Hanover
The event, scheduled for 6:30 p.m. in the Hanover High School library, is part of a planned informational series where Badams will chat with the public about a wide range of educational topics: school safety, changing science standards, and whatever other issues people may wish to tackle.
Badams, who arrived last year from Erie, Penn., to lead Hanover-Norwich schools, said bullying was among a few topics that School Board members and others consistently brought up during the hiring process. Later this month, he plans to present information on state law and district policy on bullying, best practices to prevent and correct it, and the ways that Dresden officials are trained to respond.
“Our principals take it seriously,” Badams said of bullying, noting that the district recently had brought in outside experts to review Dresden’s statutory compliance and handling of reports. “Generally I feel very confident that our administrators are doing a great job of documenting incidents of bullying, conducting investigations when warranted and then pursuing good outcomes to make sure it doesn’t persist.”
The Dresden superintendent said “restorative practices” are one approach that is gaining currency nationwide and locally, with Marion Cross recently hosting an event to learn more about its potential benefits. Similar to the legal system’s concept of restorative justice, Badams said, restorative practices in schools are a way of “rethinking the whole notion of punishment and consequences” in favor of rehabilitating offenders and encouraging them to make amends with their victims.
A thorny area that likely will surface at the talk is cyberbullying, which is difficult for parents and school officials to monitor but can have catastrophic real-life effects.
“That gets pretty dicey,” Badams said, “and it’s something I want to talk about with parents.”
The Dresden School District currently is defending itself in a suit brought by a former Hanover High student who says he was forced to move away after administrators failed to protect him from bullying. The district last month denied allegations that school officials had been negligent in their response, and the case is headed to discovery in the coming month, according to court documents.
Badams said the bullying forum was unrelated to the suit, having been planned beforehand.
Among many possible topics for future forums, he said, will be the question “How do we redefine success for students beyond simple academic success?” That is, what other kinds of achievement can students neither at the high or low end of the academic spectrum focus on to find fulfillment?
Dresden is also adapting to a new generation of science standards, a process Badams said he wanted to elucidate for parents.
Related to that discussion is a desire across the district to encourage a more diverse cross-section of students to pursue further study in the so-called “STEM” fields — science, technology, engineering and math.
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or at 603-727-3242.