Board approves external bullying review in State College schools. What will it look like?
After launching an external review of mental health policies and its response to the death of a Park Forest Middle School student, the State College Area School District is now moving forward with an external review of bullying in its schools.
During its meeting Monday, the school board unanimously approved the contract of bullying expert Susan Swearer, the chairperson of the Department of Educational Psychology and professor of School Psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Swearer, a licensed psychologist, will help review the district’s code of conduct, bullying policies and mental health programming by organizing focus groups, issuing surveys and conducting training for employees.
The district’s reviews of mental health policies and bullying in its schools come roughly seven months after 14-year-old Abby Smith, an eighth-grade student at Park Forest, died by suicide. Abby’s family and many community members called for action and change throughout the district, and several current and former students spoke with the Centre Daily Times about their own experiences with bullying at the school.
Swearer, who attended Monday’s board meeting remotely, will lead five confidential focus groups with students related to bullying in schools, up from the original proposal of just three groups. She will work with two focus groups of elementary school students, two groups of middle school students and one group of high school students, superintendent Curtis Johnson said.
Students with parental permission will be eligible for random selection for focus groups, but the exact process for forming groups remains flexible.
“The ultimate goal is to understand the landscape of bullying in the school district, and how you want to craft or organize into focus groups can go either way,” said Swearer, who serves as co-director of the Bullying Research Network and director of the Bullying Research and Victim Empowerment Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Each focus group will likely include between six and 10 students, Swearer said. Too many participants could restrict student comfort for sharing, she said, while too few could prevent groups from being representative of the larger student body.
But several board members questioned how representative focus groups could be for schools with hundreds of students. Board member Aaron Miller wondered if schools with older students may require more focus groups.
“I will say that I do think it will be necessary for us to go beyond this number of focus groups, especially if we’re talking about bullying at the secondary level, which I think is a more complex problem than bullying at the elementary level,” he said. “I would want to see two or three focus groups per school, because I think there’s a lot of conversation to have there, particularly at a place like Park Forest Middle School and Delta [Program] as well.”
Another piece of Swearer’s contract is a survey of students and their experiences regarding bullying in school. The survey, organized through the online platform Qualtrics, will include students between the third and 12th grades to illustrate a larger picture than a few focus groups could provide.
Johnson said the district will use a shorter survey model to encourage a higher response rate. Following other district-wide surveys, overarching results through this bullying survey are expected to be available at the school level.
According to the service agreement approved by the board, the district will retain Swearer’s services for the remainder of the 2024-25 school year. The total cost of her contract will not exceed $25,000, though the plans in the service agreement suggest the district expects to spend roughly $17,200 on her work. The remaining approved spending allows administrators to expand the scope of Swearer’s work throughout the district as needed.
Board member Dan Kolbe said he hopes the district will provide room for Swearer to conduct her review without constraints.
“When we’re doing work like this, I don’t like to limit them too much,” Kolbe said. “If they really start getting into the code of conduct and bullying policy, which we want them to do, we want them to take the time that they need to get it done.”
Johnson said he has already discussed future collaborations with Swearer beyond the upcoming bullying review, including the potential implementation of additional training for district employees. The approved contract already stipulates Swearer will conduct a day-long in-person training session for student services staff.
Jennifer Black, the mother of Abby Smith, encouraged the board to pursue efforts to improve mental health and bullying conditions across the district beyond the work outlined in Swearer’s contract.
“I just think it’s very important that, as a board and as administration, I feel like as a community member and a parent I need your commitment that it’s going to go beyond this contract — that the whole school district community really needs this to be used as a strong foundation to create a respectful, effective learning climate in our schools and not just be a one-and-done kind of thing,” Black said during public comment.
While speaking to the board Monday, Swearer noted she has continued collaborating with several schools and districts beyond her initial contract.
“As bullying is a social relationship problem, the solution is also a social relationship issue,” she said. “So, developing a relationship with students, teachers and parents and having that comfort level really helps me help schools and school districts with thinking through the complexity of this issue. I’m very comfortable with this, but you all need to be comfortable as well.”
A start date for Swearer’s work is not outlined in her contract, but the agreement will expire on June 30, 2025.
Reporter Keely Doll contributed to this report.
This story was originally published December 18, 2024 at 4:36 PM.
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