1

JERREY ROBERTS

SUPERINTENDENT GUS SAYER

2

GAZETTE FILE PHOTO

DANIEL T. SMITH

SOUTH HADLEY - South Hadley High School Principal Daniel T. Smith says traditional methods of student discipline are becoming less effective in addressing offensive behavior among high school students.

In the wake of the bullying tragedy involving the late Phoebe Prince, Smith and others, including an anti-bullying task force, are examining programs to promote more civil and ethical behavior at the high school.

One of those measures includes bringing back a high school advisory program that connects students with teachers. School administrators hope this program will provide added support and guidance for students in the next school year.

"We have to work on some cultural ownership for kids," said Smith, in one of his first public interviews in weeks. "The complexity of kids' issues seems to have increased."

--Read a statement from South Hadley School Superintendent Gus Sayer on what school officials knew before Phoebe Prince's death -- and what they didn't

A South Hadley High School graduate and its principal for the past 10 years, Smith was formerly head of the high school's special education department. He said school administrators find themselves increasingly counseling troubled students, a role better suited for trained mental health professionals.

For students caught breaking school rules, including bullying, an in-school or out-of-school suspension is not always the best way to get the change educators want, he said.

"They are much less black-and-white issues in terms of, 'You did this wrong, here's what the punishment is, see ya,'" Smith said. "We have felt an increasing need for more types of adjustment counseling to work with kids. Unfortunately, with the constraints we're under, financial constraints, it's just not feasible."

Lightning rod

Since the Jan. 14 suicide of Prince, a high school freshman, school leaders have become a lightning rod for critics who say more could have been done to stop the student bullying prosecutors say led to Prince's death.

For their part, Smith and School Superintendent Gus A. Sayer say school leaders acted on the information they had in the week before Prince's death, when they disciplined two students. But they did not recognize what prosecutors say was an orchestrated bullying campaign against Prince that revolved around dating relationships for months.

Nor did a school resource officer who spends the majority of his time at the high school and maintains an office there, according to the South Hadley Police Department.

School leaders have been trying to set up a meeting with Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth D. Scheibel to get to the bottom of inconsistencies between her team's findings and those of a school bullying investigation.

Scheibel has suggested school officials could have done more to stop the students who harassed Prince and described "the actions or inactions" of some adults at the school as "troublesome."

Until they learn more from the district attorney, however, Smith said, the position of school officials hasn't changed.

"When situations came to our attention, we acted," he said. "There were relationships there that we were not completely aware of. As always, hindsight is 20/20."

Last week, Sayer described the bullying of Prince as "egregious, inexcusable and wholly unacceptable." He said no school could carry out its educational mission or its responsibility to safeguard students effectively in a climate that permits such behavior.

He noted that Smith's investigative report in the wake of Prince's death "lays the groundwork for developing better procedures to prevent such tragedies from ever occurring again."

"Our schools must do a better job of fostering a culture of respect," Sayer said, during a heated School Committee meeting in which two vocal parents critical of school administrators were removed by police. "This is not a job we can do alone."

School climate

Some education and anti-bullying experts say the culture of a school sets the tone for student conduct and what is tolerated as acceptable behavior.

Bullying, as the Prince case suggests, can be a particularly insidious form of domineering behavior with a capacity to fly under adults' radar, they say.

"Bullying is a behavior that happens when teachers' backs are turned," said Dr. Christopher E. Overtree, a clinical psychologist and director of the Psychological Services Center at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Overtree consults with public schools on bullying, harassment and school climate reform. He said evaluations consistently reveal a divergence between students and teachers in terms of how they perceive their school climate, sometimes referred to as the learning environment.

"There is a wide discrepancy in how students view the school and how teachers view the school," Overtree said. "One of the main solutions to improving bullying is improving climate."

Overtree noted a national push toward a social justice model for safe schools - a departure from the more entrenched enforcement model of safe and drug-free schools, which is essentially punitive.

The former model empowers students, promotes emotional and civic engagement and a culture of respect.

Overtree said when school climate improves in this way, and students feel they are part of the solution, bullying of the kind Phoebe Prince endured "sticks out like a sore thumb."

"The whole climate is defined by everybody," Overtree said.

Smith, South Hadley's high school principal, said he is open to having conversations with other school districts that employ such a model and succeed at fostering a culture of respect. Despite calls for his resignation, he said he has received tremendous support from other high school principals during the past several months.

"I think most principals understand that there are things that go on in their schools on any given day that can elicit this type of tragedy," he said.

As an outsider looking in, Overtree described South Hadley as a community in crisis. He views the circumstances leading to the Prince tragedy as a community problem in addition to a school problem.

"There's no one thing that failed here," he said.

Blaming school

Others with backgrounds in education agree - and say blaming the school system for the Prince tragedy is short-sighted. Parents and guardians also play a critical role in student behavior and expectations.

"I do think there has been a seismic shift in parents managing kids, setting standards and keeping kids away from some of the influences technology provides them," said Thomas Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents and a public school administrator for 26 years.

"If the parents aren't an equal partner in this whole thing, then you've got a problem," he said. "It's not just the school. It's the culture of the whole community. How connected is everybody to each other?"

Dan Crowley can be reached at dcrowley@gazettenet.com.