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Pennsylvania House of Representatives
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/Legis/CSM/showMemoPublic.cfm?chamber=H&SPick=20170&cosponId=24904
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House of Representatives
Session of 2017 - 2018 Regular Session

MEMORANDUM

Posted: December 7, 2017 12:42 PM
From: Representative Stephen Kinsey and Rep. Donna Bullock
To: All House members
Subject: Requiring Bullying Education for All Grade Levels
 
In the near future, we will introduce legislation that would require bullying education to be taught in schools across all grade levels.

As we see on almost a daily basis, bullying can have a severe impact on the mental health of children. For instance, over the last several weeks there have been several media reports of suicides attributed to bullying over social media platforms, including a report of a 10 year old child who ended her life because of cyberbullying.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention released the following statistics in its 2015 biannual national study of Pennsylvania high school students:
  • 19.9% of students were bullied on school property in the last year.

  • 14.3% of students experienced cyberbullying in the last year.

  • 5% of students were threatened or injured with a weapon on school property in the last year.

  • 21.7% of students were in a physical fight on school property one or
    more times in the last year.

  • 7.6% of students did not go to school for at least one day because they felt unsafe at school or on their way to or from school on at least one day during the 30 days before the survey.

Although some school districts have made great strides in adopting bullying prevention policies, there is nothing to address bullying at its root cause. Accordingly, an age-appropriate bullying prevention and interventions program, as a curricular requirement across all grade levels, will enable the Commonwealth to move closer to eliminating bullying as a public health threat.

Please join us in co-sponsoring this legislation.



Introduced as HB2009