identification and orientation. it wraps up with remarks and that's what the department of education. a quick break here and we will return to our live coverage on c-span2. [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation]

[inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] again a brief break in the summit of bullying with the education department. while we wait for them to resume we will show you our upcoming program for this weekend on c-span2. >> put tv on c-span two, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors every weekend. here are here are some featured programs for this coming weekend on saturday at seven pm eastern, the supreme court of chief justice warren burger is the focus of the yellow law school lecturer the burger court and the rise of the judicial right.

she speaks of politics and prose bookstore here in washington d.c. then at 10:00 p.m. eastern, "after words" with syndicated radio host dana lash. she argues that the u.s. is splintering into two countries which she calls coastal america and flyover america in her book flyover nation. you can't run at country you've never been to print she is interviewed by guy benson, news reporter and editor. >> it seems that in so many ways not just really so much flyover nation although i think there targeted you have this yanking back and forth in the right in the left that are pulling in one direction or another and it goes back to needing to support particular issues and that divide is kind of scary. now politics is affecting whether or not we can equally defend ourselves against a major threat. >> on sunday at 7:00 p.m. eastern they look at how some school policies are having a negative impact in the lives of black female students in her

book push out. the criminalization of black girls in school. she argues that schools and other institutions that are supposed to help her the very places that are criminalizing black girls. go to booktv.org for the complete weekend schedule. on saturday, c-span issue spotlight looks at trade deals, their impact on the economy, jobs in the presidential election. >> we will. >> we will defend american jobs and american workers by saying no to bad trade deals like the transpacific partnership and unfair trade practices. >> the state of pennsylvania has lost one third of their manufacturing jobs since the clintons put china into the wto. >> the program includes a look at nafta, the 19941994 free trade agreement between the united states mexico and canada. >> this will weld us together in the cause for our people,

exports and markets and more democracy for our allies. >> at a session on how the founding fathers viewed free trade. >> historically the united states simply was not a free-trade nation for most of american history. the u.s. is in fact a protected, this goes back to our very constitution. >> in in-depth examination of the wto, the body that enforces global trade rules. >> at the time the wto was being negotiated or its evil smaller sister, the north american free trade agreement had hundred more pages of specific regulations. my book would be very different. when these two were being negotiated the u.s. had its official advisors, 500 corporate advisors. >> watch our issue spotlight on trade deals saturday at

8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span and c-span.org. >> we are live once again for a day on coverage of a bullying prevention summit featuring panels of educators and researchers focusing on bullying of lgbt, asian, muslim and south pacific students. it's hosted by the department of education. it's expected to get underway in just a couple minutes and focus on how recent research recommendations and surveillance can prevent bowling efforts. this should start in just a few moments.

[inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation]

[inaudible conversation] >> hello everyone. if everyone could please take their seats we will get started.

if i could have the members of the first panel come to the stage so we can get started. so this first panel is called how research recommendations and school surveillance impact bullying prevention efforts. it will be moderated by maureen perkin spreadsheet is a public health analyst in the division of child, adolescents and family health at the health resources administration. she works on bullying prevention initiatives. i will now turn it over to maureen. >> she may have run to the restroom. [laughter] okay i'm going to turn it over to catherine bradshaw and said.

>> i can always talk. the purpose of this panel is to provide a little background and delve deeper into the different themes, particularly ones that will be covered in greater detail during the breakout sessions. i have the great pleasure of serving on a recent national academy panel that reviewed the state of the science and prevention policy related to bullying. i'm going to lead off by talking a little bit about some of the findings from this study and then you will hear from my colleagues from two of the federal agencies that are very involved and work in this area, the u.s. the permit of education as well as the centers for disease control and prevention to talk a little bit about some of the surveillance and data collection efforts that they are involved in, what do we know from what they have seen so far and what's on the horizon. it's really exciting about the interdisciplinary collaboration

through the federal partnership is this information beat back and forth. it's great to be invited to a meeting where they say hey, we hear there's this new definition that we put out, should we think about aligning that with our data collection efforts. to see that feedback that's happening in real-time is fantastic and it's great to be able to participate in that as a researcher but also to partner with federal agencies who are in a position where they are relatively nimble and able to respond to these. this is something that's somewhat unprecedented. maureen did you want to make some remarks about your perspective or the panel? >> good morning everyone, i maureen perkins perkins with the health resources and services administration. we have been working on bullying for some time and we were interested in learning more about what works and what doesn't work when it comes to bullying prevention and we turn to the institute of medicine to help us answer some of those

questions. we held a two-day workshop in 2014 looking at at the capacity building of bullying prevention and following that workshop along with other federal agencies we funded the national academy of sciences to conduct a consensus study which catherine bradshaw was a committee member of. our first speaker you are ready matt,.dr. catherine bradshaw was a committee member and she will be talking about some of the findings and recommendations from that. dr. bradshaw is a professor and associate dean for research and faculty development at the curry school of education at the university of virginia appeared she holds a doctorate in development psychology and masters of education counseling and guidance from the university of georgia. her primary research interests focus on the development of aggressive behavior and school-based permit prevention. she collaborates on research programs and the development of

aggressive and problem behavior, the effects of violence, peer victimization and environmental stress on children. in the evaluation and implementation of the programs in school. with that i will let catherine begin her presentation so i was thrilled to be part of this committee. this is a list of other investigators that were part of a committee and i'm here to represent the committee. i'm happy to see some of my own opinions but i'm trying to stick with the findings from the group. it was really a very interdisciplinary esteemed group of colleagues. we were chaired by fred who is a pediatrician by training and had other health professionals including other pediatricians that were on the committee in the research area and some that were in the practice or interrogation, some with the nursing background and a number of us with education, public

health policy and developmental perspectives. it's been a really exciting group to collaborate with. we also brought on the neuroscientist that focuses largely in animal models because we wanted to understand a little bit more about some of the biological mechanism associated with stress and how that could be related to bullying. i wanted to acknowledge the great work that group had done. my purpose is to give you an overview of some of the highlights and the findings. the full report is available online and there are number briefings that are out some get a cut through about 300 pages of dense content so i am just going to give you the highlights in a couple of the take-home messages. we organize the report into four general themes. the first was very much public health orientation and clarifying the scope of the problem and taking the public

health approach, understanding the prevalence and significance of this particular behavior and what impact it is having not only on those directly involved but as society and culture in the bidirectional of this relationship are we also focused on issues of the context and i have some themes throughout this presentation because we realize the complexity of bullying. it's not just one or two kids that are involved. as a set aside in a culture we may be perpetuating some issues that could be contributing to this at a macro level that has a trickle-down effect on two students in schools and their peer relationship. as i mentioned through one of our themes was to try to leverage some interdisciplinary research and understand what impact this is having on the body in the brain as well as behavior and finally a very big lift in this report was to say not only would we know about what the current state of the

sciences is but what is really needed to move this field forward. we've made great progress in this area but what do we need to know about what works for whom and under what conditions to prevent and stop bullying? around the prevalence, it's great to be on this panel with the researchers whose data we leveraged for this when we were estimating the prevalence of bullying we focused largely on the nationally representative data set that have been collected by federal agencies and the world health organization. while there are many studies that are focused on how common bullying is among the subpopulation, when generating these large estimates using this approach we wanted to really focus on the nationally representative data so you can see upwards of 30% of youth are reporting that they had been victims of bullying and this is

only focused on victimization. we didn't have systematic data from these door data sources and that's important in the literature pen when we look ordinarily at the issue of cyber bullying which we conceptualized to be a particular form in context, we whereby bullying happens. there may be a unique aspect to cyber bullying but it is a form that meets similar criteria to general bullying. we did apply the definition of bullying when we were talking about the research in this area however given some of the studies haven't totally caught up with the definition, the it's a little hard for us to fully implement because of the core features of bullying. we did leverage other information around violence and aggression within our review of the literature. these data speak pacifically to prevalence. one question we often get and we did address in the report is is bullying on the rise. based on the review of these four data sets we did not conclude that there was an increasing trend.

if anything it seems like some of the efforts that may have been going on nationally around awareness perhaps could be contributing to a leveling off or even a slight tapering off, not a significant reduction but this increased awareness doesn't necessarily mean that the prevalence estimates are going any higher, it's exciting to see we are getting better data, but we need to get more and more data around prevalence and subpopulations. the unique features of a cyber context do create some challenges as we think about how much literature we have about general forms of bullying that happen in person relate to the context, as we heard from the opening remarks, kids are online all the time and new technologies are being created. it's really hard for the research to keep up with this because of the 247 access and multidimensionality of the online environment.

there are some unique features. understanding the social context, because of the complexity we wanted to acknowledge there are factors at multiple levels including the peer group that are really hard for us to capture in any one particular study. we know they are so important to be leveraged in any prevention and intervention effort. families are critical but there hasn't been a lot of research about the role of families in prevention or risk factors for bullying. that's an area that needs more consideration. while we acknowledge the importance of schools, better understanding how we can think about climate and culture as a possible factor that could contribute to issues around equity within the school environment are major conversations around bowling. as are the broader community context and societal norms around bullying and we do find there are societal norms that somewhat endorse retaliation and condone aggressive behavior towards subpopulations and that creates a very odd context to be trying to prevent bullying among kids when we see a lot of adults

that are endorsing those kinds of attitudes. when we drove around to look at some of the more vulnerable youth, we do leverage, in this case some of the set smaller more unique data sets that tend to be focused on subpopulation because sometimes there underrepresented in our large data collection efforts. we did see that lgbt use as well is used with disabilities are at increased risk for victimization involved in bullying, youth with disabilities not only are increased risk for victimization but may actually be where that bullying victim is acting in an aggressive way and needs support and that's a little bit unique. youth that are struggling with issues around health and obesity are also targeted in that area of obesity is one that we really haven't addressed systematically in the research. some of the other groups where we see a little more mixed findings or perhaps just lack of data to be able to formulate a strong conclusion include socioeconomic status as well as immigration status, there

certainly some trends around minority and religious groups that are being stigmatized at this higher rate and we will hear from some of those groups later on today. that's an area we need a lot more research to focus on. what we are also keen on is this issue of intersection audi where there may be a youth that is a black male, low income lgbt student. that's representing multiple groups that have been exposed to stigma and bias and that could compound the level of risk for victimization. we will hear a little bit more about that today during the conference, but that's one area we know that youth are at greater risk that we don't have a lot of good data to fully evaluate it. other issues about urban this, up, some of that even intersects with issues around definition. i do a lot of work in baltimore through my appointment at johns hopkins university and when i talk to youth in those communities they don't call it

bullying they call it being banked or in a gang and what is the intersection between different types of aggressive behaviors. it may look and feel like bullying but take on a different name that's local to that kind of community. we have to be cognizant of the fact that our terms as researchers or adults may not map onto what youth would consider those behaviors. this issue of stigma is one that we think was unique and came out of the report and there hasn't been a lot of discussion or framework around stigma as it applies to bullying. this is one area we would like to see the field move as were talking about recommendations. can we think about stigmatized groups and their vulnerability and in the intersection of those groups as it creates a compounded risk for involvement and bullying. there is some potential as a society for us to think about

the role that stigma plays more broadly and how that might be impacting youth and their victimization. so one area that we did cover in rather great detail is the consequences, this is one area there has been a lot of attention in the literature and while it's hard for us to say those effects are necessarily causal because we know some children that have certain kinds of risks may be at greater likelihood to be victimized. with that it's hard to tell if it's a cause or consequence but it could actually in effect be compounded by the bullying. some of those include physical impacts, a host of problems in the psychological area, they could affect cognition and in turn impact to your academic performance and ability to engage in an academic setting and certainly the mental health consequences are of great concern. we also know that youth that are struggling with issues around emotional regulation may be greater targets for bullying and

limiting their opportunity for further care development and social development as a result of bullying doesn't actually help them learn to regulate those emotions but can reinforce their challenges in that area. we also wanted to address some of the issues more specifically around the potential links with mental health as it relates to school shootings and suicide. again a very complex set of factors that contribute to this but it was difficult for us to find literature to suggest there was a causal association. there may be very much of vulnerability to engage in some of those behaviors. with regard to school shootings which are salient in their minds and hearts and we don't want to overlook the significance of those. while there is some connection in cases to issues around bullying, perhaps it's more broadly related to other issues around mental health and access

to weapons that are contributing to that. it's difficult to say if it's just because of the bullying. chances are it's a complex phenomenon. similarly around the link with suicide, youth that are struggling with issues around mental health have vulnerability and additional insults and problems in their social relationship and that creates another level of risk for them. that compounds their likelihood for engaging in harm to self and others. there are some subtypes, particularly the youth that are involved in bullying as a victim and perpetrator who are more likely to engage in some of those self-harm types of behaviors. we also took this trauma type of conceptualization which is very common in gaining ground in schools, in particular thinking about a trauma informed approach and that was helpful for us to think about as it helps us understand some of the impact on the brain and the body that

youth are experiencing. it's difficult to say if it's a causal association or other kinds of brain functioning or physiological symptoms, but as one form of stress or it can be very impactful around their development, particularly when it up occurs at times during transitions towards adolescence. to wrap up i wanted to talk briefly about some of the policies and programs, the vast majority of the work has been large-scale and systematic around prevention programming and it's been connected in schools and makes a lot of sense from a public health apartment because they spend a lot of time in schools but they also spend time in other contexts and some that are harder for us to evaluate like afterschool programs were out of school time and home-based care, other kinds of support groups.

those are harder for us to a due systematic research but areas that we need to focus a bit more on. in terms of the school-based programming, we recognize the need for that public health framework where we have universal programs and exposure to all students or all youth within a particular context as well is what we call selective. those are targeted and have a risk profile and they might be more vulnerable to experience in bullying and then indicated, which is more to a tear the public health term for more intensive focus around youth that are already involved in bullying and experiencing some of the impacts. the vast majority of the research has been focused at universal level so we know relatively less about the more intensive interventions. we need more research in that area and in fact leverage some of the research in more broader areas like depression and violence in the report to say that since violence and aggression are related to bullying, might those program also be effective of combating

the needs. we know that positive relationships are very important for youth and we want to promote those. that also fits with our interest in multicomponent program so it's not just going to be one solution. we need to think about what were doing in the classroom, school, peer groups and with families to be able to address these concerns. we also need to think quite a bit more about the impact on subgroups because there are relatively few studies that show impact of these programs for an lgbt population for example. we don't really know what works for that particular group but we do know some of the programs such as zero-tolerance which have automatic suspensions and automatic policies for youth that are involved in bullying and are more punitive in nature are generally not as effective. that is a conclusion of the committee based on the available literature and one that is helpful to get the word out. finally we know the importance of school climate that we need

to be promoting more positive relationships between youth that not only can improve the overall functioning of the school and academics but can also reduce rates of bullying. there has been some work in the area of policy and to be the availability of the literature we spoke to the impact of those potential programs but sadly relatively few systematic evaluations have been conducted for some of the statewide evaluations. we need more research in that area and we also need a relationship between the policymakers and the researchers so we can better understand what impact the research is having. in summary, bullying is a considerable health concern with notable prevalence, we need more consistent use of definitions and the leveraging of the research to improve practice and policy which is a critical next

step. there are a number of other dissemination activities that are currently underway and you can access information about them through the national academies website and here is just a list of the study sponsors that were generously contributing to our work. thank you. [applause] thank you. we are going to have time for questions at the end of the panel so i would like to introduce our next speaker who is rachel hansen. she is an educational statistician in the surveys branch within the department of education. she's the national center for education statistics per she is the project director for the school survey on crime and safety. good morning. thank you for coming. i'm happy to have the opportunity to discuss our current work on the school crime, i think katherine's

presentation was a great segue into the work that we are doing at the center and our commitment to address the needs and have uniform definition of bullying. i kind of wanted to give you behind-the-scenes details of the work to be able to provide high-quality allied and reliable information that we make available to researchers and stakeholders and to the public. i want to start off by discussing -- sorry. providing some background on the bullying issues that we have had since the beginning of the school time supplement and then go into the 2015 instruments that is our attempt at having items that get at the uniform definition and the plans for the

2017 items. so the school time supplement is a supplement to the national crime victimization survey which is a helpful survey sponsored by the bureau of justice statistics and elected by the census bureau. it is the primary source of information on criminal victimization. each year data are obtained from a national representative sample, about 90000 households comprising nearly 160,000 people on the frequency characteristics and consequences of criminal victimization in the u.s. respondents are all individuals residing in the household who are 12 years of age or older. they are given a core questionnaire that asks for their demographics and then questions about if they been victimized in the past six months. following that, if they had been

victimized they are giving a crime incident report that basically allows them to obtain any details on the incidents that occurred when they were victimized. so the school crime supplement piggies back on the survey. it's collected every two years so the last collection we had was in 2015. it's on kids that are in the household between ages of 12 and 18. they had to be enrolled in public or private school at some point in the school year, if they were not exclusively homeschool and they had to have completed the core in order to be eligible to take the supplement. the data collection procedures follow the in person interview and then follow up interviews are done over the phone.

the school time supplement was first collected in 1989, it was again collected in 1995, 1999 and every two years "after words". it really gives students perspective on the school climate including topics that you see as well as rules and punishment enforcement, student engagement activities, connectivity with teachers and other students in the procession under an perception of how safe they feel in the schools. i want to walk through how we got to the bullying item today and i think it's helpful to provide some context in how we started based on the 1989 and 1995 instruments that really didn't have any items on bullying. they had victimization items, the wording were similar to what

the bullying items are currently but they basically ask if other students had taken something by force or threat if they've had something stolen from them, from their desk or locker or if they were attacked at school. in 1999 it was our first instrument that included an item that use the word bully. it had a six-month reference. and it defined bullying as being picked on our quarters to do things. you can see the actual wording on the side. as we begin to learn more about the various behaviors that occur at school, i think we begin adding and refining to the items that i just showed you that we had for the 1999 instrument. for 2003 we included an additional item about feeling

rejected by others, by being made fun of or called names or by being excluded from activities. the 2005 questionnaire is the first year to have an entire dedicated bullying section. you can see the items on the slide. it basically are prevalent items that we've had and we've use this item for the past ten years. it still currently on the survey with a slight tweak to it which i will discuss in a moment. if a respondent says yes to any of these subitems than they are considered to have been bullied. they receive those individuals were always the follow-up items about the frequency of being bullied, the location of the bullying, whether the incident was reported to an adult and any injuries that were suffered from bullying. if they said they had been pushed, shoved or spit on we

asked about the injuries incurred from that. in 2007 i mentioned the change we made was actually a reference. to the last few months and the reference. changed for the other items that were on the survey. we wanted to make sure it stayed consistent so same item but asking about any instances that happened during the school year and then 2007 was also the first year that we asked about cyber bullying. you can see the wording is on the slide and there's an additional follow-up items that ask about the frequency of the cyber bullying and whether an adult was notified. in order to stay current with all the potential ways that one can mistreat another person via electronic means, we had to expand her options on the cyber

bullying items to include social networking sites and online gaming and more detailed information about if they were threatened via e-mail, instant messaging or through text messaging. again, the work that was done for the 2011 survey was focused around cyber bullying where we wanted to expand more options on social networking sites and online gaming and we asked an additional sub item about if someone had been sharing personal information about you via the internet or the mobile device. for 2013, there was actually no changes to any of the items. for 2015, to continue the

discussion of cyber bullying, it was recommended that we take into consideration cyber bullying is really a means of bullying rather than a type of bullying. so we actually removed the bullying item that we had that i've been discussing and we included online or by text as a sub item. we also included the location of bullying. you can see the addition in the red text on the screen. so as has been mentioned several times this is the trend over time on our prevalence of bullying and we have included this in our crime report which is basically the item that we been using that defines bullying up front i've students who have

done things that make you feel bad or are hurtful and it lists all the behaviors of making fun of or threatening and over time you have seen that the prevalence fluctuates for little bit but for the most part it has decreased 22% in 2013. so the purpose of my discussion is to discuss our efforts to collect on uniform definition. what i've shown you so far is this item that we have had for the past ten years did not include these two components about repetition and power imbalance. to address these missing components and to align with the definition, the 201515 supplement experience it on to experimented with ways using a

new design which i know the text on the screen is really small but i wanted to show you those items that we had side-by-side and i won't go into great detail about methodology of the experimental design but we essentially gave half of the sample version one which is on your left and the other half of the sample the other version, the ultimate country and alternate version on the right. version one allowed us to be able to retain the same prevalence item that we've had since 2,102,005. then we added two additional follow-up questions with power and balance. on version two, we essentially have one definitional item that

includes all of the different components of the uniform definition, it's all in one item and has follow-up questions asking if the bullying was verbal, physical or social. unfortunately i'm unable to provide you any estimates because we haven't been able to publish the report yet. it should be coming out within the next couple months and it's going through a review process. i can tell you the findings were interesting. there were interesting and there were notable differences, not only between item 22 and the follow-up items but also we had noticeable differences between the two versions themselves. so we decided to move forward with dropping version two and continuing to do more work on version one. our decision to go with version one allows us to retain the prevalence for collection and we found that version two was quite

lengthy and it contains a lot of components that have to be retained in memory, if you remember this as an instrument that is being part of an interview. they are not sitting down in front of the paper and reading it. it has to be read to them so it was a lot to take in for kids. we've decided to move forward with version one. i also want to mention, and i failed to get this on the screen that we added two more items to the 2015 survey. one collects information on the bullying experience and if it had a negative effect on the respondent and their school work, relationship or friends of family and their physical health. :

we wanted to focus on getting a better understanding of if kids how they define bullying themselves and if they believe the repetition and power imbalance is necessary. and also test the following items we had for the 2015 survey on repetition and power balance. in general we found many kids do not think the repetition empower balance is necessary.

for example, some students indicated a student with less power cannibalism if their attitude and willingness to do bullying behaviors. they find bullying in general along the lines of intentionally doing hurtful things to bring a person down whether it's physical, mental or emotional. sobel or emotional. sobel mentioned it depends on how the victim is affected by the hurtful things that are being done. we found if you look at the wording for repetition, our use of over and over was interpreted as something happening constantly every day. even if something, even if a respond had experienced something happened a couple times they were saying no to repetition happening. so that let us believe we need to work on different options for getting that repetition. the wording for power and violence, respondents identified many dimensions of power that

are beyond what was listed on the screen. that kind of made us want to be able to test this items more and breakout those different options and make sure we are also considering the group dynamic as power imbalance as well. i just want to say that i think we decide on final items. we are submitting our package very soon so you all will have the opportunity to review these items during the public comment period and we are happy to any feedback that you might have. just wrapping up come the bullying report will come out soon, and we will be in the collection for 2017 from january through june of next year. and here is my contact information should you need to get hold of me to although i will probably be on maternity leave very soon. [laughter]

>> maybe this afternoon. >> maybe this afternoon, yes. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, rachel. our last speaker is a behavioral scientist and the center for disease control and prevention. the division of surveillance branch. she leaves the school of associated system which captures qualitative and quantitative data on all violate school related fatalities in use. her research includes suicide and ideological surveillance intervention. she is interested in incorporating methods and researchers in both qualitative and quantitative data to better understand the risk factors and precipitate a suicide. her recent publication including the implementation at the deli and evaluation research, identification of common precipitate of homicide, suicide

and surveillance incidents, an examination of the differences in -- victimization and perpetration. >> good morning. thank you for that introduction. so again i'm just here from the cdc's division of violence prevention, surveillance branch, and as maureen suggested i work barbara on tracking and monitoring school associated violent deaths. some of which are bullying related and that's what i will be discussing with you here today. so as we know, suicide is a leading cause of death among youth the 22nd and third depend on the age group that is being examined. in 2014 for over 5000 suicides among youth aged 10-24. a recent cdc study examined data from the national violent death

reporting system to identify the common antecedents of youth suicide. we identified antecedents at three major levels, individual, relationship and school or social level of the social ecology. and over a quarter of youth suicides were precipitated by school or school related social problems, some of which were bullying related. we also know that from a number of studies that there is a relationship between bullying and suicide. so it is important for researchers to study this relationship and to track and monitor bullying related suicide so that we can better understand the problem and prevent it. for the current study we used to data sources to identify and examine suicides precipitated by bullying.

we describe bullying related suicide trends over 22 year period. we provide descriptive information about bullying related suicides at identify qualitative differences in suicide that occurred at school versus away from school. so to publish the goals of the study we obtained data from two primary sources. the first of which is the school associated violent deaths have been system. through the system we collected data from law enforcement reports and images with school and law enforcement officials who are familiar with deaths that occurred at school or on the way come on the victims way to or from school or school sponsored events. we used data from a systematic media scan of lexis-nexis, and we obtained published media articles on bullying related suicide through that method. we then took all of the suicides

we identified and used a set of variables with clear definitions, which are not so clear to you because this is a very small text, but we ultimately coded circumstances surrounding each suicide. we ultimately coded it for 25 different features, some which are listed, sexual orientation, the type of bullying, whether sexual violence victimization was involved, and some others as well. we also provided qualitative notes on items such as the frequency and duration of bullying, other salient problems that students who died by suicide were experiencing at the time, and also the schools and parents response to reports of bullying or the response in the aftermath of the bullying related suicide. so in all the identified 138 of bullying related suicides of

july 1994 to the present day. there were a total of 122 youth suicide that occurred at schools during that time period. however, only about 19% were clearly bullying related. so there were 23 suicides at schools that were bullying related. we also identified 115 of bullying related suicides that did not occur at school through the media. so here we present some demographic information for suicide decedents bisects and also by status. against the stanford school associated violent deaths. so any of those suicides is one that occurred at school and a non-savd is one that occurred away from school. the first i'd like to point out that we did see an increase in the percentage of students who died by suicide and a 13-15

you're a dream. we know this page range corresponds with the. of natural adolescent development and to transition from middle to high school when we know that bullying maybe more commonly experienced. we also note about three quarters of the suicide decedents in the study were white, and a novel aspect of the state is that could data on sexual orientation and gender identity. at the bottom of the table you will see almost 13% of the deceits in the study were lgbtq. five of those victims were transgender, and for no that the most, that most of the sexual minority youth in our study did die away from school as opposed to a school. with respect to suicide means, we see almost half of our sample died by suffocation. so that includes hanging.

however, the difference in savd versus non-savd suicide means is notable. with almost three quarters of the suicide that occurred at school having involved a firearm, compared to only 16% that occurred away from school. additionally, the proportion of supplications that occurred at school is about half that that occurred away from school. we know that suicide is typically not the result of bullying one factor and is usually, is usually a result of a constellation of risk factors. this chart demonstrates some of the other conditions that girls, boys and trans use, experience prior to the suicide. here we see a higher percentage of girls reported experienced sexual violence, mental health

problems and received mental health treatment compared to boys. among trends in youth we see a higher percentage of transit use has expanded mental health problems, history of self harm and suicide attempts. interestingly though i harvested of trans youth receive mental health treatment and disclose their suicide ideation compared to boys and girls. although the trans youth represent a very small percentage of the students in this sample we do know from a nationally representative study that was released just yesterday from cdc that trans youth do experience these and other negative health outcomes at higher rates than their heterosexual peers. so here we see the counts of bullying related suicide by year from 1994-2016. the orange line are suicides

that occurred away from school, at the blue line is suicides that occurred at school. we see for those that occurred at school, the counts remained relatively low with about, less than four suicides per year over the entire time period, at an average of about one per year occurring at school. for the orange line we see the trend does appear to be increasing and this isn't to say that bullying in general is increasing, but it may just be a product of increased awareness and reporting and not an indicator of increased bullying. the spot you see in the 2010-11 school years and other after may coincide with two cases that were very highly publicized during that time period. they were related to school, or they were related to social

media is and litigation. so those spikes may also be related to increased awareness and increased recording during that time period. here represent the type of bullying present in the suicides pick the most commonly reported type was traditional bullying with the verbal be more common than physical. we also see that cyberbullying was reported in only about 15% of the cases that occurred at school as opposed to 40% that occurred away from school. sexual orientation-based of bullying on, on your right side of the slide was often relatively more common among non-savd suicide. so those that occurred away from school. here we present traditional bullying versus cyberbullying related suicides by year.

these again are counts as a traditional bullying is the blue line, that cyberbullying is the orange line. note the initiation of cyberbullying related suicide really begins in the 2002-2003 school year with access to social media and cell phones was increasing among youth. it appears that the trade in both types of bullying related suicide continues to be in the upper direction, and again this may be a product of increased reporting and not an indicator that bullying itself is increasing. finally, one of the things we coded for was reports of bullying. the one that the students who were being bullied reported that information to school staff or to a parent or friend et cetera. sorry. so we see about 70% of the sampled at least reported the bullying to a.

to come over last and have reported the bullying to the school. presented at the bottom of the slide are some the school and their responses to such reports. they include suspension of the victim and a bully on some occasions. transferring the victim to another school which one of the things we heard about yesterday. mediation between the bold and the victim, and implementation of zero-tolerance policies. so just to summarize some of the major findings. we know that bullying remains a problem among youth and his religious suicides but, of course, we cannot draw a causal association between the two from this study. traditional bullying appears to be more prevalent than cyberbullying. we also know that the increase in cyberbullying coincides to increase in social media use and cell phone use among youth.

a novel aspect of this study is that we do have data on gender identity and sexual orientation, and again from a report released just yesterday, we know that the sexual minority youth are at higher risk than their peers to be victimized and also to experience negative health outcomes such as suicide isolation, suicide attempts and also of the mental health diagnoses -- suicide isolation. finally, we don't only need a research on that group. finally, we need to strengthen our reporting of bullying, and we need to connect those who are at risk with the appropriate services. i would just like to end on a note that bullying and suicide are very serious public health problems. however, they are preventable. a lot of research as doctor

budget indicate has been done in the area and there are some programs and policies listed here that are promising or have been demonstrated to be effective in preventing bullying and suicide. finally, just, given some of the qualitative data that we found regarding schools responses come it's important highlight some of the convention strategies and interventions that have been found to be ineffective. some of these which a doctor mentioned yesterday include zero-tolerance policies, conflict resolution and peer mediation between the bold and the victim which can be harmful, and the simple short-term solutions have not been found to be effective. it's important to note these misdirections and to guide educators away from them and towards effective intervention. and with that i would just like

to thank michael office and colleagues at the cdc, my bullying prevention colleagues there as well, and also the federal partners in bullying prevention, and thank you for having me here today. [applause] >> thank you so much. now we have time for questions to our panel. i don't know if we have microphones for those in the audience. this one over here, great. so if you can't is a racer had a go to the microphone, either way. that's fine. spent the research you did about -- [inaudible] >> so the two part about it,

power and then repetition, can you explain that more? i was confused on what you take away of that was. >> sure. so there were two parts about half of respondents in our contest indicated they didn't think either repetition or power balance is necessary. that their experiences, it really mattered about how the victim of how they internalized what was going on. in terms of the actual items that we had for the first version and a follow-up of repetition, it was the use of over and over that every getting hung up on, that you can seem like a consistent thing that was happening all the time your even though that express something more than once or twice, the indicated negatively to that repetition follow-up item the i believe what we're considering

is changing to again, and also asking refining our frequency questions to ask about how many days it has occurred and how many times it has occurred. don't quote me on that. i need to see with the final word is but a something along those lines that we won't have a better understanding of what exactly, how persistent it is happening and how often it is happening. i hope that answers your question. the power imbalance, that was interesting. some kids did say that there have to be some type of power differential but a lot of other ones said that there were kids who had less power that was bullied to try to gain power, who are less popular, who would believe in order to gain popularity. they didn't really agree with the requirement to have that component. but we did want to continue to

include ask a follow-up question to see if that power imbalance was there. and then we can have determined on the back end if the indicated that with some type of power imbalance, but that was present. >> this question is relation to the school crime supplement. can you speak about the presence of sexual orientation and gender identity data collection is a basic demographic factor which would allow you to compare different variables that you and different questions you've asked to the specific analyses? >> the supplement itself doesn't include any demographic collection. that is included in the core, and what we do is we take our data and append the data and

that's how we are able to come up with our estimates for different subgroups. that's actually a question for your of justice statistics because that part, they sponsor that part. what i can give is that they have included items to the court that even rolled out i believe last month, specifically asking about gender identity and sexual orientation and they, however there only being asked of kids that are 16 and up. so that would be some limitation on what we're able to provide in terms of the data since ours is 12-18 but we will have information for 16, 17 and 18 year olds. thank you. >> hello. my question is particularly for dr. holland but anyone can answer. i was interested in the research around bullying and talk about

trans youth in the mental health effects. i wanted to do specifically what mental health effects were coming up. from what i understand in order to transition you have to be diagnosed with some sort of middle it was to receive services or to be able to get hormones. i'm just wondering how you're categorizing mental health specifically for trans people sense that is kind of the applicability transition that you to be fun as mentally ill in some way. >> thank you. so for this study in particular, we only identified depression as one of the mental health problems that trans youth had experienced. however, again we were limited to the david that was available to us and that largely came from media reports of trans youth would die by suicide. all of the mental health information and diagnoses may not have been reported. so we are severely limited by that. >> thank you.

>> i'm a parent advocate lgbt youth, and when my son speaks to me about being a young black man, identified as gay, he speaks to being more concerned about being a young black youth in america than being a gay male. my question is, and understand the data to have around identifying young black youth, particularly in underserved communities. my question is really about providing safe spaces in the schools for individuals that aren't minorities in underserved communities your what work is being done about that particular space? the question be -- the question can be for anyone on the panel. >> i can talk a little bit about what we know from the available literature. there have been a lot of very large-scale systematic what we

call randomize trials tested the effects of those kinds of approaches like gay straight alliances are the kind of approaches that are going within the school. there are similar promising literature in the area showing, using experimental design, some of that work, a number of very impressive researchers are starting to look at the impact of those kinds of strategies. they didn't make our list in terms of randomized trials meeting that criteria of the cnp every be a very promising approach and they are one of approaches that are more tailored to lgbt population. you bring up this intersection only about being a minority of in terms of the african-american background. we have not seen that in terms of the literature in that particular area but it was more focused on the lgbt salient of that experience compared.

but i think you very are properly highlighted the differences between the way that we as researchers might categorize views in the study versus their own self identity and what is the most salient identity and that's an area we need to be thinking much, much more about because you might check a box on a survey but that's not necessary the group you identify with. being a more salient one effectively to stigmatization in that area compared to another one. >> thank you. >> i want to thank you all for the information you have given me. my question is around the questionnaires that is done for the students. i saw the definition of what bullying was and i think there was one term, one word that kind of stuck out to me and that was that definition started with a youth that does something to

you. i think that kind of limits its i just wonder, are we looking at just looking at youth because bully, bully can be done by anyone and not just youth and not just about as part of a survey that you're giving students, that it may be that you list that use because that says all, only about youth. that's all the comet. >> thank you. yes, we've actually have been asking recently come specific more about teacher bullying. i've heard that ago quite a few times yesterday. it's something we need to take into consideration for a items and/or serve and to think you make a really good point to make sure that we had a good understand of bullying that's occurring by everyone. thank you. >> i heard of the group that helped put together the cdc and department of education

definition of bullying, and that was a certain constraint that was somewhat composed, imposed on the group was to define bullying as more of a. context. there are other aspects that are more constraining comfortable take out the sexual violence, the context of the data relationship or even, there are other forms i think the research is really going in those areas to understand the overlap between bullying and teen dating violence. and david whose confidence a really, really important work about sibling bullying. so those are certainly of the contacts in addition to the teacher potential for bullying and even parents of bullying, they get at this much broader conceptualization of bullying but as researchers sometimes add some parameters that we get a better understand what's happening. it's natural the department of ed might want to be focused on

little more, to make a statement about the. context as with what's happening at home for what's happening in the dating relationship. any of the definitions are a little challenge between where you set those boundaries. .. but i appreciate your comments because i think it draws attention to much water conceptualization.

>> this is a question for dr. collins, i was curious if there were any validity concerns with the data collection method being media in terms of accurate reporting and such. >> of course there are given that we were limited to, for the large majority of our example, we were limited to what was reported in the media for the suicides that occur at school we have a more rigorous approach to collecting data using law-enforcement reports and interviews with school and law enforcement officials who were familiar with those cases. i definitely feel more confident in the findings about the school associated violent death however

in most cases we did try to use reports from the media, multiple reports for each suicide. we tried to ensure that we were getting information, the the same information a number of times over and not just from the associated press related articles that were all getting information from one source. thank you so much. that's all the time we have for this panel. i would like to take another time to think our speakers. thank you so much. [applause] >> thank you so much panel one. we are going to take a break right now and we will reconvene at 12401045. i forgot to mention earlier that the cafeteria is located behind me to my right. if you go out the doors you can

take a left and walked down the hallway. if you're looking for coffee or water or anything. if you leave the building you will have to go through security again so take that into consideration if you're going in and out. thank you. 1045. [inaudible conversation] >> the education department a long summit on bullying will continue in about 15 minutes. we will have more this afternoon with discussions on inclusive academic environments and bullying based on gender

identity and sexual orientation. again, we will be back at about 1045 with more. during this break we will show you some remarks from earlier in the conference. >> hello everyone and welcome to the u.s. department of education. please take your seats and get settled in. we will get started. i am in the office of safe and healthy students in the office of elementary and secondary education. now i have the distinct pleasure to introduce james who is dedicated the duties of secretary of department of education. he is the delegated the duties of delegated secretary on january 28, 2016. he serves as the chief operating officer and chief legal officer and oversees a broad range of operational management, policy, legal and program functions at the department.

he also oversees the department work on president obama's my brother's keeper task force which seeks to address persistent opportunity faced by boys and young men of color and to ensure that all young people are able to reach their full potential. he was the first from his family to graduate from college. he credits a high school english teacher with pursuing pursuing higher education. he has mentored school students. let's please welcome to this stage james cole junior. [applause] >> good morning everyone welcome to the 2016 federal bullying prevention summit. thank you sarah for that nice introduction. i'm excited and proud to say that thanks to you and our partners across the country and here in the federal government

bullying is on the decline. according to the most recent data from our national center for education statistics, the prevalence of bullying among students age 12 to 18 fell by six percentage points breaking the plateau that lasted for nearly a decade. that's great news and we are closer to eliminating bullying than ever before. it's so important that we do because bullying, the repeated acts of aggression or violence that students used to manipulate one another has absolutely no place in our schools. no student should ever have the fear of being harassed or hurt by one of their peers whether it's in school, in their neighborhood or online. i know that fear, i know what it can feel like it i grew up on the south side of chicago in a disadvantaged neighborhood where the schools weren't as prepared to educate us and give us the opportunities and i know what that feels like personally, right before i started high school i was robbed robbed at

gunpoint in my neighborhood. i know what it feels like to be harassed and be a victim of bullying. we all know that bullying doesn't always involve violence or involve a gun. in fact these days it often involves an iphone or social media. bullying that might have taken place in the hallways are on streets are now happening online and can happen anywhere because today relationships between children unfold in an ever growing number of platforms and apps like snapchat, instagram and a bunch of other ones that my nieces have discovered a very young ages. stopping bullying is in about a social media platform. it's about how we decide to invest in our students. it's about what kind of school environment we create, how we ask them to contribute each and every day. i also know that even though were making remarkable progress, we still have a long way to go. we have a long way to go because there are far too many people and places committed to outdated

ideas about what our values are as a society. for them, easing engine even basic concepts like tolerance are far too much to ask. for us, tolerance is not nearly enough. we need to create communities that celebrate difference that we want to make school a safer and more engaging and equitable pace for all students. across this administration we are hard at work trying to make this vision a reality. president obama has been a champion of school safety and bullying prevention efforts throughout his entire two terms. he ran force this commitment yesterday by having members of the educational policy team host a pre-summa meeting at the white house. president obama has also helped bring new urgency to this work because of the father of two young girls he understands how important it is. he has challenged federal agencies like ours to step up and find new ways to reduce bullying. we have risen to the challenge. in terms of policy and program work here at the department of

education that has meant developing a uniform definition of bullying, publishing the indicators of school crime and safety that contains critical data on bullying, issuing guidance to prevent bullying of highly vulnerable populations and issuing guidance that highlights schools legal obligation to responsible eating and harassment. in addition to those steps, i'm i'm excited to announce that today along with our federal partners, we are releasing the asian american and pacific islander bullying prevention task force report. this report calls outweighs that students have experienced bullying and what we can do to address these issues so no student has to experience bullying at all. we do this work because one of our goals is to dispel the myth that bullying is simply a rite of passage, something that kids go through. we don't want to just get rid of that outdated idea, we want to

replace it with a new one. the idea that lifting up your peers instead of putting them down is what the real cool kids do. that means embracing the key role that students play in this work and helping them understand that all of our rights are bound up together, that my right depends on yours and your right depend on mine. how her job here at the department is to set an example for protecting all students of the rights. we try to do that through things like the dear colleague letter that was released at the end of 2015 in response to a troubling rise against members of the syrian muslim, middle eastern or arab communities as well as those that are jewish or students of color. we need safe learning environments for all students are equally able to participate. we know students are affected not only by the discrimination they experience in their own lives but also by what they see

in the news and in the media. students need to know that bullying and bigotry have no place in american society. we are using the tools we have at our disposal here at the department of education to make that a reality. another one of those tools is a letter we publish with the department of justice just a few months ago to assist school districts with issues facing transgender students. it explains our federal law and how it affects schools obligations. we also released a compilation of ways that schools across the country are already successfully supporting that. together this document shows that equality is not only required by law but achievable through common sense approaches that foster safety in a positive learning environment for all students.

this letter is one of the things i'm most proud of in my time here at the department of education. i'm proud of it because it's as loud and clear there is no place for bullies to dictate the rights of children. in places like north carolina where lgbt discrimination is literally wit written into the law, we will do everything we can to protect the rights of students from bullying, from fear and from the offensive idea that somehow lgbt students matter less than others. now i know we will not see all of the change that we want to see overnight. change this big is a long and slow battle that many of you have been in for decades. i know that if we continue fighting for children and their right to a great education, one that is safe from bullying and if we continue setting an example of what it means to look out for one another and empower one another, then there is no limit to what we can help students and educators accomplish. i want to thank all of you for

being here today and for all the work that you have been doing to prevent bullying including our federal partners, in particular hhs and doj. the obama administration will do everything it can on each of our remaining 161 days left in this administration and i couldn't be more excited about all the work that you all continue to do in the many years to come at the federal, state and local level. thank thank you very much for your commitment to this important matter. >> now i have the honor and privilege to introduce one of my colleagues who is the acting administrator for the department of health and human services. [applause] >> good morning.

it's great to be her on a very hot day in washington d.c. it's a little hot outside in terms of what's going on. a big's thank you to james. thank you so much and thank you for your leadership here the department of education. you will have taken an incredible lead in the anti-bullying effort and your leadership shines through. thank you for all of your activities and working in partnership with us at hhs. i think it's a great thing when we've actually been able to come together as a set of federal agencies to work on reducing bullying prevention. in particular for me, it's about not just increasing awareness but actually taking action. that's the most important. i think we've gotten past the stage where it's just something were aware of. we are working to improve and really make a difference and as we've seen to actually reduce the amount of bullying that's happening in this country.

in addition, i think this effort has been one where we've seen it's not just an education issue. it's not just a public health issue, it's not just a justice a justice issue, it is a collective community issue. we have to work together to make this happen. to stop bullying.gov effort that we've all done is actually been recognized as a national standard for federal collaboration. we also know we can't do this alone at the federal level. we need state partners and local partners, we need folks out in the audience like you, the national groups to help us continue to focus on what's the most important thing in terms of making a real impact within our communities, in the states and nationally. i'd also like to call out my colleagues at hhs who have taken an instrumental role in terms of all their work. the entire hhs team, all of our different colleagues, they really have focused incredibly well in terms of this whole effort. in terms of our agency, we work a lot with local communities and states to improve access to

health care, preventative services, primary care, we were to build a skilled workforce and integrated programs. it's really critical in terms of our work that we look continually what is new, what is it that we need to do and focus on evidence-based practices. in in particular, one of our key areas across the department has been around bullying. we recognize that it impacts the health and well-being of millions of youth across the nation. in fact, national estimates from the cdc in department of education indicate that about one and five kids are still bullied each year. in particular we know that some youth are disproportionately impacted by bullying, especially children with special health care needs or cognitive challenges such as autism and people in the lgbt community. i think many of you sell recently the study that came out that said about one third of kids who are lgbt are still being bullied in school and so

it's a significant issue. we also know this is a significant issue for parents, educators, healthcare providers, policymakers, families and everyone who works with youth. having two kids that just recently graduated from high school as well as my wife who works in the education field at high school, i saw when they came home from school just the impact that bullying could have either on them personally or on their peers and for my wife, in terms of educators it is not easy issues to deal with. creating the atmosphere where bullying is not accepted, not tolerated it something that we work to prevent collectively and set that example of peer excellence in supporting each other and that's absolutely essential. i can't tell you how many times i would have a conversation with my daughter about, i don't understand why is this going on, why are they picking on this particular child or this group and really looking for those tools and resources within the schools and community to make an

impact. she got involved in several communitywide and school efforts >> okay so i'm going to go ahead and get started and if everyone else could take their seats, then we can hear the panelists. this panel is entitled federal legal responses to harassment and bullying. i'm going to turn it over to veronica who is a trial attorney and the educational opportunity section of the civil rights division of the department of justice. >> good morning everyone. can you hear me? >> okay think there was some trouble with the last panel. so i am here from the justice department. i'm in the educational opportunity within the civil rights division in the justice department and the goal, not surprisingly of our section is to ensure equal educational

opportunities for all students. just like a lot of people in this room, our goals are really to support school's efforts to promote respect, tolerance tolerance and appreciation of diversity, to increase safety for students and to help students stay in school. the way that we can do that, as a government is to ensure that educational institutions meet their obligation to prevent and address discrimination in schools with accordance to laws. we are working to achieve these goals with the u.s. department of education and regional offices across the country. i will let my fellow panelists talk more about that. we also work more recently with local u.s. attorney offices across the country and in the districts where the schools that they're working in are located which has been a really amazingly helpful resource for us. we also work with regional equity centers which i'm sure some of you are familiar with.

our jurisdiction really relates to harassment that is on the basis of some protected class. so we enforce federal civil rights laws. the mic went out for just a second. no problem. there are a number of statutes that prohibit discrimination on the basis of different protected classes for race, color, national origin, sex and religion and disability. relevant to the topics of it today, bullying is harassment under eyewear definition, it's based on these protected classes. some classes. some of the laws that we enforce, title iv of the civil rights act of 1964, doj in my

division has the full authority to enforce title iv. there is no private right of action. it prohibits discrimination including harassment on the basis of race, national origin in institutions of higher education. we also enforced title ix which prohibits discrimination and harassment based on sex. title vi prohibits it on the basis of color and national origin by any recipient of federal funds which is a little bit different than a public school in the ada which prohibits exclusion or denial of access based on disability. we don't always get involved in cases but we only get involved in cases that come to our attention that meet the legal standard for equitable equitable release. what i mean by that is it rises to a level that would warrant court granted remedy and that would require a party to act or

refrain from acting. it's a little bit different for a lawsuit from what we call damages or money. because it's the public school or the recipient of funds that will ultimately be liable for a violation of one of our statutes and susceptible for equitable release, our our focus is really on the actions and responses of the school official. we have to assess the underlying conduct of the student to see if it was severe enough to trigger our jurisdiction but we don't focus on the actions of the individual student. so what happens is if we look into a case, we find there was harassing contacts, were going to look for three things to understand whether father-in-law is implicated. the first is if the concept was severe, pervasive to deny their

ability to participate in or benefit from the educational program for the second is we look to determine whether the school district new or any exercise of reasonable care should have known about the conduct that was occurring and finally whether the school district failed to take appropriate responsive action designed to stop the harassment, eliminate the hostile environment or remedy the effects of the harassment on the student that was arrest and prevent the harassment from occurring again. it's a mouthful every time i said. that's basically the things that we look at. how do we get involved to assess these things. there are cases that come to our attention the couple different ways. we might receive a direct complaint, a phone call or email to our department, we often receive referrals from other doj divisions or government agencies such as the department of education that's a can you look at this case for us. sometimes there's a private lawsuit that's filed that implicates one of the statutes that we enforce and we might get

involved that way. other times there might be a news article, something out there that draws our attention that implicates the laws that we enforce that we think we might want to get involved with or investigate further. then we do outreach. sometimes we go out into communities to learn about problems to see if there's anything that we can do to help. those of the different ways that cases would come to our attention. now when they do, we don't always get involved. we've received hundreds and hundreds of citizen complaints each year at the justice department. sometimes we just lacked jurisdiction in which we respond to the plan to let them know that. we often refer complaints to other parts of the civil rights division or other agencies like ocr but when we do get involved we do so in a number of ways. we almost always will conduct an investigation which means we will interview witnesses,

students, administrators, teachers, faculty, staff, families, we often will request documents into a document review request documents into a document review to better understand what's going on at school and sometimes we will file a federal complaint in court seeking equitable relief as i discussed a little bit before. that may lead to the enforcement , i'm sorry, negotiation of enforceable court order. i will give you an example there is a case in minnesota, there there was a private suit that was filed alleging that multiple lgbt students in the district were being harassed for non- gender stereotypes. we ended up intervening in that case along with the department of education to help resolve some of the issues that were going on in a more institutional

sense in that district. we wanted to really resolve the allegations of the private litigants that they had made. we negotiated with the school district, with the court oversight and an extensive decree. it requires, among many things that the district modify its policy and procedures among lgbt students in higher consultant to help with training of the students and faculty in the schools and that they set up an anti-bullying and harassment task force in the community. the agreement was put in place for five years which means for five years my section including myself monitored the implementation of that decree and we visited with the students and administrators. we do so very regularly to make sure they are in full compliance with the different provisions and to see how the climate is in the school district. it's a pretty large district in

minnesota. that's one route that we get involved. the other is to do something very similar but do it out of court. that first one, that's something if there's a problem we go to the court and its enforceable, there are frequently times that we negotiate out-of-court settlements. there are lots of different reasons why that might happen. one good example was a case in georgia. we negotiated an out-of-court agreement resolving allegations that we had received a religious and national origin harassment of the student. we received in 2012 a complaint that the student was disciplined more severely than a white student following a physical altercation. the complaint alleged that there had been repeated instances of harassment targeting this suit student up to the altercation

and things that were clearly based on his religion and national origin including allegations that he had been called aladdin because he wore a turban and he was told by fellow students to go back to his country. we took that complaint and initiated the school district under our title for jurisdiction. the investigation will frequently raise not only concerns to that complaint but it will bring our attention to other issues in the district. we discovered during our investigation that the district has not investigated witness statements that this particular student have been called a terrorist and that additional harassment had occurred including one where a student had cut his hair from the back of his turban. it also revealed some things interesting again, many issues will, that the white student parent was involved and had appealed his discipline.

the bullied students parents were of limited the bullied students parents were of proficiency. they allegedly waived their right to appeal the cuts they missed the deadline. when we looked into it, there was no written policies or procedures about appealing or waving appeals of his suspensions. there was no information on reported deadlines for challenging disciplinary decisions. we were really concerned about the equity of that process. we worked with the school district to develop an out-of-court settlement agreement that requires the district to provide training to students and staff on religious and national origin harassment including topics related to post- 911 backlash and the agreement requires the district to communicate with limited english proficiency proficiency

parents. that's one example of an out-of-court settlement agreement. that agreement, although it's it's not enforceable technically the way that another was, it covers more than 100,000 students, 14000 employees and we just ensure compliance with the provision of that order as we do any other order. the other way we will get involved and i'll let my fellow panelist talk about it a little bit is to silently cultivate a statement of in interest. we do it when there's a federal lawsuit that's filed privately that implicates one of the laws i discussed earlier and we think there's a chance or danger of the law being misinterpreted by the courts. that's one other way we might get involved. other activities that our section does in addition to monitoring and enforcing the dissent decree, we draft new

items in concert with other federal agencies, we review draft legislation from congress that implicates the laws that we enforce and we conduct outreach as an organization and rooms like this, that's all, i'll hand it over and you might want to use a different microphone. >> hello everyone, my name is allison i work in the department here and i wanted to say welcome to everyone and were so happy that everyone is here to talk about bullying prevention today. as rhonda mentioned our offices work very closely together because we enforce many of the same laws. as she mentioned doj has jurisdiction over title iv. we enforce title vi which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin. panel nine prohibits it based on

sexual orientation and another based on disability. with respect to title vi, i wanted to mention that it does not prohibit discrimination based on religion but it does protect students of any religion from discrimination including harassment based on a student's actual or perceived shared and ancestry, citizenship or read residency where the dominant religion is identity. >> harassed for ethnic slurs, how they look or dress in ways to ancestry or stereotype based on perceived ethical characteristics. for example, hindu, jewish and others are groups who may be harassed as being part of a group that exhibits both ethnic

and religious characteristics. then i also wanted to point out that title vi also gives us the authority to investigate complaints based on a student's limited english proficiency and that's relevant for the reasons that veronica highlighted in her case. then with respect to sex discrimination, that includes a whole host of things including pregnancy or parental status, gender identity or transgender status. i'm just going to run through some of the policy guidance is that our office has issued that you might find relevant and then nicole who works in our in person office will go through the enforcement process and a little more detail and talk about a case that i think is probably the most interesting part.

all of our policy guidance are available on our website in the reading room so we have issued a lot of guidance about harassment and i'm not going to go through all of them today. i just wanted to highlight a few of particular interest. the first one is a dear colleague letter that we issued in 2010 and this dear colleague letter was issued to all school districts around the country and it clarifies the relationship between bullying and harassment under the civil rights laws that we enforce. we explain how student misconduct that falls under an anti- bullying policy, for example may also trigger responsibilities under federal civil rights laws. it reminds schools that the failure to recognize discriminatory harassment when addressing student misconduct could lead to inadequate or inappropriate responses that fail to remedy violations of those federal civil rights laws. a great thing about that dear colleague letter is it provides examples of harassment and also illustrates how a school should respond in each case.

the next one is from 2014 and this one addressed bullying of students with disabilities and this letter clarified that regardless of whether a student being bullied based on his or her disability, the school must remedy the effects of bullying on the services that the student with a disability receive. so for example, special education or disability services. this is to ensure that the student, despite the bullying continues to receive a free, appropriate public education. the next one is a dear colleague letter that we issued in 2015 and this is on tolerance. this was issued by madame secretary duncan or former secretary duncan and king and it was issued relationship to current international events like the syrian refugee crisis. this just reminds them and

includes suggestions to help schools maintain safe learning communities. it includes resources to help school officials and others to promote positive school environments for the last one is a dear colleague letter that we just issued a few months ago in conjunction with the department of justice and this is about how title ix applies to transgender students. the letter remind students schools about harassment based on sex. in conjunction with that document we issued a document that put together examples of emerging practices that school districts are already using to make sure that transgender students have a safe healthy environment in which to go to school. now i will turn things over to nicole. >> thank you. so i work in the d.c.

enforcement office. we have 12 enforcement offices across the country. our primary job is to investigate discrimination under the law that ocr. we do evaluate every complaint we receive and we open investigation for every complaint of which we have jurisdiction that files in a timely manner and where it contains an allegation of a violation of one of the laws we enforce. basically everything that states a claim, we investigate. we have two primary ways of resolving complaints before the end of our investigation. we have the option of mediation for complaints if both parties agree that it's a good idea then we can go through mitigation to resolve before we conclude our investigation. we can also, if we have concerns , the universities have the option to volunteer for

voluntary resolution. if they want to raise their hand and say we can go ahead and address your concerns before you finish your investigation, we have that option as well. if none none of that happens then we finish our investigation and make either a finding that we don't have sufficient evidence or we make a finding that we do have sufficient evidence that a violation occurred and the recipient will enter into a resolution agreement with us. i have a case example from a few years ago of a student, a transgender transgender student who had a complaint filed on his behalf for alleging that the school failed to respond appropriate harassment. he was a student who came from his birth gender and he was male in middle school and he started out a new high school hoping to make a fresh start with new classmates.

the activist started the school year, a boy was talking near him and asking if he was a boy or girl. one student responded now he's a boy. he reported this to his mom and his mom reported it to school staff and they spoke with the boys and said that was an inappropriate. his leader was in class and two girls were speaking about him near him that he could overhear them and again discussing whether he was a boy or girl. one asked him if he was a boy or girl and he said i'm a boy so then she said well let me touch your deck. he said no and she said that means your girl. based talking about him him and saying things like he doesn't have any tips so what are you going to do. he reported that to his mom and she ported it to school staff and they talk to the girl and's

suspended her for class for a day and when she came back kids asked her why she was expelled for a day and she responded he she ratted on me. >> he. they reported it to his mom and they suspended the girl for three more days. about a month later the mom met with school staff and officially asked them to have investigate the statements and at that point the school went through and did an investigation. the investigator used a deliberate and different standard and found that there wasn't any evidence of sexual harassment. we had concerns that they didn't immediately start their grievance procedures to investigate the claims of harassment. they used the wrong standard and even the last, where the view

the last statement by the student about he she ratted on me, they didn't consider that harassment statement. they revised their procedures for investigating claims of harassment. they updated their policies and their statements, they conducted training for school staff and they re-conducted the the investigation of that student's harassment. >> does this work? okay. >> good morning. i'm michelle tucker and i'm an attorney here at the u.s. department of education office of general council and at the office of general counsel it's led by general counsel who welcomes everyone to the event today. they provide assistance to the secretary concerning the programs and policies of the department and my division, the

division educational equity provides assistance with the civil rights rights. [inaudible] the bulk of my portfolio relates to sex discrimination. we work closely with alice's office and the office of civil rights to put out policy guidance. we also work with the oj as well as her statements of interest. [inaudible] i will talk to you a bit about those. about this. okay.

the government filed statements of interest in cases that were not party to. that means the government isn't bringing the case against anyone the government hasn't sued anyone and were not being sued. these are cases that the government learns about and has a distinct interest in. generally speaking they want to clarify the interpretation. [inaudible] sorry. is this microphone working? >> okay. generally the government files briefs and these are generally filed in appellate court cases. these briefs also share or clarify the government's interpretation of federal law but are generally filed in support of one side the case. today i'm i'm going to provide an overview of two briefs that

they worked with that were filed in federal court that included allegations about harassment and bullying. i'm not going to get into the legal argument but i wanted to provide examples of the types of cases that have led the government to get involved. first case i'm going to talk about is tk versus the new york city of education which was a case in the u.s. court of appeals for the second circuit. in march of 2015, the government filed in brief in this case because we found it important based on the administration priority to stop bullying as well as a unique opportunity this case presented to confirm the long-standing position that student harassment or bullying can a fear with the ability to receive free appropriate education which is required under the ida. here a 12-year-old student with learning disabilities endured daily bowling by her classmates and caused her to regress academically and socially. it included claims of pinching

being socially isolated and called names and the teachers let this happen. despite the request the school refused to address it in her individual education plan. rather the school recommended that she remain in the same placement the same year with the same students who continue to bully her. the parents rejected the proposal and removed her from the public school program. following the parents filed a lawsuit against the parents saying the student was denied the free appropriate education to which she was due. they're entitled to reimbursement. the school district appealed the case and we feel filed a brief to argue that the school district's refusal to grant the parents reasonable request denied her the free appropriate education she was due. ultimately the second circuit agreed with the united states

and it was a violation. the second case i will talk about briefly within the u.s. district court of michigan. we filed with veronica's office and doj if every 2015, statement of interest in this case. the plaintiff what is the mother of a 14-year-old trans gender student. he was born a female and presented of mail of all aspects of his life. this was against four michigan school saying the school's treatment of her son based on his transgender status and their deliberate indifference to the harassment he suffered violated the federal civil rights laws. they did call him by his preferred name but they required him to use the female restroom across the school in the cafeteria and they eventually let him use a restroom which was generally close because of construction.

the student was also the subject of harassment in the school's response was if she's going to dress like a boy she needs to toughen up. plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in the government filed a statement of interest to clarify the legal involvement of the law. >> good morning. my name is marlena and i work with the department of justice community relations service. how many of you are familiar with community relations service or even know we exist? okay so community relations service is the entity within the department of justice that does not prosecute, does not investigate, what we do is we

come in and we facilitate, we mediate, we hold facilitated dialogues and we help bridge the distance between community members to ensure that they have the tools they need to resolve whatever tensions may exist or whatever disagreements may have occurred. for some background information, the civil rights act was put in place by the civil rights act of 1964 and under the civil rights act, we were given the opportunity and the ability to address conflicts and tension that arise from differences that are based on race, color and national origin. actually consider america's peacekeepers. then with the passage of the massey shepherd hate crime act we are also given the ability to work with communities to allow them to develop capacity to prevent and also respond to any