Mount Olive schools report rise in middle-school incidents; district outlines prevention work

Jackie Bello, the district staff member who presented the safety report, told the Mount Olive Township School District Board of Education that she was presenting the Student Safety Data System (SSDS) report and the district's HIB data for the Jan. 1–June 30 reporting period.

"The topic I am presenting tonight is the student safety data system known as SSDS and then also the harassment, intimidation and bullying report," Bello said, introducing the presentation the New Jersey Department of Education requires districts to file.

Bello said the SSDS covers violence, vandalism, weapons and substance incidents and that the incident total column on the state spreadsheet includes founded HIB incidents as well as those other categories. She told the board many schools had zeroes in several categories but that the middle school and high school had higher counts overall.

Bello said the district had an increase in incidents recorded as violence at the middle school compared with previous years. She said administrators met to review the SSDS definitions and reporting guidance and concluded some incidents had been reported more conservatively than the state definitions require. "We were a little bit overzealous in reporting violence," she said, and the district expects the numbers to decline in the next reporting period after aligning practices to SSDS guidance.

On substance incidents at the high school, Bello said totals have stayed roughly the same in recent years and coincide with the installation of vape detectors in bathrooms. "It's not necessarily substances being used at school. It can be in possession of any kind of drug paraphernalia or in possession of any controlled substance or materials like a vape," she said, noting the district cannot tell from a device whether it contains nicotine, THC or a flavored cartridge.

Bello described HIB investigation work: the district ran a large number of investigations during the reporting period, distinguishing between alleged and confirmed HIB. She emphasized that an allegation that does not meet the HIB statutory definition can still be a serious incident but will be recorded as alleged rather than confirmed.

The presentation included prevention strategies the district is deploying: social-emotional learning integrated in elementary classrooms, small-group counseling and programs such as kindness ambassadors, No Place for Hate (an Anti-Defamation League program) across K–8 schools, and district-level initiatives at the secondary level including student clubs, awareness campaigns and a new Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) rollout at the high school with the Rutgers BOGGS Center.

Bello also announced a series of parent workshops and trainings (including sessions led by attorney and educator David Nash) and said board members were already signed up to receive registration notices.

Superintendent Daniel Bangea (title as given in the meeting) praised Bello and staff for transparency in reporting and for combining investigations with prevention and programming. Board members asked questions during the presentation about the middle-school increase and district steps to standardize reporting.

The presentation did not include line-by-line district counts by gender or race during the public meeting; a member of the public later asked whether the district could provide HIB breakdowns by gender and race so the district can target prevention earlier in elementary grades. Bello acknowledged that level of analysis could be helpful and noted the district would examine follow-up reporting and analysis.

The board received the SSDS/HIB presentation and discussed next steps for aligning reporting practices and continuing prevention programming districtwide.