Diana Capellán has been following the Board of Education’s discussion of a new Code of Conduct for students.
Tomorrow night (Thursday, May 16, 7 p.m., Staples High School cafeteria), they’ll have a third reading of the policy.
Diana writes:
Back in 2016, our community mourned the tragic suicide of a 14-year-old Staples High School freshman.
In an open letter to then-superintendent of schools Dr. Elliott Landon, his parents wrote:
Several current Staples students have reported observing bullying, humiliating or inappropriate behavior by one or more peer or peers toward others, and these students report that [they] do not know how to respond or intervene.
They feel guilty and ashamed of their inaction and passive consent to the blatantly behaviors.
We wish to address school policy regarding mandatory electronics access and usage during class. We spoke with our son’s team of teachers and guidance counselor about limiting his access to his phone and laptop during the day to enhance his focus on his work. We were told that he had to have his laptop with him.
Frankly, there should be more and better options available. Such policy presently seems to result in social media access during school hours, which is counterproductive to the learning environment and subjects kids to additional cyberbullying. “
Fast forward to today. We still have similar challenges with our children being constantly online, and their safety.
Our children have access to their phones and social media during school hours, affecting not only their mental health but also increasing their likelihood of being exposed to hateful content.
Those online exposures inevitably bleed into the real world. In the last couple of months, we have seen concerning cases of racist and antisemitic hate incidents in our schools. Yet students still don’t know how to report or intervene when they see a peer being harassed in school or online.
Along with over 40 concerned parents, and at the behest of our school administrators at the March 13 Temple Israel event on bias, we have been contributing to the code of conduct process to find ways to address the issues of hate-based harassment we’re seeing in our schools.
We launched a website to raise awareness of 4 points that need further consideration in order to have a comprehensive code of conduct and rollout plan.
After further research, we realized that the single most impactful policy is implementing an anonymous reporting system, as has already been done by Darien, Greenwich and Norwalk.
According to a recent study by researchers at the University of Michigan, an anonymous reporting system increases the likelihood of students reporting signs of concerning behavior so it can be promptly investigated and addressed by administrators before it escalates to harassment.
Specifically, we’d like to bring the evidence-based Say Something program by Sandy Hook Promise to our schools.
Their website says: “Sandy Hook Promise’s no-cost Say Something program teaches elementary, middle and high school students to recognize the warning signs of someone at risk of hurting themselves or others, and how to say something to a trusted adult to get help.”
This training and app would not only empower bystanders to take action and help children feel more comfortable reporting bullying, but is also designed to be a powerful tool to keep our children safe from the threat of gun violence.
Tomorrow’s Board of Education agenda includes cellphone use during school hours and voting on the new code of conduct, which includes a provision to implement an anonymous reporting program in our schools.
Comments about a no-cellphone use police during school hours, and an anonymous reporting system to keep our children safe can be sent to boe@westportps.org, and/or made during the BOE’s public comment period.
Thank you for this Diana and for spearheading the updates to our Code of Conduct. SmartPhones have no place at school, especially now the research on the damage has been widely analyzed. Listening to Jonathan Haight’s The Anxious Generation. It’s so chilling and powerful.
Amen!
Bravo! ! This!!!!
How is it even a question that children shouldn’t be using cellphones in school? They’d be better off drinking and smoking cigarettes.
Thank you Diana for your work and advocacy for all of our children. This is fantastic.
I’m not a fan of the University of Tik Tok scholars.
Again, Richard Fogel is spot on!
An anonymous reporting system is a no-brainer! As well as implementing the program from Sandy Hook Promise. As a parent of 3 children under the age of 10, I fear the impact that cell phone use will have on their lives. As I hear more and more research, I am convinced that there is no need for them in school and plan on holding off on getting smartphones for my kids as long as possible. I’m grateful to Diana for bringing the BOE proceedings to our attention and look forward to joining her and other parents in our community working to make our schools safer for ALL children!
I’m a therapist and many of the clients I work with were exposed to smart phones and social media at a pivotal and vulnerable time in their social development. The longer we can hold off, or the more supervised and limited the use, the better. No social media in school! And we can’t do this alone and be THOSE parents. It will need to be a systemic and community effort.
To this end, I also FULLY support the use of an anonymous reporting line “Say Something”. The more awareness and comfort around naming hurtful and harmful behavior, the better.
I’ve been engaged in a debate with town and school officials about whether the location of the town’s community garden poses an untenable risk to our students. The safety of children is paramount, most especially when they are in school. Emotions run high, and rightly so.
Lately it seems what takes place within the walls of our schools has had far greater debilitating effects on the wellbeing of many children compared to a blocks-away garden or jogging park.
It’s a sad state of affairs with many ineffectual efforts to remediate.
I hope the community continues to find ways such as those suggested above and elsewhere to mitigate the culture of bullying, racism and antisemitism in our schools.
We don’t need to “debate” school safety that the chief of police and superintendent is proposing for our schools. And we shouldn’t block a decision to enhance school security. Safety of children is paramount whether external or internal. The actions of a small group of people who put their interest first ahead of the larger community, and act as NIMBY on public land is enough reason why the community plots need to move to another location, and not share the property with a school. This addresses all of the complaints of this small group, and we can stop this divisive topic that has been consuming a lot of time. I urge the RTM to muster their courage and do what needs to be done.
I smell mendacity, Joe. This is a manufactured threat. You are a soccer dad. Your “special interest” is all important to you and you don’t want the single Community Gardens being a hindrance to having twenty-something sports fields that largely benefit private sports organizations.
The safety matter was debated before RTM twenty years ago and a reasonable solution was found. Nothing that has happened in the subsequent twenty years has suggested any sort of a meaningful risk associated with the Gardens being located on land adjacent to the school property.
The Gardens are further away from Long Lots School than Saugatuck Elementary is from Riverside Ave (and it has windows facing the street). It’s about the same distance that Kings Highway school is from Post Road. Using your (and, yes, Foti’s) tortured logic, those are more vulnerable to some attacks from strangers, but I guess you don’t care about the safety of those children. Or you simply realize that the land between those schools and those roads can’t be turned into sports fields.
School safety over the past twenty years has changed for the worse. We now have SRO patrolling the schools. There is no excuse to minimize the risk on school safety for the purpose of one’s own interest. Honestly, the safety and security of the school is a matter for the school and what they deemed to be appropriate, with the help of the police department. Westport is simply catching up with best practices that are already in place in many neighboring towns. So if you don’t mind, I am not falling for the bait, and going down the rabbit hole of baseless debating. The fact that the community plots are in constant conflict of interest with the school is a clear sign that it is time to revisit this whole setup, and move forward with a better solution that can work for everyone.
They ARENT moving Joe ! The P&Z made that patently clear. It is not up to the RTM thank god ! And a very watchful eye is being kept on that school committee.
Doesn’t matter how many new “rules” are created.
Community garden will be staying right there as it should.
As is their right.
You just hijacked an opinion piece about our children. Please take your divisive and unrpoductibe rant somewhere else. This opinion piece is about our CHILDREN, not Mary, not Chris, and not Toni. The adults on this thread are discussing cell phone use of our kids and annonymous reporting of bullies. At this point, ad an adult, I would report Mary, Chris, and Toni as bullies.
Conflating two unrelated things that kids experience is not fair to our children. You care about one thing, and one thing only: the garden. Please stop gaslighting our kids. They deserve more. Please keep your garden talk to your garden people. This conversation is about cell phone use wnd anonymous reporting of bullying, not gardens.