Mary Gannon, who identified herself as a public member attending the Agency of Education’s Hazing, Harassment and Bullying (HHB) advisory council and as vice president of the Windham County NAACP, briefed the Windham Southeast Unified Union School District #9 board at its Oct. 14 meeting.

Gannon reviewed the advisory council’s history, noting the council was created following statutes and reports dating to 1999 and 2010 and that it has been active as an advisory body since statutory implementation around 2012. She said the council’s recent revival was tied to renewed attention from state leadership and that some stakeholders have criticized the council’s current membership for lacking representative diversity.

“We are in a very complicated time,” Gannon said, and argued the state should emphasize prevention and school culture work rather than rely primarily on post‑incident, punitive measures. She advised the board that model policy revisions were underway and a draft model policy from the Agency of Education is expected in January.

Gannon also relayed a policy‑relevant warning she had heard from legislative staff: potential cuts to the Agency of Education budget could range from 20% to 30%, which would limit the state agency’s ability to provide implementation support for prevention programs and the forthcoming model policy. “One of the numbers I was given tonight was… we can expect anywhere from 20 to 30% cuts at the state level at the agency of education,” she said.

Gannon urged school districts to develop local prevention practices tailored to demographics and context, to increase local data collection beyond incident reports and to send representatives and community voices to advisory council meetings. She pointed board members to resources including the Agency of Education’s web pages and the Committee on the Future of Public Education’s survey and public meetings.

Board members noted the district had previously written to the AOE asking for more diverse council membership and that the board will continue local work on prevention and data. The board scheduled a deeper, closed‑session review of HHB data for its Nov. 4 meeting.

Provenance (transcript excerpts)
- Topic start: Mary Gannon begins update (transcript excerpt): “So I just wanted sorry. I'm at parent conferences tonight... I just wanna make sure that you remember BHS has leadership council that night…” (block_id: t_2537.42; local_start:0; local_end:200; evidence_excerpt:"So I just wanted ... I just wanna make sure that you remember BHS has leadership council that night…") [reason_code:topicintro]
- Topic end: board thanks Mary and schedules follow‑up (transcript excerpt): “Thank you very much, Mary. And, any questions from the board?... we will call on you, to hear your comments in the future as we go through this process.” (block_id: t_4265.44; local_start:0; local_end:200; evidence_excerpt:"Thank you very much, Mary. And, any questions from the board?... we will call on you, to hear your comments in the future as we go through this process.") [reason_code:topicfinish]