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Page 8 - Shelton-Mason County Journal ~ Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023
Backto
V School
ngesfival
Hundreds of Shelton School District students,
their siblings, parents and guardians attend-
ed the district’s Back to School Festival on
Aug. 26 at Olympic Middle School.
Clockwise from left, Cedar High School Prin-
cipal Amber Hosford hands out water on a
day when temperatures climbed into the 903.
Shelton Police Officer Chris Kostad hands out
stickers.
Students put discs into the Plink machine to
win prizes at the Our Community Credit Union
booth.
Journal photos by Gordon Weeks
Bullying: Districts say issue is ‘not rampant’ locally
continued from page
have been the subject of an obscene
message on Snapchat, for example,
the principal and/or the school coun-
selor set up meetings with all the par-
ents and seek a resolution, Mallery
said. '
Jeff Davis, superintendent of the
Pioneer School District, said bully-
ing is “not rampant” on the Agate
campus, nor does he hear about much
cyber-bullying. The district teaches
students up to eighth grade, and Da-
vis said he hears more about bullying
from administrators who have high
schools.
“The definition ofbullying gets
misunderstood,” he said. “It’s targeted
behavior, usually (involving) a size
difference, repeated over and over.”
Employees concentrate on solv—
ing conflicts and helping students get
along with each other, Davis said.
“I think We’re headed in the right
direction,” he said.
In the Shelton School District “so’
cial media and phones are oftentimes
a challenge to some of our bullying,”
especially at the secondary schools,
Superintendent Wyeth Jessee said.
He added, “Things start off in the
community and they’re brought into
the school.”
In response, “We can be reactive or
preventative,” Jessee said. “We are in
a preventative stance It’s the work
up front.”
The schools spotlight celebrating
students having successes with their
peers, Jessee said.
“We are really focused on positive
experiences every day so bullying gets
extinguished,” he said.
For Grapeview Superintendent
Gerry Grubbs, “a safe bully—free
school begins with schedules, man-
agement, instruction and supervision
that creates an engaging, efficient
learning environment,” he wrote in an
email to the Journal. “Forward think-
ing and planning minimizes the op‘
portunity for misbehavior, and more
specifically, bullying.”
As for the district response to
bullying complaints, Grubbs wrote
that “a critical piece of minimizing
bullying is through timely, firm, but
kind communications from adults
about expectations and metering out
appropriate consequences as needed.
Gerry Grubbs
Grapev/ew School District superintendent
The closer to the event that the cor-
rection is applied, the more effective
the response. Within the area of re-
sponse we create mechanisms that
allow for ease of communication from
staff, students and parents to ad-
ministration to ensure that problems
aren’t ignored.”
Children who bully might be re-
flecting the actions they see by the
adults in their orbit.
“We are critical of children who
bully, but frankly I see many adults
in many environments who engage
in bullying behavior,” Grubbs said.
“Because it is a human issue and not
just a childhood issue, it takes all of
us to practice, model and communi-
cate practices that minimize bullying
everywhere. With this in mind, we
have adopted the Character Strong
Curriculum that explicitly teaches
higher level personal characteristics.
As we roll this out to our community,
we will be sharing strategies and
language that families can use and
model at home. We will do this so
that the child’s entire environment
(teachers, families, students) sur-
rounds them with the knowledge and
vocabulary of our vision for conduct.
The nine characteristics that will be
explicitly taught to everyone connect-
ed to our school are respect, empathy,
cooperation, responsibility, persever-
ance, courage, gratitude, honesty,
creativity.”
The district also conducts Safe
Schools Training for all staff members
that includes bullying and other for—
mal policies and practices, he wrote.
Bullying isn’t an issue in the
Southside School District, said Super—
intendent Paul Wieneke.
“We do not have trends of bully-
ing at Southside, and have had few,
if any, complaints about bullying
over the past three years. Students
truly care about each other in a posi-
tive way,” he wrote in an email to the
Journal.
“The culture at Southside is an-
chored in Hope Science: 1) having
goals; 2) having pathways toward
goals; and 3) having agency (or the
commitment toward owning a positive
future),” Wieneke wrote. “Southside
teachers teach expected behaviors
and social and emotional well—be—
ing through the ‘Character Strong’
curriculum.”