H539 - School Harassment and Bullying

This bill is intended to provide information to parents regarding students who have experienced bullying incidents in schools. It counters the notion that putting more guns in schools will make them safer. It is typically young people who have been bullied who are shooting, and this bill focuses attention on determining the causes and solutions to prevent these tragic school shootings.

What the Idaho Department of Education (IDE) can provide back today is an Excel spreadsheet with tallied responses of the number of bullying events that had occurred in districts per grade level. There is little more than this tally available to schools, administrators, policy makers to be able to understand further the context of the incidents, causes, and harm done. This bill proposes more impactful documentation to help students, parents, and school administrators to address issues.

The current definition of bullying under Idaho Code 18-917a, is out of date and does not include anything about modern day issues of online harassment or bullying. This bill allows IDE to work on a new, more meaningful definition in today’s environment. Each district will be required to create something to send home to parents about how to help their child after a bullying incident has been recorded. The state will have materials for any district who requests them instead of making their own.