In response to a request made to the Asheboro City Schools, the administrative offices released 513 documents relating to bullying issues. The documents contained information relating to Asheboro High School (AHS), South Asheboro Middle School (SAMS), and North Asheboro Middle School (NAMS). They covered the school years 2001 – 2012 and through August of this school year. The request was made for what is defined by North Carolina state law as bullying.
The documents were broken down in to the following categories. There were 313 regular documents and 208 emails. All of these had to do with bullying at the schools.
From the school year, 2011 – 2012 and for this school year there were 35 incidents reported.
AHS had one incident. The incident involved a W/M and it resulted in out of school suspension.
NAMS had 31 incidents reported. They involved 14 males and 14 females; the racial breakdown was 11 Black, seven Hispanic, six mixed and seven white students. The results of the incidents resulted in five conferences, 18 in school suspensions, five out of school suspensions, and three other types of results. The other types of results were not defined.
SAMS had three incidents reported. They involved two males and one female; and one each of the following racial breakdowns, White, Black, and Hispanic. The results of the incidents resulted in one detention, and two out of school suspensions.
The bullying incidents took place at the following school locations, the cafeteria, classrooms, hallways, off school, and in the restrooms. The most occurrences took place in the classrooms.
According to Dr. Brad Rice the Asheboro school system takes bullying as a serious issue. The entire faculty has had training in this issue. Dr. Rice said in an email “When the law was passed I spent 30-45 minutes with each staff. I give refresher training with the principals each summer (20 minutes) and the principals do the refresher training with each staff. I assume the training is 20-30 minutes depending on questions on this specific topic (we did not time them or ask them to report on the session). Principals spend a lot of the first workday going over overall expectations, climate, rules, positive behavior support, and discipline all of which touch on the topic.” According to Dr. Rice, the faculty is not given a test on what they are taught; it is just an “awareness session.”
There was a customer satisfaction survey done in the spring of 2012. The participants of this survey were broken down in to the following categories. AHS, NAMS and SAMS had 483 parents, 1,602 students and 302 staff members to participate.
Dr. Rice said that the student and faculty population changes almost daily for the schools. For this school year, the populations were listed for each school as AHS – 1,312; SAMS – 607; and NAMS – 546.
All of the emails appeared to be just routine emails on the subject of bullying and the documents were training documents, minutes from meetings, state law and other informative documents.
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