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Anti-bias bullying plan a big failure – NY Daily News
by Meredith Kolodner
Only 14% of teachers believe the city’s program targeting bias-based bullying and harassment is effective, a new survey shows.
And about two-thirds of the 200 teachers surveyed from 117 schools said they had witnessed students being harassed based on their race, ethnicity and sexual orientation.
The new report by the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Sikh Coalition and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund comes more than two years after a regulation was passed that mandated the reporting of bullying that involves racism, sexism or homophobia.
Still, the survey found that only 27% of the teachers had been offered the Education Department’s Respect for All training – two days of instruction on preventing, identifying and reporting the bullying.
“I knew the chancellor’s reg existed, but to tell you the truth, there wasn’t much evidence of it at Lafayette,” said Pat Compton, a teacher at Lafayette High School in Brooklyn for 24 years who retired last summer. “Certainly they had some brochures, and some posters, but it was completely perfunctory.”
Advocates said school staff should be the most informed about how to deal with harassment.
“Teachers are the front-line people who are supposed to be protecting our kids from bias-based harassment,” said Amardeep Singh of the Sikh Coalition. “[The Department of Education] has made a very good promise, but hasn’t resourced it all.”
Education officials said the survey was not comprehensive.
“It relies on the opinions of a tiny fraction of staff and grossly misrepresents the strides made by our schools,” Education Department spokeswoman Barbara Morgan said.
“Our schools take the issues of bullying and bias-based harassment very seriously.”
Khin Mai Aung of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund gives the department credit for the strides it has made.
“But there is a lack of a consistent, overarching response,” Aung said.