By Michael Oliveira
The School Committee announced that it plans to finish up a new bullying policy by the start of the new school year.
On Wednesday, June 12, the committee members discussed bullying and the impact that it has on children around the town.
“It’s really important and we want to have this be a focus area. We want our entire staff to understand their role in preventing bullying, and also train our staff on how we investigate it, and identify it when it’s happening and what actions we take”, said Assistant Superintendent Michelle McKeon, who has been facilitating the Social Emotional Learning Committee.
The purpose of the SEL Committee is to bring social emotional learning skills to improve coordination between early learning education, K-12 education, and youth serving community partners. This, along with identifying best practices or guidance for schools implementing the standards, benchmarks like bullying, and developmental indicators for SEL.
The committee has already met twice with the intention of looking at what has been described as an outdated North Attleborough bullying prevention plan and receiving feedback as a basis for the new plan to see what they can do better.
“Parents are going to be our partners in this work, we are going to have some really good presentations next year that support the work of the family members and how they can be a part of it.” McKeon continued.
The current plan is to hold presentations to showcase what the committee wants the policy to improve on.Superintendent John Antonucci backed this proposal by stating “The public has a tough time teasing out bullying versus other behavior, we do too, so I just want to say it’s a broader umbrella, but we have a lot of work to do, and it’s going to be good.”
