By Quinn Fitzgerald
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS ­– After finding more than half of schools in Indiana are not reporting bullying incidents, lawmakers have passed legislation that aims to resolve the issue.

The latest data report in Indiana provided online by the Indiana Department of Education, shows that 55 percent of schools throughout Indiana reported zero incidents for the 2016-17 school year. One potential cause is not having a clear definition of bullying, which legislature and IDOE are working to get a handle on.

House Enrolled Act 1356, which was signed by Gov. Eric Holcomb March 14, contains a number of elements to address the issue.

The bill, which was authored by Rep. Greg Porter, D-Indianapolis, would ensure that the reports do not affect a school corporation’s overall performance grade given by the state.

“What we thought was that school corporations were not reporting bullying because they were afraid of their performance report in schools,” Porter said. “We don’t think they’re doing it because it’s punitive toward their outcomes.”

To make sure the intimidation is reported, even with the assurance that it will not affect school grades, the bill also requires IDOE to send a letter to schools, electronically or physically, reminding schools of the reporting policy.

“Sometimes those procedures or the movement does not happen at the Indiana Department of Education and it’s not casting disparaging comments on them, but we are here to help,” Porter said during the Senate Education and Career Development Committee in February.

Under the law, IDOE would be able to periodically conduct an audit or a review of school corporations to ensure incidents are being accurately reported and report discrepancies on the IDOE website.

David Woodward, director of school building physical security and safety for IDOE, disagrees with this aspect of the bill because it undermines local authority.

He added that because weeks can pass between the incident occurring and it being reported to administration, having IDOE to intervene and re-investigate after seeing a dispute months after the fact would only muddy the water.

“I don’t think that’s going to clarify anything at all,” Woodward said. “Nothing ever is helped by adding a level of bureaucracy to something that is already hard to measure.”

The state defines bullying as any overt, unwanted, repeated act or gestures committed by a student or group of students against another student with intention of harassing, ridiculing, intimidating or harming the student.

In other words, to be reported by the school, bullying has to be more than a one-time incident.

“That doesn’t mean that what someone does wouldn’t be wrong or an act that could be cause for discipline,” Woodward said.

When she was a freshman, 17-year old Madi Brown from Floyd Central High School in Floyds Knobs, became a football manager with three other girls. She was subjected to repeated intimidation, especially by one particular girl.

“Little by little, they would make me do all the work, and then they would exclude me from what they were doing,” Brown said. “They would talk about me behind my back.”

Brown didn’t want to quit, so she instead went to one of the coaches–who is also a teacher at the school–but he dismissed the situation. Her dad eventually found out Brown was being bullied and confronted the coaches on the field to address the issue. The girl who was targeting Brown quit afterward.

“It was a public affair. It was a nightmare,” Brown said.

There are four types of incidents that IDOE requires schools to report— verbal, physical, social or relational, and electronic or written communication. Brown’s experience fell under social or relational bullying.

Dr. Joe Voelker, assistant principal for student development at FCHS, said he is hearing more instances of students posting on social media when they feel intentionally left out of the group, similar to how Brown was treated her freshman year.

“It causes a lot of anxiety for kids,” Voelker said. “Ten years ago, people didn’t know about that. And maybe just it was a coincidence that they met up there. It’s not that they’re intentionally trying to leave somebody out.”

In 2013, then-Gov. Mike Pence signed the Indiana Anti-Bullying Law that requires schools to report bullying under guidelines by IDOE. Voelker said since the implementation of the law, the number of incidents documented in Floyd Central has risen.

For the 2014-15 school year, Voelker said FCHS documented 10 instances of bullying, which was eight more than the previous two years. For the 2016-17 school year, he said he documented eight incidents and seven the year before.

Voelker said the increase of reports during the 2014-15 school year has more to do with how the 2013 law defines bullying. Since then, he said the law has helped the school in how they handle the procedure for reporting instances.

Lawrenceburg High School was one of the 1,852 schools reporting zero incidents of bullying. Assistant Principal Steve Johnson said this is partly due to how bullying has to be a “repeated act” in order to be reported.

“Whatever behavior is going on when we start that process tends to stop immediately,” Johnson said.

Woodward said in the first few years after implementing the law, there was difficulty in spreading the word about the requirement and how the data was collected. He said there isn’t enough yet to determine a trend.

Because the data could mean schools are not reporting as they should, Woodward said there will be work done on IDOE’s end to fix it.

“I think it’s going to require more education for us with regards to the reporting mechanism and what’s reported and what isn’t, and then going from there,” he said.

The last portion of HEA 1356 requires IDOE to conduct a statewide survey to see if school corporations improve in reporting. The survey must then be submitted to the General Assembly no later than Nov. 1, 2018.

While HEA 1356 takes care of the regulation of reports, House Bill 1230–authored by Rep. Wendy McNamara, R-Evansville–includes language that would have specifically dealt with incidents outside of school hours. The bill, however, died on the last day of the legislative session after lawmakers ran out of time to hear the bill.

Pushing for legislation like HEA 1356 and HB 1230 is one way to help schools take control of bullying so that students don’t have to go through experiences like Brown did, as well as addressing issues including student retention.

“If we want to really address the drop-out rate and suspension and expulsion and things like that, if we want to raise the graduation rate, we have to take care of our children,” Porter said during the Senate Education and Career Development Committee during the session. “We have to address it right now. This is the way to do it, through anti-bullying legislation.”

FOOTNOTE: Quinn Fitzgerald is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The City-CountyObserver is a media partner of THE STATEhouseFiles.com.