As students and parents across Vermont seek better protections for children who are mistreated by classmates in school, the Agency of Education says it’s eyeing system-wide reforms to harassment, hazing and bullying policies.
One in five Vermont students said they were the victim of bullying at least once in the past 30 days, according to a statewide survey last conducted in 2023. That rate rose to 30% for students of color, and 40% for students who identify as LGBTQ.
Vermont has for more than a decade required school districts to adhere to a model policy that governs the prevention and resolution of instances of harassment, hazing and bullying, often referred to as HHB.
But students such as Harmony Bell Devoe, a high school student in central Vermont, told members of the Agency of Education this month that those policies lack the humanity and rigor needed to address what is by all accounts a growing problem in Vermont.
“How do we make a human-centered process that includes transparency and justice and good communication and education? Those are not the values of the process.”Alyssa Chen, Education Justice Coalition of Vermont
“When I as a person with Asian heritage was told by a student in my home room that my children wouldn’t be able to see because their eyes would be so small, I did not feel that my school properly disciplined nor educated this student on why his statement was harmful,” Devoe said.
Devoe is part of a coalition called Narratives for Change that’s using a planned update of Vermont’s Harassment, Hazing and Bullying Policy to push for prevention training, mandatory intervention, and a “restorative” approach to HHB incidents, among other demands.
Alyssa Chen, with the Education Justice Coalition of Vermont, said her organization regularly consults with students who end up leaving their school in order to escape hostile social environments. She said the way schools respond to incidents of bullying often exacerbates students’ trauma.
For instance, Chen said students can be required to testify on their own behalf during school investigations, or left in the dark about the specifics of a resolution. The coalition’s demands include the option for an adult to represent the student in proceedings, and for “plain language” transparency about what the school has done to rectify the problem.
“It is not built from the perspective of victim-centered, how do you reduce harm,” Chen said. “How do we make a human-centered process that includes transparency and justice and good communication and education? Those are not the values of the process.”
Courtney O’Brien, interim director of the Safe and Healthy Schools program at the Agency of Education, said she agrees that Vermont needs to rethink the ways it both prevents and responds to harassment, hazing and bullying.
“We certainly live in a time when national context has affected how we approach this work. It’s affected how people are experiencing this work. It’s deepening the impact of it,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien said the agency will have a broader conversation next year about how to incorporate the feedback it’s received as it prepares to update the state’s policy.
She also said the agency will be able to put a greater emphasis on HHB prevention and response.
“I feel some hope in this process for the first time in a long time because of some of the changes we see coming at the agency level,” O’Brien said.
Those changes involve the elevation of “safe and healthy schools” to its own agency division, which, according to O’Brien, will provide the resources needed to strengthen state-level prevention training to educators, students and community members.
“How can we provide supports and consistency for school districts? How can the school then leverage that to provide support to all of their schools? How do those schools support that work with each of their students?” she said.
O’Brien said it will take time to arrive at answers to those questions. She said it’ll likely take 12 to 18 months for the agency to roll out reforms.
Parents such as Caroline Elander say that work is needed to prevent other students from suffering the same kind of harm her child did. Her daughter, who’s from Ethiopia, was the victim of both racial bullying and sexual harassment at a middle school in Franklin County.
The school’s inability to address the behavior, Elander said, forced her child to leave the district.
“The current situation isn’t working,” she said. “And I feel terrible for other kids in that situation and can’t get out.”
