School Board Cracks Down on CyberBullying
I am sure this is slowly happening around the country, but I would like to point out this one school that made local headlines for taking the aggressive step of addressing cyberbullying on the books (or “in” them, rather) in black & white.
The story is posted below from Nola.com. But before you scroll and read, remember that it’s not just schools who have to take control and measures to proactively stop Internet terrorizing – it’s parents. You are responsible for your own little instigators. It’s sad if your child is a victim… but it’s worse if they are the offender and you don’t know about it. There are no excuses. Monitoring your child’s online activity. Use PC Pandora monitoring software to know. After all, knowledge is power.
School Board cracking down on bad Internet behavior
By Kia Hall Hayes / The Times-Picayune
A St. Tammany School Board committee has voted to add “cyberbullying” to the list of unacceptable behavior in the District Handbook for Students and Parents.
The amendment, which was proposed by the district’s discipline committee during an annual review of the handbook last month, stems from a district-wide effort to spread awareness of cyberbullying and its ramifications for students, Senior Supervisor Kevin Marse said.
The School Board will consider adopting the revision during its Thursday meeting.
“We just felt because of the increase in usage of cyberspace or even text messaging and things of this nature that our parents need to be aware of it and our students need to be aware that we will not tolerate that,” he said.
Board member Mary K. Bellisario of Slidell said she learned about cyberbullying during the district PTA workshop two years ago.
Since then, Bellisario attended workshops on Internet safety during the National School Board Association convention in Orlando, Fla., in March, and held a computer safety session at Little Oak Middle School in Slidell during her 15th District meeting last fall.
Bellisario said she is pleased with the School Board’s efforts but would like the district to do more to teach its students about Internet safety. Not only would it keep the district in step with a nationwide effort to increase awareness, the move would also help St. Tammany students, she said.
Tags: cyberbullying, electronic bullying, internet safety, keylogger, monitor online activity, monitoring internet activity, monitoring software, online bullying, online safety, pc pandora
May 10th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Good to see that our schools are finally waking up to the dangers posed by the virtual net world.!