courtesy of Chesterfield County Public Schools

January is designated as Bullying Prevention Month by the Virginia School Boards Association, but eliminating bullying is a year-round effort: Chesterfield County Public Schools operates under the core values of respect, responsibility, honesty and accountability. The school system’s standards of student conduct prohibit bullying. One of the top goals of the school system’s Design for Excellence strategic plan is safe, supportive and nurturing learning environments.

In Chesterfield, school counselors lead many of the bullying prevention efforts. Dr. Martha Mullen, instructional specialist for school counseling, said, “Our schools have in place proactive programs to prevent bullying and develop social skills.”

Bullying behavior in Chesterfield County Public Schools is generally on a downward trend:

In 2002-03, Chesterfield had 54,006 students and 621 incidents of bullying.
In 2005-06, Chesterfield had 57,239 students and 355 incidents of bullying.
In 2006-07, Chesterfield had 58,455 students and 333 incidents of bullying.
In 2007-08, Chesterfield had 58,969 students and 366 incidents of bullying.

Seven of Chesterfield’s 64 schools have adopted the comprehensive Olweus Bullying Prevention Program: Alberta Smith Elementary, Ettrick Elementary, Gordon Elementary, Beulah Elementary, Bailey Bridge Middle, Swift Creek Middle and Tomahawk Creek Middle. (Beulah Elementary and Tomahawk Creek Middle are training for Olweus this month.) The Olweus program is an internationally recognized, schoolwide, anti-bullying program that uses school rules, weekly meetings, classroom lessons, parent and staff training, daily reminders and consistent consequences.

Chesterfield school counselors have developed an anti-bullying program available starting this month in every elementary school that has not adopted a program such as Olweus. The Chesterfield program is a research-based, best-practices approach to eliminating bullying. “The intention was not to mandate this but to provide a no-cost program that involves schoolwide rules, a consistent curriculum among school feeder patterns and data gathering to ensure program effectiveness,” Dr. Mullen said. Many elementary counselors will present the Chesterfield anti-bullying program to their colleagues this month, go into classrooms to work with students and hold information sessions for parents.

When bullying takes place online, it is called cyberbullying, which is one of the topics of Chesterfield’s Internet safety curriculum. This year, every Chesterfield school is teaching lessons on cyberbullying, personal safety on the Internet, cybercitizenship and Internet manners. As part of the Internet safety curriculum, Chesterfield offers online resources for students and parents at chesterfield.k12.va.us/internetsafety.