Dearborn committee recommends cultural events, student media campaign and policy edits to reduce bullying

A district bully-prevention committee presented four district-level recommendations to the Dearborn City School District Board of Education, urging stepped-up cultural awareness, a student-led media campaign, policy edits to Board Policy 05/2001, and expanded professional development to prevent bullying.

The committee facilitator, Aynep Sarini, told the board the committee of about 30 members met three times between mid-October and February and included teachers, students, parents, social workers, principals and central-office staff. "We consulted with some middle school advisory groups in between," Sarini said, noting younger students were engaged between meetings and that their input is reflected in the recommendations.

The committee proposed four main district recommendations:

1) A districtwide cultural awareness day or a district event organized by a planning committee; schools would receive a theme and grade-level activities but retain flexibility to adapt them. "Our committee feels very strongly that building respect across cultural differences isn't just valuable, but it's also necessary," Yasmin Sarid, a junior at Edsel Ford High School, said.

2) A student-led media campaign using district digital platforms and social media to raise awareness about bullying and cyberbullying and to share response strategies with parents, families and peers. Committee members said middle-school students in particular requested more accessible information for families about online safety. "This would be led by students who would create the content and then have it posted to district websites and social media sites," Sarini said.

3) Edits to Board Policy 05/2001 to remove subsection C (described by the committee as an outdated curriculum reference) and to replace the phrase "anti-bullying events" with "bully prevention events and initiatives" for more positive framing and consistency with current administrator usage.

4) A professional-development catalog, updated each fall, listing training opportunities in restorative practices, conflict resolution and cultural-awareness/inclusion practices so building leaders can identify appropriate training for their staff. The committee also recommended a resource for administrators to track implementation progress and share practices that are working.

Trustees and staff asked clarifying questions about scope and implementation. Trustee Patruska urged the committee to place the word "school" before "culture" where used in materials to emphasize a common, school-wide set of values and expectations rather than individual or family cultural identities: "Everywhere you have that word culture, I want to see school in front of it because that's what we're trying to encourage is the school culture's identity," Trustee Patruska said. Other trustees agreed that both school culture and awareness of individual cultural backgrounds are relevant and that the approach should be practical for principals and teachers.

Trustee Angeli asked whether the committee identified which types of bullying are most prevalent; a committee member said much bullying manifests as online or social-media microaggressions that often surface in school on Mondays after weekend online activity, and that interventions often require mediation and conflict resolution: "It's both — it's an and," a committee member said, summarizing the presence of both online-originated and in-person incidents.

Sarini said the committee intends to continue gathering administrator feedback and to produce an implementation plan the board and building leaders can use. The committee suggested a target start of fall 2025 for initial implementation.

The board thanked committee volunteers and said the policy committee will take the recommendations under advisement for potential changes at the board level; building administrators would receive the implementation resources for use at individual schools.