By Don Heinzman
ECM Editorial Contributor
As a new year school year approaches, parents and the entire community should resolve to listen to their youngsters who complain to them about being bullied and take action.

No longer is bullying behavior considered a natural boys-will-be-boys and girls-will-be-girls behavior.

It is so serious that Minnesota schools are required to have a program to prevent bullying. In Minnesota, two shooters in schools complained of being picked on.

Itís becoming obvious that any school attack on bullying behavior, like the Olweus Bullying prevention program in Forest Lake needs to involve adults, particularly parents. (The Forest Lake Area School has a partnership with the Hazelden and together a Teacher Guided and Schoolwide Guide has been developed.)

The Olweus Program is meant to create a safe, welcoming and respectful school climate for all students and to reduce opportunities for bullying and promoting positive peer relationships.

Bullying is defined as repeated behavior intended to cause the victims to feel frightened, threatened, intimidated, humiliated, shamed, disgraced, ostracized or physically abused. It can be physical, verbal relational or over the internet.

Part of the Olweus program is surveying students to determine the extent of the problem. A survey of 1,631 students in grades 3-12 in seven Forest Lake area schools revealed that while 59 percent said they were never or seldom bullied, 19 percent or 309 students said they were afraid of being bullied at school fairly often to often.

While one surveyís results in a school district is not indicative of what students in other districts are experiencing, they offer some insight to the over all problem.

Forest Lake students when asked if they had been bullied by others, 30 percent of students said they had been bullied two to three times a month and 31 percent said they had been bullied once or twice during the past couple of months.

Students say if bullied, 49 percent tell their friends, 46 percent tell their parents and guardians, 30 percent tell their brothers and sisters 21 percent tell another adult and 20 percent tell their classroom teacher.

The role of teachers and adults in the school building is being examined. Surveyed students say half the teachers often or almost always try to stop it, 32 percent try to stop it sometimes while 18 percent almost never try to stop bullying.

Students also say over half of the teachers did very little or nothing to counteract bullying.

Parents are reluctant to intervene with students who bully others.

Of those surveyed, 15 percent say parents talked to them at home about bullying others while 12 percent said parents talked to them about bullying one time.

As part of the program, all staff, some 309 participants, from each of the seven schools will be trained on anti-bullying strategies in the school buildings. A brochure is being developed to be distributed at back-to-school open houses and flyers about bullying will be distributed to coaches and volunteers in community education and youth recreation programs. A plan is under way to involve parents in the Olweus program.

Some may say that school teachers have enough to do with all of the curriculum changes and federal and state mandates to have to settle bullying behavior problems.

Itís becoming obvious that a serious solution to lessening the bullying of children should involve the entire community, particularly parents. While too much is asked of school staff, their leadership on this program, as demonstrated in Forest Lake Area schools is commendable and should be encouraged.

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