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WL SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER SIDESTEPS LOCAL DEBATE, CALLS OUT BULLY NOTIFICATION POLICY AT STATEHOUSE
A proposed change in how Indiana schools would have to report alleged bullying incidents on their campuses has bubbled up at the Indiana General Assembly amid wrangling over policies at the West Lafayette school board.
A section of Senate Bill 255, a three-part measure authored by state Sen. Spencer Deery, would require schools to notify parents of children involved in a suspected bullying incident by the end of the school day. That requirement would be in addition to the five days Indiana law gives schools to investigate bullying cases.
“As a parent, I deserve to know what the school knows, that they were involved in some kind of incident,” Deery, a West Lafayette Republican said during a Senate Education and Career Development committee hearing last week at the Statehouse. “What the bill does is it says to schools, you may not know the details of this incident, but before the end of the day, you need to make a reasonable effort to inform a parent that something happened.”
Among those testifying for the bill last week was Dacia Mumford, a West Lafayette school board member. Telling the Senate committee that her testimony was her own as a parent and social worker, and not representing the school board, Mumford told state senators that she’d unsuccessfully advocated to update the West Side policies to match what Senate Bill 255 proposes.
“The administration and the school’s legal counsel are opposed to this change because state law allows them to delay,” Mumford testified. “Parents have a right to know what is happening at their school, so they can advocate for their children.”
The committee did not vote on SB255 after taking testimony at Wednesday’s hearing. (The bill also would address a proposed streamlined process for teacher licenses for those with science, technology, engineering and math degrees. And it would offer a technical fix to a measure from 2024 that allowed release time during the school day for students to get off-campus religious instruction.)
After the hearing, Mumford said that because a proposed change to West Lafayette’s bullying policy made in early 2024 hadn’t made it to a school board vote, she reached out to Deery and to state Rep. Vernon Smith, a Democrat from Gary, about the one-day notification proposal. Smith has a similar provision in House Bill 1539. The House bill hadn’t received a hearing, as of last week.
