Parent asks for bullying policy change

A concerned mother and teacher asked the school board to consider amending the bullying policy Monday.

Mikki Kauppila presented school board members with a photocopy of a hurtful text message she said was circulated about her daughter on private cell phones during school hours, an account confirmed in part by secondary principal Monty Buness. A teacher at the high school saw the message, intervened, and the text’s author was punished with a two-day in-school suspension, Kauppila said.

Kauppila, joined by fiancé Aaron Angerman, told school board members her concern was two-fold. First, the text’s creator didn’t serve the full punishment, in part because of a previously scheduled awards ceremony, Kauppila said.

“She was in-house suspended for two days,” she said. “It was basically part of one day, and then the next day she basically got out at 12:30 and was able to go to an awards assembly with the rest of the school.”

Second, the school system needs to adjust its policy relating to cyber-bullying in general, Angerman said.

“As we go forward and a different administration comes in and this emphasis on bullying keeps going, we’d like to see that cyber-bullying not be a minor part, but a big part of this,” he said. “If you find it in ... the wrong hands at the wrong time, something devastating could really happen. This is something that’s not gonna stop. I mean, second graders have cell phones. They’re not waiting until they’re teenagers to get Facebook, they’re getting it. It’s just gonna keep going and going.”

The policy should lay out a set of specific consequences for technology mis-use, Angerman said.

“There should be some kind of strike one, strike two, or strike three if it gets to that,” he said. “There should be something written down somewhere about cyber-bullying, bullying in general. As of right now, unless you’re physically threatening that person, you can get away with whatever you want.”

For now, Kauppila’s trying to deal with the negative consequences of the message. Her daughter no longer wants to attend school in Wrangell, she said.

“As of right now, my daughter doesn’t even want to go to school here next year,” she said. “She’s a straight-A student. She participates in all the activities. She participates in all the sports. She’s a great asset to have to the community. As a mother it breaks my heart that I’ve actually gotta talk her into staying here.”

Board members said they would review the policy going forward. At least one board member expressed concern about the school system’s ability to impose limits on private electronic communications.

The ideal situation would be to expand the system’s technology use agreement, which students sign in order to gain access to school-issued laptops, to include an ethos for the use of personal technology, said principal Monty Buness.

“In our policies that speak about electronics use and computer use, we don’t have anything that speaks to if you use an electronic device that is not the school’s and engage in something like this. We need to be able to make it more broad-based,” he said. “Right now, it says that if you use your laptop inappropriately, we’re gonna remove your laptop. What we need is something that says if you can show that you cannot use technology appropriately or you’re using it for something like this, then we need to be able to extend that.”

The author of the text should be referred to counseling, board member Chrissy Smith said.

“I would suggest too … that the actual perpetrator be sent to counseling,” she said. “It seems like we always push the victims, but the kids that are doing stuff like this are the ones that need to be sent to the counselor.”

Parental consent, or the lack of it, can complicate counseling, said Laura Davies.

“It seems like when we send kids, they need parents permission,” she said. “So you can only send them three times and then those parents don’t always agree, so there’s some problems there with that, speaking from past experience.”

In an indirectly related issue, the school board voted 3-0 to approve a memorandum of understanding with Alaska Island Community Services (AICS) for existing counseling services at about $30,000 per year. School system administrators have in the past said the counseling services were one part of a solution to behavior issues at the school.

The school system also voted 3-0 to approve another memorandum with AICS for additional counseling services, provided the school system can successfully obtain an almost-$90,000 federal grant for counseling services specifically for the elementary school.

Smith, who works for AICS, abstained from both votes.

In other business, the school board also voted 4-0 to extend kindergarten from 1 p.m. to the end of the day.

The school board also voted 4-0 to change Title I funding from a targeted basis to a school-wide basis for Evergreen Elementary School. The change will allow administrators greater flexibility in distributing funds, school system officials said. The federal threshold to make the switch is for 40 percent of children to be at or below the federal poverty level. Officials put the estimated percentage of those at or below that line at 56 percent.