Per state law, school districts in New Jersey must report on HIB incidents to the public twice per year.
At the Aug. 28 board of education meeting, Washington Township Public Schools Superintendent Joseph Bollendorf reported of the number of Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying incidents in the district from Jan. 1 through June 30.
Per state law, school districts must report on HIB incidents to the public twice per year.
According to Bollendorf, Washington Township schools investigated 73 HIB incidents during the sixth-month period from January to June, with 17 found to be cases of Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying.
Bollendorf said 52 of the remaining incidents did not qualify as HIB incidents, and the final four incidents were inconclusive.
According to district officials, while the number of reported incidents is up slightly this year compared to recent years, the overall percentage of cases actually found to be incidents of Harassment, Intimidation or Bullying is down, leading officials to believe more people are being vigilant about reporting.
“This law was enacted to help ensure that the process of investigating HIBs was in the open, that schools were not sweeping problems under the rug and that there was a reporting out process and a documentation process to help and ensure the integrity of that,” Bollendorf said.
Bollendorf also spoke to what he described as a “common misnomer” with HIB reporting, where members of the public might believe incidents that don’t qualify as HIB incidents have no forms of inappropriate action by students.
Bollendorf said that was not the case, but merely the state’s anti-bully laws were written so specifically to what can be categorized as a HIB incident that, more often than not, most incidents wouldn’t rise to the level of HIB.
However, Bollendorf said that does not mean the students in question should be allowed to continue with their actions.
“It’s all very likely that students will receive some level of discipline for their inappropriate interaction,” Bollendorf said.
From an HIB training perspective, Bollendorf said there were 18 types of HIB training provided throughout the district during those six months.
“They’re very comprehensive, robust trainings that are going on throughout the district really for all the folks that work in our district, and that continues to go,” Bollendorf said.
In other news:
Bollendorf also responded to questions from the public concerning the district’s opening to students on Aug. 30, two days before Labor Day, with the district then closing on Friday, Sept. 1 and for the holiday on Monday, Sept. 4.
Bollendorf said this was the third year in a row the district was opening before Labor Day, which started in a year with four days in September before Labor Day began.
According to Bollendorf, the reason the district has continued to open before Labor Day is now tied to preparations for the the state-mandated Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers test.
With the state mandating testing occur in a specific window of time in the spring, Bollendorf said the conversation among the district’s calendar committee and others has turned to how the district can schedule more days of education before that set testing window.
Bollendorf said the district also removed three days in November, and moved other days beyond the testing into spring break.
“A lot of machinations occurred to actually add about five days of instruction before testing was going to occur, which we thought was a tremendous advantage to our kids and also to our staff,” Bollendorf said.
Bollendorf said the schedule also allows the district to still appropriately honor the Labor Day holiday by giving families a four-day weekend.
