Strengthening School Safety Through Prevention of Bullying

Statement at Healthy Families and Communities Subcommittee Hearing

Good morning.  Welcome to our hearing.  Today we are here to discuss the safety of our Nation’s schools, with particular regard to bullying.

While the issue of bullying is not new, its ever-changing face has unfortunately kept it prevalent in our Nation’s schools. According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, between fifteen and twenty-five percent of United States students admitted to being bullied “sometimes” to “more often.” While we are aware of the effect that bullying has on the mental health of students, attention is not always given to the significant impact bullying has on students’ academic performance and physical health. Recent studies have shown that lower rates of school attendance can be attributed to bullying.  Children who are bullied are also more likely to have lower self-esteem; higher rates of depression, loneliness, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts.  The physical effects of bullying can result in a multitude of health problems, including headaches, sleeping problems, and stomach ailments.  Certain research even suggests that adults who were bullied as children are more likely than their non-bullied peers to suffer from depression and low self-esteem as adults.

Within the last ten years, the occurrences of bullying have become more difficult to detect as it has reached beyond the physical walls of our classrooms through the increased use of technology.  E-mail, text messages, chat rooms and websites have provided a quick and often anonymous means of cyber bullying.  In national surveys of ten to seventeen year-olds, twice as many youth indicated that they had been victims and perpetrators of online bullying in 2005 compared to 1999.  Thirty-six percent of twelve to seventeen year-olds reported that someone said threatening or embarrassing things about them through e-mail, instant messages, web sites, chat rooms, or text messages.

A number of initiatives have been created to educate and prevent bullying.  Organizations and educators have made parents more aware of the warning signs of bullying.  Information has been made available to parents on how to prevent cyber bullying through increased monitoring of technology at home. Today, we will hear from Ms. Rona Kaufmann, Principal of William Penn Senior High School in my Congressional District.  Ms. Kaufmann will share how the character education program implemented at her school has reduced the incidence of bullying.

I look forward to hearing the testimony from all of our witnesses today.  As we move forward, it is vitally important that we all remain committed to ensuring that each and every student has the opportunity to be educated in an environment without fear, intimidation, or severe and pervasive insults.  Thank you Chairwoman McCarthy.