Manassas Park staff outline bullying reporting, investigations and new SEL programs as proclamation marks Bullying Prevention Month

Manassas Park City Schools staff presented the district's approach to bullying prevention and reporting and described social-emotional learning programs the division is using to address student behavior.

At the meeting the board read a proclamation recognizing October 2025 as "MPCS Bullying Prevention Month." The proclamation noted national estimates and encouraged classroom discussion and the division's anti-bullying model policy.

Kelly Brown, supervisor of student services, reviewed recent trends and said reports increased after RethinkEd (the K'8 social-emotional learning curriculum) launched in February 2023. She told the board increased reporting likely reflects better understanding of what constitutes bullying rather than a sudden rise in incidents.

"With the implementation of RethinkEd in the 02/2023 school year, we start to see an increase in those reports," Brown said. She added that some reports do not meet the threshold for a formal bullying investigation but provide "teachable moments" for staff to address peer conflict and mean behavior.

Brown described the district's criteria for moving a report to a formal investigation: staff must see evidence that the behavior is repeated over time, that it has an intention to harm or humiliate, and that there is a perceived power imbalance. "So if those indicators are not present, it still certainly will be addressed by the school administrator or school staff that it's reported to, but may not be investigated as a bullying investigation," she said.

Elementary counselor Julia Byers described campus prevention work including weekly RethinkEd lessons, a campus-wide positive behavior system called the 3 R's (Respectful, Responsible, Ready to Learn), "positive paw" tickets, and a voluntary online emotional check-in tool for students. Byers shared a counseling anecdote in which students used an apology exercise to repair harm: in the story a student folded and crumpled a paper heart to show how repeated unkindness affected her and then accepted an imperfect apology.

At the secondary level, staff announced the division moved from RethinkEd to Second Step for secondary grades after a curriculum adoption process. Kelly Birkey, lead middle-school counselor, said lessons are classroom-based, screen-free and delivered weekly at the middle school and monthly at the high school.

The board and staff emphasized that anyone can report bullying, including anonymous reports through the division's Safe Schools alert system on the district website, and that reported incidents that fall below investigation thresholds are still addressed in classrooms or through counseling.

Why it matters

Bullying prevention remains tied to other district goals: student attendance, academic performance and school safety. Staff cited research tying bullying experiences to chronic absenteeism and lower achievement, and said the division is tracking both reports and formal investigations to guide prevention work.

What the board asked for

Board members asked for more qualitative data to accompany statistics; one member asked staff to document counseling anecdotes for inclusion in progress reporting. Staff said they will continue quarterly updates to the district's strategic plan committees and the public dashboard.