Thank You, You've Been Most Incompetent

I was expecting a yawning silence. I had come to expect as much. Especially from McDuff who I'd taken to poking every few days.

Providing horrific articles about tragedies resulting from Bullying gone unstopped.

Sending links to Facebook pages about Saying No to Bullying.

Forwarding YouTube videos of Public Service Announcements.

Poking the bear had become a favorite pasttime.

But Rotelli evidently was eager to respond, however lamely. And he protests too much.

I'm sorry for any misunderstanding. (I'll bet you are, Hell Toupe.) Like I said, we can always communicate better, and your questions and ideas were helpful. What I was trying to communicate (and failing with every new sentence?) was that there has been a procedure for dealing with bullying and harassment issues since at least 1998, which I shared with you, that I had followed from my years as an assistant principal at the high school. The procedure systematizes Board Policy, which was revised in 2007 to reflect the legislation that mandated including bullying specifically, as have the procedures. (What new procedures? Where were they the other day?) Our board policies are in the process of being uploaded on the district's web site (Really? Are they being typed by hand because uploading only takes a minute...) and we will make this particular one more directly accessible on the web site as quickly as possible. (That should get a lot of laughs.)

Our schools have done a great deal of work to address the various forms of bullying and harassment. For example, there is an elementary anti bullying curriculum that was revised this past summer. Our required sixth grade Developmental Guidance class deals with these issues. If you look at the middle school's web site, there are many initiatives planned or in place to address bullying. This is also certainly true of our high school. (Then why can't I find them? Where are they buried and why aren't they front page news?)

Again, as we stated, the poster that is in every classroom is meant to be a reminder and teaching tool, not a solution. (No, you said it was for compliance, and changed your story when I called you on not complying...)The main point that I was trying to make, (and bobbled like a rookie) is that there has been a longstanding process in place to investigate and address bullying. We are always working to improve our responses. If you would like to continue this dialog to make our school district even better equipped to deal with these issues, I'd be glad to listen to your ideas.

Oh we'll be dialoguing...that is for certain. Sooner than you think.