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 violent hate crimes that are committed on the basis of

gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion and disability. in addition to race, color and national origin. because of our mandate, we have the capacity and the ability to go into communities, whether it's the school, because i consider that a community, whether it's the community at large, we work with entities such as law enforcement, superintendents, individual schools, mayors, community members leaders and the goal is to ensure that we provide the tools for that community. when it comes to the education realm, we address many different cases and concerns within the community and some of the cases

that we've addressed through the delivery of services have dealt with student racial conflicts intentions or when there's a school protest or demonstration and they ask us to come in, school disturbance case or violence, a conflict over school policing which we know exists in several communities and conflict over disparities and treatment or in opportunities. we may receive a call from the school board or the school superintendent or a teacher or parent that is concerned and they want us to come in and speak with them. the beauty about asking for our services is that our services are provided on a confidential manner. in other words, unless the parties that we are working with the side they want to let the world know that were there, we will not be informing the public and we will not be informing anyone outside of the group that's working with us that we are there or what the concerns are. sometimes a concern makes national news and so we enter that way and the parties are

free to also advise the community at large that we are there to assist them. we don't necessarily come in when there are conflicts that involve other divisions of the department of justice for the department of ad but there have been times were there have been issues that affected the school community in such a way where we have collaborated with the department of education civil rights division in order to make sure that whatever services are being provided to the schools are comprehensive in nature and we have some buy in. some of the work that we do involves providing services. so we teach the community on how to strengthen, problem solve and other skills. we offer cultural awareness training.

we help communities such as schools develop strategies to prevent conflict and improve relationships among students, faculty, staff, parent community groups. i used to be a teacher so i also like to think that we would bring in the folks that work in the cafeteria, the bus drivers because the school community also includes those employees as well. we also try to help the school, especially the students have the tools they need to effectively address any hate or bias motivated incidents that may occur in campus or any bias incidents that may occur in the community sometimes you may have a racial tension or racial conflict outside of the actual school building but the counseling is so intense that it

seeks into the day-to-day affairs of the school. when a situation like that, crs can come in and have different meetings with different entities within the community inside and outside of that school building to discuss the concerns that exist currently in that community. then we can hold either a facilitative dialogue or town hall but we are mediating and facilitating these discussions so that the individual that resides in that community are the ones that are actually identifying what their needs are and identifying what their goals and objectives are. we are facilitating that mapping that they're doing to try to figure out, were here in .8, how can we get to point b in the most effective way in order to make both feel that there understood, that they are being heard and that their concerns are being validated. that's the key to allow everyone

to have a voice at the table and be able to discuss and work through whatever concerns they may have that they absolutely believe is having a negative impact within that community, that school or that school district. in cases such as this, we may have, as i said, the stuff that we do is confidential so i'm not going to discuss specific states where we been in but i can give you a general overview of types of cases that we would become involved with, for instance we may have racial tension in a community and in a case like that, in the past we've come in and we've worked with the administrators, teachers, students, family members and we facilitate a dialogue to address the concerns that are taking place and then we may then come in and provide training so we

may provide professionalism training to address the concerns i have been identified by the groups at large at the table. we may murder work in a community where we have immigrants and refugees and there's tension based on race and sometimes that tension is also based on fear. folks are acting out and it's affecting the young women and men in that community and its seeking into the culture of the community as well. we come in and work with the local immigrant refugee community leaders and school officials, law enforcement, we invite whomever feels they need to have a voice at that table because they can help not only identify the problem but identify the solutions and then the implementation for those solutions. we may end up facilitating a dialogue that's based on race.

it also provides a cultural competency component because there may be a level appear there because of a lack of understanding about a person's culture. we have provided in the past cultural competency training that addresses the arab muslim culture. sometimes, as you know there have been incidents across the nation with students having their job removed from them physically by another student or by a teacher and instances like that we also come in and hold cultural competency training and we have facilitated dialogues we make sure that religious leaders are present, that the parents have an opportunity to be heard and that the students have an opportunity to be heard. one of the things as an educator

but i always think about it sometimes when our students act out, we are really quick to suspend or to expel and i know that from the school board there are certain instances where expulsion is necessary, but when you have incidents where a child is acting out and it's based on culture, it's not only a knee-jerk reaction to suspend, you want to be able to say let's take a step back. you don't understand this culture, you don't understand why this young lady is wearing ash had job. his job and there can be respect and validation. we can come in with perspective and help facilitate these conversations and also provide services. we can provide and facilitate

dialogue and competition entering we also have a program we've developed and it's called the spirit program and it stands for the student problem identification and resolution of issues together program. otherwise known as the. what it does is it brings students, administrators, teachers, parents together to identify the issues at hand to develop solutions and it's not crs developing the solutions, it's the participants that are developing the solutions. then they have the opportunity to use the tools that they will receive during this two day program so it's two days, half a day each of the two days to then take action on the conflicts that they have within their school. when we talk about restorative practices, this this could be one of the many tools in the toolkit as it applies to these practices because you are now validating through the

discussion of what the issues are but you're also giving the student in that school the opportunity to take ownership of their own resolution enter giving them those tools and what we have found is after we leave this peer program and the techniques that they learn, they continue to implement that on a day-to-day basis and then you can even have peer to peer training. that's just a very general overview of what crs does and thank you very much. [applause]

[inaudible] do we have a deficit of diversity and research for bullying and that kind of thing? >> i'm not aware. i'm not aware of the numbers. [inaudible] >> we've done a lot of research

to understand the reasons why. mediation in such a powerful tool to holistically correct but it is underutilized. it's often seen as an afterthought. how do you think we can overcome those barriers? >> we need to spread the word that mediation is effective. we need to empower our students to also have -- sorry. i have a big mouth. we need to spread the word that mediation is a very effective tool in that outside of classroom. i've used as an attorney. i've used it as a teacher and i use it now at crs. we also need to provide our students the skills to do their own mediation. it doesn't have to be following alall of them with the books tht you have to do it from an academic perspective but there's a wakeup a dialogue and to

listen to what someone is saying to you and then to acknowledge it, to validate it and then is it okay, i hear what you're saying. our young ones may not have that ability but we can teach them another way that they necessarily not involve words. i think it's like so this is where i'm coming from. what do you think about this and what you think about that? asking the question. to me that the way of mediating. it's not like you are wrong. no. it's like this is how i feel. is ideally. i taught special ed and so some of my students couldn't really express themselves other than through physical means, and so how do you do that and how to redirect the behavior? sometimes mediation is that redirection of behavior as well, and that's how i view it. >> can i speak at the mic?

>> go ahead. >> i'm the director of the office of cisco at the florida department of education, and one of our responsibility to abide guidance, training and technical assistance to school districts and individuals with regard to bullying and harassment. i am very familiar with the dear colleague letter and we used them quite often. i am especially fond of the first one because it does have the examples and i think that's a very critical when you're providing training. are there ever opportunities, because when you come in and do investigations or address incidents in individual school districts, that doesn't come from the state. and yet there are some valuable learning opportunities that would be applicable across the state that i get help share and provide information on.

is there ever a way other than the school districts himself reaching back out to be saying, hey, we had these findings or we were made in this area and that i could help disseminate that information. are there other ways that we can reach out to you or access information that bubbles up as a part of his investigations that we could use not to take on an individual spaces or a school to do something wrong but use it as a learned opportunity cost the state for others to benefit from? >> i think there are two answers. [inaudible] if you want information for an individual findings for a particular school division, you would have to file a foia request for that but we do offer technical assistance and trainings if you like your office to retreat we think a school division or school

district may benefit from trade from our office, we do provide those opportunities. i can give you my contact information after this if you would like more information. >> that would be wonderful, thank you. >> we are going to have to table all the questions. i'm sure they would be happy to answer any questions if they're able to stay or they can get contact information. i can circulate that led to let's just give him a big round of applause and say thank you. [applause] >> i'm going to ask that the third panel come up to the stage, this will be using the school operations planned from to support bullying prevention efforts.

>> [inaudible conversations] >> all right, thank you. i introduced with the earlier. i work in office of safe and healthy students and office of elementary and secondary education here at ed and i will be moderating this panel. with a great panel lined up so please feel free to ask a lot of questions at the into there's anything that you are unsure about. at the conclusion of today's session you will know more about emergency operation plans than

you ever expected at a bullying summit. you will discover a new set of partners at the district and school levels to support your bullying initiative. i'm going to provide you with a brief overview of bullying. we've heard a lot about award for my section is going to be very short. afterwards my colleague will provide a brief overview of emergency planning. we do will discuss school climate and school climate assessments. and in conclusion you here from the safe schools healthy students program director with the hamilton school district in massachusetts and gene is on with an airport right now. or flight got canceled this month so she were brought up as we're talking. if you see when something -- if you see some kind of mistake, that's the district we will provide you with free resources for use when you return back to your school districts. so as you all heard this morning ofrom bullying his unwanted

aggressive behavior among school-age children that involves a real or perceived power and politics of behavior is repeated or have potential to be repeated over time. vote-getter bullet and those who bully others may have serious and lasting problems. -- those who bully or if you'd like to see the complete would you can download it from the website. bullying and threats to the physical and emotional safety at school and a negative impact the ability to learn. the best way to address bullying is to stop it before it starts. the are a number of things schools staff can do to make schools safer and prevent bullying. you can stop bullying on the spot with adults respond quickly and consistently to bullying behavior, they send the message that it's not acceptable. research shows this can stop bullying behavior over time. very simple steps adults can take to stop bullying on the spot and to keep kids safe.

do anything immediately. it's okay to get another adult to help you. separate those were involved, make sure it would be safe, need any immediate medical or mental health needs. stay calm, reassuring to get involved including the bystanders and model respectful behavior when you intervene. you can also support the students involved by addressing bullying behavior involving parents and school staff and avoiding interventions that do not work such as zero-tolerance. i am now going to briefly introduce my colleagues before they get started. madelyn sullivan is an education program analyst in office of safe and healthy students here at ed, contracting office represented for the readiness and emergency management for

schools technical assistance center which provides training and support for building school preparedness and their mission is prevention and protection, medication, response and recovery which would've more about. in regards to school safety, security and emergency management. reader is an education program analyst in the office, said office. we're all colleagues. she serves at the contracting office represented for the national center on safe and supportive learning environment of the nestlé technically assistance center. this center provides technical support and training to state education agencies local education agencies and schools federally funded under programs to improve school climate and conditions for learning in pre-k 12, and also going to introduce gina english is not your justly have an idea of her background.

gina is a licensed school psychologist and prevention specialist with work and have been will ram regional school district for over 25 years. the school-based program development and management experiences have concentrated on strategies to improve school climate and safety and the integration of school and community behavioral health programs for students and families. now i'm going to turn over to madelyn. >> thank you, everyone. i do all the work you do is very important i do know you are all very busy so we are really grateful you are able to -- just a minute. >> the work that you do to prevent bullying and to protect the victims is very similar to the work that goes into developing and maintaining a

school in emergency operations plan which we call a school gop for short. so both work to create a safe school environment. just as worked to prevent bullying can you also have to have support in place for responding to incidents of bullying and for supporting the victims of bullying. working with the eop timetable enhancer efforts by helping bring together all of those who enrolled at who have roles and responsibilities, and expertise and the resources. a school eop is developed using a systematic framework which we call the six step process. furthermore, the framework allows for flexibility and it supports and all hazards approach. this needs it takes into consideration a wide variety of hazards and threats that might impact and disrupt the safe and healthy condition for learning.

as you can see a school eop support all efforts to address natural hazards, including the wildfires and floods, technological hazards such as power failures, and biological hazards such as the seasonal flu and food contamination. and adversarial incidental and human cost threats including suicide, trafficking and bullying. as there are more more threats and hazards they will see, nablus and the necessary action needed to address the. and this helps strengthen your bullying initiative. so just like bullying come emergency plan works to build capacity before, during and after possible incidents. and emergency planning means focusing on prevention and protection just as much as medication, response and recovery. this is how increase

preparedness. so by integrating bullying with emergency planning you are helping ensure everyone, students, staff, families, everyone is educated about bullying, and is aware of the steps that they can take to not only prevent bullying but to respond on the spot. this is our six step plan to process. please notice this process is designed to be flexible and iterative so it can be adapted to each needs the school and school district. and it can take into account each of your unique bullying initiatives. so, for example, in step one it is named formed a collaborative planning to go each school should have a bullying prevention coordinator and possibly even a whole team that addresses bullying. the prevention coordinator can be on the eop planning team.

step two, the team is going to conduct a climate assessment at work to learn specifics about how bullying shows itself in the school. such as the individuals being victimized as well as the types and the frequencies and locations of bullying that is happening at your school. my colleagues rea read what mr. specials are a safe and supportive learning environments will describe to you surveys and improved resource package. so this is so that will help you to customize both your bullying initiatives to use of this school and the topic of bullying within your school eop your in step three we want to be determining goals and objectives. based on a climate assessment data was collected in step two, the plan came will select goals and objectives. the goals of the teams more

broad vision of what the school wants to accomplish and the objectives have or measurable outcomes. the sample goal by the prevent bullying from occurring, or protect students from bullying, or support students who have been bullied. a sample objective might be right students with training or provide training to staff on recognizing the signs of bullying, or teach students how to respond to bullying. in step number four is where we get into more detail and is named plan to develop it. so this is where the courses of action that are detailed are going to outline all of the specific steps that the school will take. for example, using the assessment data for plenty might select a matching prevention program and set specific steps to take to protect and support a student who has been bullied. in step five, plan and preparation to review and

approval, a lot happens. as the plan is developed, policies and processes supporting the initiatives can be formalized, including the requirement for the reporting process if that's one of your state or district mandates. this step works to help clarify all of the partners roles and responsibilities as it pertains to preventing bullying and responding to all of those goals. furthermore, by approving a plan, if you it is agreeing to the plan and their contributions. and then in step six its planned implementation and maintenance. in step six all the efforts are kind of focus on raising awareness to bullying, what it looks like, and the resources to help those who were bullied. additionally, the school pride training on this bold initiative and the program. it's important remember that this process is continual and the steps are iterative.

the eop and the updated based on lessons learned from incidents and the new assessments and surveillance results. and now we are going to hear from my colleague rita. >> good morning, everyone. just want to share a little information about a new set of resource tools to help schools and planning teams lay out a foundation for safe environment for learning and academic student academic success. about five months ago the department of education released a first of its kind set of measurements to support safe and and rich learning environment for all students and staff. i might add that these resource tools can also be included as key components for bullying prevention and in emergency operations planning. the new resources include the

education school climate survey and a quick guide on making school climate improvement. additional resources as part of a school climate improved resource package would be released later this month, and through the fall of this year. these whatever resources were developed for the department of education by the american institutes for research and the national center on safe support of our departments operated by a i r. the surveys and the company resource but euros are posted on the website and i will provide that information for you in a moment. first i would like to provide you with a little bit of background. the school climate survey is and the resources were developed in response to executive action fund the administration to help address issues of safety as well as issues impacting the improvement of school climate. the u.s. department of education provided support for the

development of the school climate management platform with the intent to make available and reliable measures of school climate as well as resource materials to help and assist the users of, i'm sorry, to assist users in analyzing the data. we know that positive school and climate foster trust, respect, communication and cooperation among students, school staff, parents and the community. research has shown us that students learn best when they are in environments in which they feel safe, supportive, challenged, except the adults as well in those same environments feel that they can perform their duties and responsibilities best when they feel safe and supportive. i'd like to give you provide for you a couple of features about the new school climate survey.

the survey can be administered at the state, district or school level. there are five surveys. one designed for and high school students in grades six through 12, one for teachers, one for non-constructional staff, one for administrators and one for parents and guardians. so the student surveys administrators have the option of linking the school climate research respondent david to other students to do the resources. such as disciplinary data and incident data. the service will enable states, district and schools to collect and act on reliable nationally validated school climate data in real-time, and provide user-friendly reports. the surveys are posted on a web-based platform which makes it easy for the user to download and then upload other data system. districts and schools admission

to surveys can store the date on their state, district or school based data systems with access only to authorized users your the student, structure a non-instructional staff survey takes about 20-30 minutes to complete, and the. and guardian survey takes about 10-15 minutes to complete. for the student and parent surveys, there is an option of parents come unstuck, student and parents to toggle back and forth between english and spanish versions at any point while taking the survey, if needed. all of these surveys are free. there's no cost for using them. i want to ge give a little insit into what the survey looks like. the survey targets three core domains. engagement safety and

environment. there are 13 subdomains covering topics such as constructional environment, school participation, relationships, emotional safety, physical safety, bullying and cyber bullying, physical health and mental health, cultural and linguistic competence, substance abuse and discipline. so if by chance you're wondering how many questions are included in the surveys on bullying, there are a number of questions across the five surveys. they address areas such as bullying as a problem, bullying related to race, ethnicity and religion. cyber bullying, bullying related to sexuality and bullying related to physical and mental disability. so just to give you a little bit of information about the school climate improvement package,

those resources will be available by web-based also. the resources are action oriented and they are based on evidence-based research. resource materials were developed to help create support for users of the school climate survey, if they include the following pieces, a reference manual, action guide for a range of stakeholders a data interpretation guide, online practice modules, customized list of resource items based upon an assessment and pointers for improving school climate based on the use of an assessment. so the school climate survey at all of the support of resource materials our post on the national center for safe support of our department technical assistance center website at safe supported learning.edu.gov. those leaks are listed on the

slide and enclosing a just like to acknowledge the director of the national center on this or learning environments also note as nestlé who is here and you can average two to get any additional questions about the resources. sandy williamson. so i would turn it back over to madeleine or gina. [applause] >> i'm gina kahn from the hampden-wilbraham regional school district about an hour and half ago. my flight return is, are my goal was to get it before had to go back. [laughter]

i'm really happy to be here and i am especially pleased to be able to contribute to this conversation with a little bit of school-based perspective, and so if you just bear with me for one second so that i can get to my spot on my notes. next slide, thank you. hampden-wilbraham regional school district, we are in worcester, massachusetts, we are adjacent to springfield mass and as a suburban district we have concerns that incorporate typical of a new england suburban school district. we have school buildings that reflect aging infrastructure. those shortly promote or present

safety issues and concerns. we also have issues that pertain to economic stresses that her death not unusual in any school district. we have seen 10 percentage points of increase in our free and reduced lunch designation over a short period of time, and there are always issues around resource allocation. however, we define that we have been able to maintain that court of our safety agenda, and we've been very fortunate to be able to do so with the support of some really very important and very beneficial federal resources that have provided is not just simply with funny but also with very high quality technical assistance and support. these have included the

readiness and emergency management program, have included the safety school program and mostly so we are recipients of the school climate transformation grant. and the concentric circle of these projects have allowed us to continue to promote our school safety agenda. next slide police. -- please. we sort of started at the very beginning with the vision, this is an excerpt from our bullying prevention intervention plan. the foundation that helps us great at safe and secure and healthy learning environment, free from bullying come free from cyber only, supports positive emotional health and well being so all students can learn. as we have heard earlier today in the presentation, it even though i was near i know because

we work together, bullying is a significant issue in our schools and yet our schools are also a key resource and a solution. and so in weaving the bullying prevention throughout our emergency operations process, and really using all of our standard systems in our bullying prevention efforts we are really able to strengthen those efforts. they emergency operations planning process really does provide that ideal structure. madeline has described that b.o.p. planning process and the six components. i will provide a few examples of what these look like in our school district. one of the first vegetables is supported by leadership, and that is definitely no surprise that when all the wheels are turning in the same direction we

are able to make some progress. in our state as in many states, anti-bullying legislation has passed and this really does ensure that this remains a priority in our state and our region and that the district level as well. leadership of course it's at the district level, and that the tippy top of our school administration. we need those folks, our superintendent and his cabinet to develop and review those processes and procedures and to allocate the resources that we need in order to make sure that professional developer takes place, the evidence-based programs that we need are selected, and that we continue to have a place where the data that is so important to measure our efforts can be looked at and can be considered, and acted upon. ..

assessment she described is a fabulous school. in a moment i will talk a little bit more about some of the other faster ways in which we are able to paint that picture in the school climate. third assessment and capacity assessment to make sure we have the resources to keep going. on the next light i have some examples of what that might look

like. to use sources, any source of data that is available to us has helped us not only address our concerns around bullying but our overall school safety efforts. we do an annual risk behavior survey but there are other things. we have our student information system. i'm sure many of you from the public setting do and it tracks things like attendance and disciplinary reports and grades. our nursing counters as well as our counselor interventions, and then we do use the universal screening tool in our district. these tools are really important and may be us with supporting individual students, for me and for us in our district, the value really becomes greater in the aggregate where we are able to use these things is more in the way of understanding are universal practices and gaps in our core instruction or our core invention.

this just gives you another way of looking at the. you may be familiar with the triangle approach to intervention, whether it's a a tiered system of support or different names for it from your schools. however, you see we always start with those core practices and not just a matter of bullying or with behavior, making those expectations explicit but making sure we have the mechanisms to teach those expectations and how students can comply with that. we use things like responsive classroom, second step evidence-based curricula that give students the tools they need. we also need mechanisms to be able to support students at higher levels of risk and the most intensive interventions that might involve behavioral intervention plans.

another planning principle, and i had set a few moments ago the 360° look 60-degree look at this. really all corners of our buildings and all students and staff, the afterschool programs, the bus these are things that might sometimes escape our immediate view if we are just thinking of the classroom setting. collaboration among all stakeholders is another key in the process. this includes our approach to school safety and enhances our efforts. you can see we are at the building level, district safety team with great collaboration with our community partners with the law enforcement, parents,

students must must be involved in there's other peripheral support. our programs like our ymca for early childhood programs, not just within the school but the center -based programs that we can reach out to. in sharing our resources we are basically invested in the long-term efforts. it's interesting to see this data slide per the point is not to look specifically at the data but to remember as we gather the data it makes charters for improvement. sometimes we have to look at things a little deeper. sometimes there's been a reduction in high school or middle school students who think that bullying is a problem at their school. this is really not a sufficient place to stop. we need to find out what they are telling us we can do this

through focus group and through intervention programs. we get a more richer perspective we also see the positive adult connections in the earlier slides in terms of reporting, kids need to know that they have an adult at school that they can go to if they have a problem for this is a piece of data that we work on all the time to try to get that improved through things like our advisories. next slide. we know from feedback that we get from our safety teams that they do see the connection between climate and ongoing process of school climate and safety. the eop process is the perfect opportunity. it gives us the platform to do that and it gives us a placeholder to ensure these things happen all the time on an ongoing basis. one of our former superintendents, we won't say we

are not perfect and we are not. the issues we need to address and where we need to go has helped us set those charters and make those improvements. we have those challenges and goals. we want our kids to feel connected. in particular right now i think most parents will tell us, and they have their survey, they, they are having difficulty navigating the social media aspects of bullying. that impacts the school environment and the community environment. these are environments we would like to work on. finally we would like to work on making sure we make the common threads in our initiative bullying prevention, suicide prevention, substance abuse prevention. these are all high-priority aspects of our safety priority planning. they are built around the framework of resilience and problem solving and health seeking. the more that we reinforce those

concepts for kids, the safer our school should be and ultimately free from the impacts of bully. i think that might be it. thank you. [applause] thank you so much. we appreciate all of your great efforts to get here. you're wonderful. so, i work with a team and we administer the readiness and emergency management for school technical assistance center. we are joined by those who can help you answer any questions. this is a hub of information and services and resources and training and technical assistance all supporting the development of high-quality, emergency operation plan.

the overall comprehensive emergency management planning effort. i could go on for about an hour and a half with all of the services we provide and i'd be smiling the whole moment but there's no time. i encourage everyone to take a look at the website. it is a great entry point into all of our services. it is http ://rim at edd.gov. or you can go to the department of education website and not only do we have training, both virtual and in person but we have tools. one of them is a piece of software that will take you through the planning process and actually work with you to generate and eat eop. it works in the physical and virtual environment and facilitates collaboration throughout the community.

again, thank you everyone for all that you do and we really hope you're having a great day here at the department. [applause] >> thank you everyone. we have a couple minutes to take some questions. if you're going to ask a question please use a microphone so we can make sure everyone on the live stream can hear you. >> i am a college student, i wanted to ask you about what can be done federally to really create and foster an inclusive and bully free environment in school. i've been reading a lot about what's going on in different states and the policies and implementation that they're doing. i notice that there is a cruel

elation but there is in a set standard protocol so what can we do in order to really get something mandated nationally? >> i think that's a great question. thank you. i know that we at the federal level are working very hard to put out as much information as we can and i'm sure you're all aware of the website where we have all of the information that we develop and products that we create. there are training guides in their for teachers and bus drivers and continuing education credit that you can take. there's an app for parents as well. there are a lot of pieces that you can take and we are continually working to push this conversation forward and i think in partnership with those at the state level and at the school level and especially at the local level, this can really move forward. i don't know if gina wants to talk more about what they are doing in particular with

specifics on bullying, that might be helpful as well. >> i think one of the things that i feel very strongly about is that the resources that sarah just described, they're not still available. they really would, once we establish that fundamental commitment to addressing the bowling -- bullying issue and the evidence based practices that are available to us, there are so many resources that are available. i don't know the answer to your question in terms of how we get this to be a uniform federal or national, i do know it is a national concern and certainly our federal partners have provided a tremendous wealth of information to help us with that. i do think it comes down to

getting it going in the same direction and having credit to the evidence base of what works and really one community at a time, one state at a time, i don't know the data on the number of states that have enacted bullying prevention legislation such as massachusetts, but when those things are happening then you do have that common language and common thread. >> do all 50 states have a policy on record about bullying prevention? ethic it's a great place to look if you look at your state and see what the laws are around bullying. i think that help you engage with your state education agency as well. >> thank you please go to the microphone. >> can you hear me okay customer, research fellow and

one of our interest is promoting positive school environments. my question is about the school elp that you talked about. is there a component that is participatory so if natural tragedies occur about any group, how much can schools. [inaudible] his out part of an elp as well and what are your thoughts on that? >> yes. i had to -- we want to think about every possible threat. in terms of before during and after, also we want to think about before during and after peer what can we do to prevent it.

if we can prevent it what can we do to mitigate, what can we do to be continually protecting the whole school community. then during, you want to apply those same principles. then we talk about to consider each of the hazards, also in terms of, on a scale so to speak, you never, you want to take in all hazards approach and in an ideal world prepare for the worst case scenario and the things that happen more frequently but we don't want folks to focus on that. it's an everyday event and it's those skills and functions that you're going to tap into into something more intense communitywide. no matter the emergency, if something was involved with

teaching and learning whether it's in the school day or extended period of time, there's going to be a communications component and an accountability component where you want to know the well-being of everybody in the school community. we encourage folks and give them the information and resources to think about this key function and apply them to specific threats and hazards. because of iterative over time you will continually build more and more capacity does that answer your question? >> yes, thank you. >> hello, i am a psychiatrist's from michigan state university. my question is more on data collection. i know my biggest, as a researcher, my biggest challenge is that when they asked me how many, what's your your unmet needs or how many muslim students are there, most of the campuses don't have the category

that you can identify your religious religion. i was wondering do you have that data on religion or other things like that? is their data related to religion? >> so i can only speak for our school district. it is not one aspect of data that we look at on a regular basis. however, a component of the community scan is to understand the nature of the community. i think for the example you gave, that hard data is really important and i would definitely advocate for collecting in whatever means possible in order to get an accurate assessment of

what that community looks like. we need to know who is in our community and how do we address the cultural competence effort of our planning. just from our lens, it's not a piece of data that we collect but i think your your point is really important. >> do you have time for one more ? >> sure. >> thanks. thank you so much for the data you presented. i'm specifically interested in the last set of studies that talked about students feeling connected to adults in their school environment point have there been any conversations or is there any future effort to talk about how floyd discrimination can impact having trusted faculty in school settings.

there are legislatures and policies that can essentially get you terminated for being out about your orientation or gender identity. we also know having those people in the school can make specific populations fuel more what about them protecting employees who may be out. >> again, i can talk one lens from this to draw from. what i can tell you about our own school district is the importance that we have provided that we have focused on helping students who understand as a school community, diversity of all types. this does involve for example components of our training that

i referred to as evidence-based programs, we use something like lifeline as our suicide prevention curriculum. we have a very large component of that that has to do with helping students be comfortable with whatever they feel the fines them and having that connection to that trusted adult as you were talking i was sort of visually thinking about the number of doors that display some sort of graphic representation of that message to students in some way. i think it comes down to the culture of the community and it takes work. it takes recognizing that these are needs that we may indeed have some problems that we may not necessarily be addressing them as adequately as we can and then setting the benchmarks of how we need to improve.

>> thank you. >> i'm also going to point out judy, you may want to touch base with her. she's from the los angeles school district and they have a lot of great activities going on around creating safe spaces and they have badges that they've given their employees to show students where they can come purchase book about that yesterday so if you weren't able to hear her, you may want to speak with her about that. i am going to end this panel now and i will say we are going to break for lunch. please make sure you come back at 1:15 pm. we will start right at 1:15 pm. you have a great panel great panel to kick off the afternoon. as a reminder the cafeteria is behind me on my right so if you go out the door and take a left and go all the way to the end of a highway or go outside the building but you have to go through security to come back in

so please factor that into your time to be back at 1:15 p.m. thank you so much. [applause] >> the morning session of this conference on preventing bullying is finishing up with a lunch break now for about the next hour. the session resumes about 1:15 pm p.m. for strategies and inclusive academic environment. then a session on gender, gender identity and sexual orientation and concluding remarks by the senior advisor secretary to john king. these in the morning session will be available on our website cspan.org. a group called the fight for 15

holds its first-ever live convention in richmond virginia. workers from various industry will call for the raising of the minimum wage to $15. we will have live coverage starting at 5:00 p.m. eastern time. during the lunch break here is some of the earlier discussions. >> hi everyone. if everyone could please take their seats we are going to go ahead and get started. if i could have the member of the first panel come to this stage that we can get started. this first panel is called how research recommendations and school surveillance impacts your bullying prevention efforts and it will be in moderated by

maureen perkins. marine is a public health analyst in the division of child adolescence and family health bureau at the health resources bureau who works on bullying prevention. i will turn it over to maureen. she may have run to the restroom okay, i'm going to turn it over to catherine bradshaw instead. >> i can always talk. so the purpose of this panel is to review the state of the science and provide background as we delve deeper into some of the different themes, particularly ones that will be covered in different in the

breakout sessions. i served on an panel that reviewed the policy related to voting. i'm going to talk about some of the findings from this consensus study and then you will hear from my colleagues from two of the federal agencies that are very involved in this area, the u.s. department of education as well as the center for disease control and prevention to talk about the surveillance and data collection and what they have seen so far what's on the horizon. one thing that's really exciting is this information feeds back and forth. it's great great, great to be part of the organization. we hear there's a new definition and should we align that with our data collection efforts. to see that feedback happening

in real-time is fantastic. it's great to be able to participate in that as a researcher but also to partner with federal agencies that are in a position where they're relatively nimble and able to actually respond and that's somewhat unprecedented. marine did you want to make any remarks about your perspective or the panel? >> good morning everyone. 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. 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 the cap pasty building of bullying and we conducted a consensus study with the committee member.

our first speaker that we already met, catherine bradshaw was a committee member and she will be talking to us today about 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. she holds a doctorate in development psychology from the university of georgia. her primary research interests focus on the development of aggressive behavior and school intervention. she collaborates on research activities regarding bullying and school climate. the design evaluation and implementation of evidence based prevention programs in schools. with that i will let catherine begin.

>> i was thrilled to be part of this committee. this is a list of other investigators that were part of the committee and i am here to represent the committee. i'm happy to see some of my own opinions but i'm trying to stick to the opinions of the group and it was a very interdisciplinary esteemed group of colleagues. we were led and chaired by fred who is a pediatrician by training and had other health professionals including pediatricians and nurses in a number of us in education and public health and policy and developmental perspective. it's been an exciting group to crop collaborate with. we also brought on a neuroscientist. we wanted to understand a little bit more about some of the biological methods associated with stress and how that could be related to bullying i wanted

to acknowledge the great work that that work had a drink group had done. my purpose is to give you an overview of some of the highlights of the findings. the full report is available online and there are number of briefings that are out so i will cut through about 300 pages of dense content so i will give you literally the highlights here in a couple of the take-home messages. we organize the report into four general themes. the first was public-health orientation and clarifying the scope of the problem and taking the public health approach, understanding the prevalence and significance of this behavior and what impact it is having not only on those directly involved it on society and culture in the bidirectional aspects of this relationship. we also focused on issues about the context and i have some themes throughout this presentation because we recognize the complexity of

bullying. it's not just one or two kids that are involved but as a society and a culture we may be perpetuating some issues around stigma or other factors that could be contributing to this at the macro level that has a trickle-down effect on students and schools. as i mentioned through one of our themes to look at biological and psychological impacts and see what it's doing to the body and the brain and behavior. finally a big lift in this report is to say that not only would we know what the current state of the sciences is but what is really needed to move the field forward. what do we need to know about what works for whom in order to stop bullying. it's great to be on this panel

we focused largely on needs nationally representative data set that has been collected and while there are many studies that are focused on bullying in the subpopulation, when generating these large estimates we wanted to really focus on the data. you can see upwards of 30% are reporting they had been victims of bullying. this is only on victimization. we didn't have systematic data from these sources and that's a real limitation. when we look more narrowly at the issue of cyber bullying which we conceptualize to be a particular form and context whereby bullying happens, there may be some unique aspects but in many ways it is a form of bullying that meets some of the similar criteria to jump general bullying.

we did apply the cdc definition of bullying when we are talking about the research in this area however given some of the others haven't caught up with this definition and some of that is because it's hard for us to fully implement because of the core features of bullying, we did leverage other information among violence and aggression. this is specifically around 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 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 slight tapering off. not a significant reduction but the increasing awareness doesn't necessarily mean that the prevalence estimates are jumping

or going any higher. it's really exciting to see that we are getting better data that we need to get more and more data particularly around prevalence and subpopulation. the unique features do create some challenges as we think about general forms of bullying. kids are online all the time and new technologies are hard to keep up with. there are some unique challenges there. we wanted to acknowledge and we know there are many important aspects to leverage and many intervention efforts. families are critical. there hasn't been a lot of research in the role of prevention or risk factors for bullying.

that's an area that needs more consideration per while we acknowledge the importance of schools, better understanding of how we can think about climate is a factor that contributes to issues around equity within the school environment. as are the broader community context and societal norms around bullying and we do find there are societal norms that endorse retaliation and can condone aggressive behavior. that creates an odd context to prevent bullying around kids when we see adults who are endorsing this kind of attitude. we drove around to look at some of the more vulnerable use and we do leverage in this case some of the smaller more unique data sets that tend to be a little more focused on sub population. sometimes they are underrepresented in our large data efforts. we did see lgbt youth and disabilities are at increased

use for victimization. use with disabilities not only are increased risk for victimization. they are all so acting in an aggressive way. youth are struggling with health and obesity in their often targeted and obesity is an area we haven't addressed very systematically in our research. some of the other groups that we see 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 emerging trends around minority and religious groups that are being stigmatized at higher rates and we will hear from those groups later on today. that's an area that we need a lot more research to focus on what we are also keen on is this issue of inner sexuality 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 but that's one area that we know the youth are at greater risk but we don't have a lot of data to evaluate that. other issues that come up and intersect 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 other forms of being banked or in a gang and what is the intersection between

different types of aggressive behaviors. they look and feel a little bit like bullying but take on a different name that's local to that community. we have to be cognizant of the fact that our terms as researchers or adults may not map onto what youth did consider those behaviors. this issue of stigma is one that was unique and came out of the report. there hasn't been a lot of discussion or framework around stigma as it applies to bullying. this is one area that we would really like to see the field move as were talking about recommendations from this report. can we think about stigmatized groups and their vulnerability in the inner sexuality of those groups as it creates a potential compound at risk for involvement in bullying and 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 you. one area that we did cover in great detail is the consequences. this is an area that there was a lot of attention in the literature. why it's hard for us to say

those affects are causal because we know some children who have certain kind of risks may be a greater likelihood to be victimized and what that it's harder to tell if it's a cause or consequence but it could actually be compounded by the bullying. some of those include physical impacts, a whole host of problems in the psychological area that could affect cognition and in turn impact your academic performance to equally engage and certainly the mental health consequence is a great concern. we also know that youth are struggling with emotion. maybe limiting their opportunity for peer 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 link with mental health as it relates to school shooting and issues around suicide. again a very complex set of factors that contribute to this. it was difficult to find literature to suggest there was a causal association. there may be much of vulnerability to engage in some of those behaviors with regard to school shootings, those are fortunately rare but are salient in our minds and hearts so we certainly don't want to overlook the significance of them. while there is some connection in some cases to issues, perhaps a stigma more broadly that's related to that and other issues around mental health and access to weapons that are contributing to that. it's difficult to say is that just because of the bullying. chances are it's part of a complex phenomenon. also around the, they have a vulnerability and problems in

their social relationship. it creates another level of risk for them thereby compounding and increasing their likelihood of engaging in harm to self and others. there are some subtypes that are a victim and perpetrator who are likely to involve in self harm behavior. we also took this trauma type of conceptualization that is very calming and in gaining ground in schools, in particular thinking about a trauma formed approach. so that was good for us to think about as it helps us understand the impacts on the brain and the body. again it's difficult to say if causal association of bullying causes variation in other kinds of brain functioning or physiological symptoms but as one form of stress or it certainly can be very impactful

around children's development, particularly when it occurs at salient times like during transition to adolescence. to wrap up i wanted to talk briefly about the policies and programs. the vast majority of the work has been large sit scale and systematic and programming has been conducted in schools and it makes a lot of sense because kids spend a lot of time in schools but they spend time in other contexts that are harder for us to evaluate like afterschool programs in home-based care and other kind of support groups. those are harder context for us to do 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 the framework where we have universal programs were we have exposure to all groups it

indicated tears from warm -- the vast majority of the re- search has been focused at the universal level so we know less about those intervention and we need more research in that area. since violence and aggression are related to bullying in some ways, might those programs also be effective in helping to meet the needs of youth. generally speaking we see positive relationships are very important for youth and we want to promote those. that also fits with our interests in multi-component programs so it's not just to be one solution. we need to think about what we

are doing in the classroom and peer groups and with families to be able to address these concerns. we need to be thinking quite a bit more about the impact on subgroups. there's been few studies that will show impacts of these programs. we don't really know what works for that particular group. we do know some of the programs such as zero-tolerance which have automatic suspensions and policies that are more punitive in nature are generally not effective. that's a conclusion based on the literature and one that is helpful to get the word out. finally we know the importance of school importance we need to promote positive relationships with youth and that can only improve the overall functioning of the school and academics but also decrease rates of bullying. there's been some work in the area of policy and to the availability of the literature

we spoke to the impact of those potential programs but relatively few systematic evaluations have been conducted for the statewide evaluations. we need more research in that area. we also need a relationship between the policy makers and the researchers so we can better understand what impact the research is having. in summary, bowling is a considerable public health concern with notable presence. we need more consistent use of definition and leveraging the research to improve practice and policy which is a critical next step. there are a number of other activities that are currently underway and you can access information about them through the national academy website and here is a list of the sponsors that were contributing to our work. thank you. [applause]

thank you catherine. we will have time for questions at the end of the panel. i would like to introduce our next speaker. rachel hansen is an educational specialist in the department of education. she is the national center for education statistics. she is the director for the survey on crime and safety. good morning. thank you for coming i am happy to have the opportunity to discuss our current working crime statistics. i think that was a great segue into the work that we are doing on the center and our commitment to address the needs to have uniform definition of bullying. i kind of want to give you the behind-the-scenes details of the

work to be able to provide high-quality valid and reliable information that we make available to researchers and stakeholders and to the public. i want to start off by discussing, providing some background on the evolution of the bullying items that we have had since the beginning of the school supplement and go into the 2015 instruments that is our attempt at having items that get at the uniform definition and plans for the 2017 items. the school supplement as a supplement to the crime victimization survey which is a household survey sponsored by the bureau of statistics and collected by the census bureau. it's our nations primary source

of information on criminalization. each year data is obtained from a sample of about 90000 households with nearly 160,000 people on the characteristics and consequences of criminal victimization in the u.s. respondents are all individual residing in the household for 12 years of age or older. they're given a questionnaire that asked for their demographics and questions about if they been victimized in the past six months. following that if they had indicated they had been victims of bias they were given an incident report that allows them to maintain details of what occurred when they were victimized. the school crime supplement piggybacks, it's collected every

two years for the last collection was in 2015. it's administered to kids in the household between the ages of 12 and 18. they had to have been enrolled in public or private schools at some point in the school year. they were not exclusively home schooled. they had to have completed the nt ps core in order to take the supplement. the data collection procedures follow in that there is an in person interview and follow-up interviews are done over the phone. the school crime supplement which was first collected in 1989, it was collected again in 1995, 1999 in every two years "after words". it really gives students perspective on the school climate including topics that you see on the slide and

punishment in rule enforcement, student activities, connectivity with students and teachers in the perception of how safe they feel in the school. i kind of, i want to walk through how we got to the bullying item today and i think it's helpful to provide context and how we started based on the 1989 and 1995 instruments that really didn't have any items on bullying. they had victimization items, the wordings were similar to what the bullying items are now but they basically asked if other students had taken something by force or threat, have had something stolen from them from their desk or lockers or if they have been physically attacked at school. in 1999 it was our first instrument that included an item

that used the word bully. and at a six-month reference. and it defined bullying as being picked on were coerced to do things. you can see the actual wording on the slide. as we dig in more more to the various behaviors that occur that are considered bowling, i think we continue to add and refine to the item i just showed you from the 1999 instrument. for 2003 we included an additional item about feeling rejected by others, being made fun of and called names or being excluded from activities. the 2005 questionnaire was the first one to have an entire section dedicated to bullying.

you can see the item on the slide which is our prevalence item that we've had in that we've used this item for the past ten years. it is still currently on the survey with a slight tweak to it which i will discuss in a moment but if a respondent said yes to any of these subitems than they were considered to have been bullied. then they receive follow-up items about the frequency of being bullied, the location of the bullying, whether the incident was reported to an adult and whether any injuries that were suffered from the bullying, so if they said that they had been pushed, shoved or spit on them we asked asked about the injuries incurred from that. in 2007, i mentioned the change that we made was actually to change the reference. from the past six months to the school year.

the reference. changed and we wanted to make sure it stayed consistent. same item but asking about any instances that happened during the school year. 2007 was also the first year that we asked about cyber bullying. you can see the wording on the slide and additional follow-up items that asked 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 our options on the cyber bullying 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 work that was done for the 2011 survey was focused around the cyber bullying. 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. 2013 there were 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. 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 and the location of bullying. you can see the addition in the red text on the screen. as has been mentioned several times, this is the trend over time on bullying and we have included this in our crime report which is basically the item that we been using where students are doing things that make you feel bad or hurtful and atlas off all the behaviors about making fun of or spreading rumors or threatening and overtime you've seen there is a fluctuation in prevalence but for the most part it has decreased 22% in 2013.

the purpose of my discussion today is to discuss my efforts on the collection of uniform definition. what i have showing you so far is that this item that we've 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 in 2015 we experimented ways of obtaining this information using a split half 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 debt great detail about the methodology of the experimental design but we essentially gave half of the sample version one which is on your left and the

other half the sample the of their version that we have on the right. version one allowed us to be able to retain the same item that we've had since 2005 and then we added two additional follow-up questions. on version two we essentially have one definitional item that includes all of the different components of the definition all in one item and then has follow-up questions asking if the bullying was physical, emotional or social. unfortunately i don't have any estimates because we have been unable to publish the report. it should should come out in a couple months. it's going through the review process.

i can tell you the findings were interesting. they were interesting and noticeable differences between item 22 and the follow-up item for version one. we also had notable differences between the two versions themselves. we decided to move forward with version two and continued to do more work on version one. version 1, our decision to go with version one allows us to retain the prevalence for another collection and we found that version two was quite lengthy and contained a lot of components that have to be retained to memory. if you remember, this is 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 the sunscreen that we added two more items to the 2015 survey. one is that it collects information on the bullying experience and if it had a negative response on their schoolwork or friends or family and their physical health. their second item that we have for 2015 also asked if the respondent perceive the bullying to be related to the respondents race, religion, ethnic origin, disability, gender, sexual orientation and appearance. we actually had the same item for the hate related words that we had and we have use the same structure and are now asking it for bullying as well.

for 2017 we have just wrapped up some testing and i will kind of skip through some of this stuff since i'm running out of time but we essentially wanted to focus on getting a better understanding of if kids, how they defined bullying themselves, if they believe that repetition and power imbalance is necessary and also test the follow-up items that we had for the 2015 survey on repetition and power imbalance. in general we found many kids do not think the repetition and power imbalance is necessary. for example some students indicated that a student with less power can bully someone if they have the attitude and willingness to do bullying behaviors. they defined it in general along the lines of intentionally doing hurtful things to bring a person down whether it's physical, mental or emotional and several

mentioned that it depends on how the victim is affected by the hurtful things that are being done. we also found that if you look at the wording for repetition, our use of over and over was interpreted as something happening constantly like every day. even if a respondent had experience something that happened a couple times, they they were saying no to repetition happening. that led us to believe that we need to work on different options for repetition. the wording for power imbalance, we had many dimensions of power beyond what was listed on the screen so that made us want us test the items some more and break out different options and make sure we are also considering a good group dynamic as power imbalance as well. i just want to say that i think

we've decided 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. and we are happy to hear any feedback you might have. so, just wrapping up, the, the report will come out soon and we will be in the collection for 2017 from january through june of the next year and here's my contact information should you need to get a hold of me. although i will probably be on maternity leave very soon. maybe this afternoon yes. thank you. [applause]

>> the implementation in fidelity and value research, the identification of common precipitators in homicide, suicide x the examination of sex differences and tie pollings of dating violation, vicinityization and perpetration. -- victimization and perpetration. >> good morning. thank you for that introduction, maureen. so again, i'm just here from the

cdc's division of violence preventing, the surveillance branch. and as maureen suggested, i work primarily on tracking and monitoring school-associated violet deaths, some of which are bullying related, and that's what i'll be discussing with you here today. so as we know, suicide is a leading cause of death among youth between the second and third depending on the age group that is being examined. in 2014 there were over 5,000 suicides among youth age 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 antisee departments at three major levels; the individual relationship and school or social level of the social ecology, and many -- over a

quarter of youth suicides or were precipitated by school or school related social problems, some or of which were bullying related. we also know from a number of studies that there is a relationship between bullying and suicide. so it is very 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 sought to use two data sources to identify and examine suicides resip tated by -- precipitated by bullying. we describe bullying-related suicide trends over a 22-year period. we provide specific information and identify qualitative differences in suicides that occurred at school versus away from from school. so to accomplish the goals of

this study, we obtained data are two primary sources. through that system we collect data from law enforcement reports and interviews with school and law enforcement officials who are familiar with deaths that occurred at school or on the way -- or on a victim's way to or from school or school-sponsored events. we also use data from a systematic media scan of lexus/nexus, and we obtained published media articles on bullying-related suicide through that method. we then took all of the suicides that we identified and used a set of variables with clear definitions which are not so clear to you here because this is very small text. but we, ultimately, coded circumstances surrounding each suicide. we ultimately coded for 25 different features, some of which are listed here. so 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 streak city and duration of bullying -- frequency and duration of bullying, other salient problems that students who died by suicide were experiencing at the time. and and also the schools' and parents' response to reports of bullying or their response in the aftermath of a bullying-related suicide. so in all, we identified 138 bullying-related suicides from july 1994 through present day. there were a total of 122 youth suicides that occurred at schools during that time period. however, only about 19% of those were clearly bullying-related. and that's -- so there were 23 suicides at schools that were bullying related.

we also identified 115 bullying-related suicides that did not occur at school through the media scan. so here we present some demographic information for suicide decedents by sex and also by savd status. again, that stands for school-associated violent deaths. so think savd suicide is one that occurred at school, and a non-savd suicide is one a that occurred away from school. so first i'd like to point to out that we did see an increase in the percentage of students who died by suicide in that 13-15-year-old age range. we know that this age range corresponds with a period of natural adolescent development and a transition from middle to high school when we know that bullying may be more commonly experienced. we also note that about three-quarters of the suicide decedents in the study were

white, and a novel aspect of the study is that we do have data on sexual are orientation and gender identity. at the bottom of the table, you'll see that almost 15% of the decedents in the study were lgbtq. five of those victims were transgender, and we know that the host -- that most of the sexual minority be youth in our studied die away from school as opposed to at school. therewith respect to suicide me, we see here that almost half of our sample died by suffocation, so that includes hanging. however, the difference in savd versus non-savd suicide moons is notable. with almost -- means is notable. with almost three-quarters of the suicides occurring at school having involved a firearm compared to only 16% of those that occurred away from school.

additionally, the proportion of suffocations that occurred at school is about half that of those that occurred away from school. so we know that suicide is typically not the result of only 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 youth experienced prior to their suicide. so we see that a higher percentage of girls reportedly experienced sexual violence, mental health problems and received mental health treatment compared to boys. among transyouth, we see that a higher percentage of trans youth experienced mental health problems, a history of self-harm and suicide attempts. interestingly though, a higher percentage of trans youth also received mental health treatment

and disclosed their suicidal 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 through 2016. the orange line there are suicides that occurred away from school, and the blue line is suicides that occurred at school. we see that for those that occurred at school the counts remain relatively low with about four suicides -- or less than four suicides per year over the entire time period, and an

average of about one per year occurring at school. for the orange line, we see that 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 spike that you see there in the 2010-'11 school years and thereafter may coincide with two cases that were very highly publicized during that time period. they were related to school -- they were related to social media use and litigation. and so those spikes may also be related to increased awareness and increased reporting during that time period. here we rent the type of bullying -- we present the type of bullying present in these suicides. the most commonly reported was

traditional with verbal being 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% or that occurred away from school. sexual orientation-based bullying on your right side of the slide was also relatively more common be among non-savd suicides. so those that occurred away from school. here we present traditional bullying versus cyberbullying-related suicideses by year. these, again, are counts. and the traditional bullying is the blue line, the cyberbullying is the orange line. note that the the initiation of cyberbullying-related suicides really begins in that 2003 -- 2002-2003 school year when access to social media and cell phones was increasing among youth.

it aears that the trend in both types of bullying related suicide may be moving in an upward direction, and this is not an indicator that bullying itself is increasing. finally, one of the things that we coded for was reports of bullying. so whether or not the students who were being bullied reported that information to school staff or to a parent or friend, etc. sorry. so we see here that about 70% of the sample had at least reported the bullying to a parent. however, less than half reported the bullying to the school. presented at the bottom of this slide are some of the school and parent responses to such reports of bullying. they include suspension of victim and bully on some occasions, transferring the victim to another school which is one of the things that we heard about yesterday. mediation between the bully and

the victim and implementation of zero tolerance policies. so just to summarize some of the major findings, we know that bullying remains a rob -- a problem among youth but, of course, we cannot draw a causal association between that and suicide from this study. traditional bullying appears to be more prevalent than cyberbullying. we also know that the increase in cyberbullying coincides to an 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 our report released just yesterday, we though that those sexual minority youth are at higher risk than their peers to be victimized and also to

experience negative health outcomes such as suicidal ideation, suicide attempts and also other mental health diagnoses. so finally, we definitely need more research on that group though. finally, we need to strengthen our reporting of bullying, suicidal ideation, and we need to connect those who are at risk with the appropriate services. i'd just like to end on the note that bullying and suicide are very serious public health problems. however, they are preventable. a lot of research, as dr. bradshaw indicated, has been done in this 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. and finally, just to given some

of the qualitative data that we found regarding schools responses to bullying, it's important to highlight some of the prevent strategies and interventions that have been found to be ineffective. some of these which were mentioned yesterday include zero tolerance policies, conflict resolution and peer heeduation between the bully -- heeduation and between the bully and victim which can be harmful, and those simple short-term solutions haven't been found to be effective. it's important to divide educators away from them and towards -- to quite educators away there them and toward effective intervention. with that, i would just like to thank my co-authors and colleagues at the cdc, my bullying prevention colleagues as well and also the federal partners in bullying prevention and thank you for having me here today. [applause]

>> thank you so much, kristin. so now we have time for questions to our panel. so i don't know if we have microphones for those in the audience. >> [inaudible] >> there's one over here? okay, great. so if you can either raise your hand or go up to the microphone, either one. sure, that's fine. >> [inaudible] the research you did about -- [inaudible] the definition was meeting resistance. so the two parts about it, power and balance, and then the repetition. could you explain that a little bit more in i was confused on what your takeaway from that was. >> sure. okay. so there are two parts, you know, about half of the respondents in our cog testing indicated they didn't think that either repetition or power and

balance was necessary. that their experiences, it really mattered about how the victim or how they internalized what was going on. in terms of the actual items that we had for that first version and the toll up of rep decision -- follow up of repetition, it was the use of over and over that they were getting hung up on. that to them seemed like a consistent thing that was happening all the time. and even though they had experienced something more than once or twice, they indicated negatively to that repetition follow-up item. so i believe what we're considering is changing it 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 what the final wording is, but it's something along those lines. we wanted to have a better