BERNE — After parents of a Berne-Knox-Westerlo student told the school board last month that their son had been bullied for years with no help, other parents have come forward with their stories on social media, some of which were shared at the BKW School Board meeting Monday night.

Superintendent Timothy Mundell responded that the district needs to communicate its policies better to parents, and offered to have parents and community members be involved in reviewing the school’s code of conduct.

He also told The Enterprise on Wednesday, “I don’t think social media is the proper place to sort out these issues … It’s not an effective problem-solving mechanism.”

Noa Ganser, the mother of a BKW Elementary School student, says that several parents talked to her about bullying at BKW, after she and her husband, Richard Ganser, shared their own story of their son being bullied for years with, they said, little involvement from the district.

“I’ve seen it firsthand … ,” she told The Enterprise. “School bullying happens.”

Noa Ganser, who is originally from New York City, said that the BKW community is smaller and closer than where she grew up, and seems less inclined to discuss issues like bullying.

“The community is different than other communities,” she said.

Tales of bullying

Three weeks ago, Ganser created a Facebook group, “All BKW Moms and Dads.” The group derives its name from the group “BKW Moms and Dads,” intending to be more inclusive than that group, which was created five years ago and has about 600 members.

The inciting incident for the new group’s creation came when Richard Ganser was told an Enterprise article that included his account of bullying that he had posted to “BKW Moms and Dads” would be removed because it named a student involved, said Noa Ganser.

The Gansers spoke about bullying after another parent said their son had been shaken by Richard Ganser. The Gansers and the district refuted that claim, but Richard Ganser said at a May board meeting that his son had been bullied for years with no action from the district, which he told The Enterprise was why he had gone to the school to confront his son’s bully.

Noa Ganser serves with another BKW parent as group administrator for the new page. Since its creation, over 400 people have joined the page, with some seeking advice or speaking out about their children being bullied or not being heard by the district.

“They’re sick and tired of being ignored and their children being bullied,” Noa Ganser told The Enterprise.

Noa Ganser said that the group is now private because a parent who had posted on the page had been told not to speak about bullying, she said.

At Monday night’s school board meeting, Noa Ganser told three different stories that had been shared with her by members of the Facebook group.

“Bullying has reached an all-time high,” she said.

One mother, she said, told Noa Ganser that her daughter started at BKW in the eighth grade and was called “scum.” When the girl missed classes because she was avoiding being bullied, a rumor that she was pregnant was started, said Ganser. Also, a threat was made to the girl that she would have “her face beaten in,” Ganser said.

Noa Ganser said the mother contacted the school about six times. The girl attended peer mediation, but it only escalated the situation, and eventually child protective services were called in by the school due to the girl’s many absences, said Ganser. She said that the mother was told not speak about the incident and was told that “that’s how teenage girls are.”

Another woman said her son was being bullied. While the school was helpful implementing testing, no 504 or Individualized Education Program has been put in place.

“An IEP or 504 can be extremely helpful to children who are being bullied for their disabilities,” said Noa Ganser. “It can be life-changing for them.”

At the meeting, Noa Ganser did say she saw progress when she was told her son had attended a session of peer mediation in response to a disagreement.

“It was beneficial … ,” she later told The Enterprise. “But it is the first time it happened that I am aware of.”

“Mediation is the first step,” she later added. She said the school should be listening to parents and submitting reports of incidents to the state as required by the Dignity for All Students Act, known as DASA. Incidents of bullying that occurred in past years according to the Gansers and other parents don’t correlate with what has been reported to the DASA or to the state’s Violent And Disruptive Incident Reporting systems. In the last year, none were reported to the DASA or VADIR databases from BKW’s elementary school.

Ganser also said that reviewing the code of conduct with parents would be beneficial, but such documents should be more easily accessible on the district’s website.

“I think it’s great that the board and superintendent are listening,” she said after Monday’s meeting. “But listening is only part of it.”

Ganser chose not to name the parents whose stories she shared. But one parent and grandparent of former BKW students, Laura Clarke, told The Enterprise that her daughter has pulled her children from BKW to attend Helderberg Christian School as problems with bullying worsened, she said.

“The problem has just gotten worse over the years,” Clarke said.

Clarke said her grandson was picked on by one student, and got in trouble when he fought back.

She later found out her now 35-year-old daughter was bullied in school as well; she said that her daughter was consistently hit by other students on the school bus, but that she told a bus driver who had her change seats.

Clarke’s youngest son, Richard Treadway, is 19 and has cerebral palsy that leaves him unable to move or talk very much. He now receives home instruction provided by BKW, she said. Though she recalls only one major incident of bullying, she said that the school had an attitude of covering up problems her son experienced at the school.

When he was younger, Clarke said there were instances where staff appeared to neglect her son. In one case five or six years ago, a girl picked on him for reading a “little kid’s” book and he tried to respond verbally by attempting to say her name. Clarke found out about the incident from the school bus driver and  bus aid, who laughed about the incident, she said.

Another time, she found her son in a state of disarray when he arrived home because a substitute aid neglected to remove his hand from a brace after an hour, causing him to arch his back in prolonged pain, she said.

After her son’s hip bones deteriorated, she said, he could no longer sit comfortably, and asked that, while at school, he be in a recliner; the school compromised with laying him on a rubber mat, she said. But, when she visited the school, she saw that he was not provided with a pillow or blanket or given his juice to drink.

About four years ago, the school district had told her during one of her regular special-education meetings with the district that she could be charged with slander for complaining about her son’s treatment on Facebook, she said.

“It kind of creates a culture of self-protection at Berne … ,” said Clarke. “It’s like, we’re supposed to be a team,” she said.

It has been four years since her son left the school for home instruction, she said. She still has meetings with the school, and says that things have improved since then. However, she said she fought to get her son home-instruction, as the school had wanted to send him to a facility in Albany.

District responds

Before Ganser spoke at Monday’s meeting, Mundell addressed concerns he said had been raised about bullying in the schools. Although he said that BKW has taken steps to improve the “school climate,” such as creating peer mediation, he noted that the district will need to listen to parent concerns. He added that students should not be judged in these situations.

“They are just children,” he said. “Even the big ones are children.”

After Ganser spoke, Mundell thanked her for coming forward, and announced that the district would be inviting community members to review the school’s code of conduct in informational meetings in the fall. The code of conduct predates the Dignity for All Students Act, which requires documentation of bullying, he said. Mundell also said that informational sessions would be used to review how the school investigates a bullying incident.

Mundell told The Enterprise on Wednesday that the board must adopt the code of conduct on an annual basis, and that the administration reviews the code with committees to see if changes are needed. The process is typically completed in August, he said.

“You have to get it done before school opening in September,” he said.

The superintendent said that, “given some of the concerns that folks have raised,” parents and other community members will be invited to join these meetings to review the code of conduct. This will be advertised on the school’s website and other notification services, he said, and meetings will be coordinated after that. There are no specific dates yet, he said.

Mundell said that some informational meetings will also be held in the fall to communicate with parents; he hopes that they will be smaller gatherings with the building principals.

“I’ve come to learn in the past few weeks we can do a better job communicating what our policies are,” said Mundell. But he said that the school has been responsive to incidents of bullying.

“Sometimes I get confused when people say the school isn’t doing anything,” he said.

Mundell said that the code-of-conduct review would likely look at how the code defines bullying, what the steps are to investigate bullying, the consequences of bullying, and what preventative measures are in place.

Mundell said preventative measures may go as far changing classes or schedules if a student conflict arises. Other means include the peer mediation program and the positive behavior intervention strategies, or PBIS, program.

The PBIS program involves shaping positive student behavior in the elementary school, said Mundell.

He also said that better opportunities at the district in general seem to have improved the school climate. He said that more parents having their students take required state test in grades three through eight shows parents trust the school more than when the opt-out rates were higher. At the same time, the state has uncoupled student test scores from teacher evaluations; the coupling had caused massive statewide protests.

“We’re on top of it,” said Mundell, noting that he had just spoken with a parent who had praised the changes in the district’s climate.

The superintendent also encouraged parents to speak to the district if their child told them about an incident of bullying, because the school may not know about it.

“Students don’t typically engage in bad behavior in front of adults,” he said.

Following state legislation in 2001, schools were required to develop a code of conduct that defined intimidation, harassment, and bullying, said Mundell. In 2010, the Dignity for All Students Act was developed and implemented in 2012, providing specific definitions, said Mundell. Bullying reported to DASA is categorized based on harm against a protected class, whether that be gender, race, religion, or other categories, he said.

“The DASA legislation really focuses on those protected classes,” said Mundell, adding that this is different than school codes of conduct and different than the state’s Violent And Disruptive Incident Reporting, known as VADIR.

The mother of a BKW Elementary School student had told The Enterprise in 2015 that her daughter had been called a racial slur in 2013, during which no incidents at the elementary school were reported to DASA.

Mundell said that bullying also has a specific definition; that it must involve an imbalance of power and repeated, chronic behavior. When investigating claims of bullying, the superintendent said that these are often determined to be “conflicts” instead.

“It gets dealt with, but it’s not an issue with bullying,” he said.

Mundell said he cannot comment on individual incidents involving students, as per the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, known as FERPA, a federal privacy law that protects students’ educational records.

But he said that parents who comment on social media about issues at the school should talk to the district first.