Anti-Bullying Law Could Expire Without State Funding

Unless the state comes up with funding, anti-bullying legislation passed last year could sunset in the next month.

At the end of January, the New Jersey Council on Local Mandates—a bipartisan body independent of the branches of state government—ruled the Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying (HIB) law (AKA Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights) was .

to conform to the legislation, but school officials were critical of the measure from the start.

“This law, the intention of which cannot be questioned, architecturally was put together hastily,” said Superintendent John Bach. “It’s messy. It has a lot of layers. When you have that kind of seismic change, it usually takes a little while to figure out how it works.”

Bach said last week the policy has been “tying up a lot of professional time and energy,” more than the Legislature probably intended.

“They clearly didn’t do enough consultation with people in school districts,” he added. “I don’t want to sound like I’m against (anti-bullying), but the current law is really not a very good law.”

The council’s decision is supposed to take effect 60 days from its Feb. 27 ruling, according to the New Jersey School Boards Association (NJSBA). If the state doesn’t come up with the funding, the law is supposed to expire.

“The Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights is a well-intentioned statute designed to ensure that no child is ever afraid to go to school because of harassment or intimidation,” said Marie S. Bilik, NJSBA executive director.  “Unfortunately, the legislation required more work prior to enactment, including consideration of the financial and staffing burdens placed on local school districts.”

As of late last week, it was unclear where (or if) the state funding was going to come from, according to Mike Yaple, spokesman for the NJSBA, who said since the council’s detailed decision had not been provided yet, it was also unclear exactly how it would affect HIB.

“It may simply be aspects that are null and void, not the whole thing,” said Yaple.

Under the district’s current HIB policy, school staff are .

A report prepared by Bach earlier this month tracked the number of reported incidents since September at each of the district’s six schools:

— 3 incidents
— 7 incidents
— 28 incidents
— 1 incidents
— 0 incidents
 — 1 incident

Bach said the comparatively high number of incidents at the Upper Elementary School is not cause for alarm. It’s “(what) you’d expect,” he said, “because they’re young and they’re immature.”