has been on the rise since 2020, according to Superintendent John Antonucci.
At its meeting on Aug. 12, the School Committee a new incident reporting form which can be used for all different types of bullying. In comparison to the old one, the revision builds alignment across the entire school district, according to school officials.
“While we have this plan, over time people start to lose sight of the proper way to investigate, so we really want to get back down to the basics, create a flow chart of exactly how every administrator would investigate any situations that are reported,” said Assistant Superintendent Michelle McKeon. “This is meant to be a front-facing document, that really any person can use to report bullying, so we really wanted to revamp this.”
The new forms are meant for those filing the reports to not feel like they have a tracking sheet, or any identifiable information about the students.
“We are not alone here at North Attleborough with this,” said Antonucci. “Post-Covid, especially if you’ve talked to other schools, people are really struggling with student behavior and parent behavior too – it’s a challenge. It was time for us to do this recalibration”
The new forms also allow for families who want to report bullying incidents to elaborate further, said McKeon. The previous method sometimes led educators to miss certain details.
When the form is filled out on the website, it will immediately be sent to the principal of the specific school parents are reporting about.
The school district’s leadership team spent the summer working with legal counsel, which included how to properly document incidents and the best ways to investigate bullying in its different aspects.
“On the front of training, we have done a lot of calibrating with our entire team, and we thought that was especially helpful,” McKeon said.
School officials are finalizing a page on the North Attleborough Schools website that is specifically dedicated to bullying and will include a five-minute video for parents and children.
“This whole document will be broken down into sections on the website so that parents can find resources easily,” McKeon said. “There will be a separate button with the reporting form right there so you’ll literally go to the NA Schools page and find anything about reporting a behavior or incident.”
The website should be created before the beginning of the academic year and everything about incident reports will be streamlined there. The new incident form is not finalized yet, and the leadership team is committed to having this finalized before the school year begins.
