Highland Lakes: Area schools taking steps against bullies

By CHRIS PORTER • Daily Tribune Staff

BURNET COUNTY - Local school superintendents say their districts have plans to identify and stop bullies before the situation can escalate like the shooting that rocked a Cleveland campus this week.

Asa Coon, a 14-year-old student at Success Tech Academy in downtown Cleveland, opened fire with a pair of revolvers at the campus Wednesday, wounding two students and two teachers. He then turned his gun on himself.

Coon, who had a history of mental problems and bickering with teachers, was suspended from classes Monday after fighting with another student, officials said.

Marble Falls Independent School District Superintendent Ryder Warren said faculty members are trained to identify such behavior in students, and can remove students who exhibit such behavior if needed.

“The whole state of Texas, from the Legislature down, has taken a really negative stance on bullying,” Warren said. “The Legislature has put a lot of new anti-bullying protective measures into the education code to help out. Locally, we’re going to follow the law to the letter.”

Those new laws, dubbed “Freedom From Harassment,” are designed to keep classroom bullying to a minimum, Warren said.

“If a child is accused and found guilty of bullying, he or she could be removed from the educational setting,” he said. “The victim can request (the bully) be removed.”

Several schools offer alternative education programs for students with learning or disciplinary problems. Cleveland’s Success Tech Academy was one such alternative school, officials said.

Educators in Burnet and Marble Falls said removing a student is a last resort, adding there are programs in place to teach students how to resolve differences peacefully.

“We have team leadership programs available at the different grade levels,” Burnet Consolidated Independent School District Superintendent Jeff Hanks said. “We teach the students social skills and intervention strategies that can be used in working with their kids. There’s several opportunities for kids to be an integral part of the culture.”

Students in Marble Falls take part in the Character Counts program, which identifies and promotes several core character values such as respect, responsibility and citizenship.

“Our teachers have been trained to teach those strands from Character Counts,” Warren said. “Kids are taught through the classroom how to deal with each others’ differences. The ones who need a little more reminding, we have to do some more things with them.”

Both districts offer extensive mentoring programs for students of all ages.

Hanks said high school faculty in Burnet will soon begin a new advisory period where adults can interact with small groups of students.

“It will be kind of a mentoring program, where all of the adults on campus are responsible for 10-15 kids,” Hanks said. “The adults will try to form a relationship with the kids, and through that they’ll have a variety of character lessons. One of those will be how you react with each other when there’s a disagreement.”

Marble Falls High School Principal Allen Roberts said that campus’ mentoring program extends to younger students at other campuses.

“We send students out to speak at the elementary schools on a regular basis,” he said.

While there, the older students act as role models to their younger counterparts, Roberts said.

“The one thing that we really stress is relationships,” he said. “We try to teach the kids about building relationships and understanding one another.”

So far, the programs seem to be working.

“I’ll tell you this, I’ve been here in Marble Falls for going on two years, and I think we’ve had two fights total this year,” Roberts said. “They were disagreements, not necessarily fisticuffs. Overall, our student body has been outstanding.”

Across the country, about 30 percent of sixth to 10th graders were involved in bullying in 2001, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control. That number includes both bullies and their victims.

Warren said teachers are trained to keep an eye out for bullying behavior.

“We can try to identify certain behaviors early and get those kids and give them a lot of talking-to,” he said. “We try to keep the kids from making a bad decision.”

And, should the unthinkable happen, Warren said local campuses are prepared.

“Every campus has regular lockdown drills on how to lock down the school,” he said. “We even have drills for each type of situation - if we think someone’s already on campus or if we think someone’s on their way to a campus.”

The regular security drills call for teachers to lock classroom doors and turn out the lights, protecting students from external security threats.

In the meantime, teachers will remain vigilant, Warren said.

“There are kids that make bad decisions, and the worst thing you can do is ignore it,” he said. “Kids need to learn how to take care of their own problems, but if they’re being constantly harassed, they should be able to have the freedom from that.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

chris@thepicayune.com

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Highland Lakes: Area schools taking
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