GISD board to track harassment in district, take action based on trends

The Graham ISD board Wednesday addressed public comments that have been made related to district incidents of bullying, harassment and discrimination made to students.

In the April GISD board meeting a student of the district and their parents spoke about racial discrimination incidents which had occurred during their time at Graham High School. The speakers in April felt that little or no action was taken as punishment. The board, which must wait until the next meeting to place an item on the agenda from the public comment section, placed the item on their May meeting and president Andrea Lowery responded Wednesday. She stated the board needed to start being informed of any incidents of harassment, bullying or discrimination each month at their meetings.

“Following last month’s board meeting, there were a lot of issues brought to light about harassment,” Lowery said. “Some racial harassment about bullying in some of our schools. There was some discriminatory comments about student organizations so the point of this topic is to really revisit, (the issue). We have local policies (...) FFH and FFI against harassment and bullying. But, we had discussed, I don’t know if we need to amend those policies or if we just need to place a practice where there is mandatory reporting to the board level of reports that are happening on our campuses. In other words, it’s going to add some administrative overhead, but to have if there is any kind of discriminatory action or harassment in the classroom or through sporting events or practice any extracurriculars, that those things are logged. That a status is kept and those are reported to the board. They flow through Mr. (Sonny) Cruse (Superintendent of GISD) to the board on a monthly basis so we can track status, what our reaction has been and trends.”

Lowery said the trends will also help show them if the educational program they implement will have driven the trends in the right direction. Board member Daniel De La Cruz said he would like to see a breakdown by campus and the status of where the district is at and when they occur without having to disclose those students.

For the rest of the story, see the May 15 edition of The Graham Leader.