Mayor-elect Vince Gray is backing a series of D.C. Council bills designed to force the city’s school system to crack down on bullying.
The bills don’t enforce any specific rules. Instead, they mandate that the school system creates policies that define bullying behaviors, delineate standard procedures for reporting and investigating complaints, establish repercussions and protect children against future incidents.
“Bullying fosters a climate of fear and disrespect that can significantly impair the physical and psychological health of its victims, and affect learning in a way that undermines the ability of students to reach their full potential,” Gray said in his opening remarks on a public hearing addressing the bills Monday morning.
Gray said he decided to take action against bullying after a series of nationally publicized incidents involving bullying, some of which ended with suicides.
“I think that’s being brought out recently in the suicides we’re seeing is there’s a lot of talk… but not implementation,” D.C. community activist Peter Rosenstein said during the hearing. “How do we deal with this in the school? … How do we make it clear to our students that there are repercussions for this?”
