Revisions to Columbia Public Schools’ bullying policy are nearing completion, one step at a time.
The proposed changes to the policy specifically identify who is required to report bullying at schools and their response. It also clarifies the definition and protocols around cyberbullying.
On Monday, the Columbia School Board’s Policy Committee all agreed the bullying policy still needed more changes. Discussions about the policy will continue at the next Policy meeting this month.
Although committee Chair Paul Harper said the committee is getting close, there were still some concerns from members over the revised policy’s process for notifying parents and guardians of bullying incidents.
Under the current policy, when a bullying incident is reported, the building principal should notify the victim’s parents/guardians within two school days of the initial report.
The revised policy proposes that the principal should notify the alleged bully’s parents/guardians as well.
Some members want to change that to wait to notify parents/guardians until the end of the investigation in order to not interfere with it.
Others countered by pointing out that it is important to let parents/guardians of both the victim and the bully know about the reports, so they don’t feel out of the loop and to increase transparency.
The revised bullying policy also identifies a broader range of people who must intervene if they witness bullying on school grounds, assist the victim and report it to the building principal within two school days. The people affected by the change are school employees, substitutes, educational contractors that work directly with students and volunteers. Training would be required.
Under the current policy, only district employees are required to report bullying, also within two school days, but they are not required to intervene or assist the victim.
Also, in the interest of clarity, the new policy would separate the definition of cyberbullying from how the district responds to it.
Cyberbullying is defined in both the old and new policies as “a form of bullying committed by transmission of a communication including, but not limited to, a message, text, sound or image by means of an electronic device including, but not limited to, a telephone, wireless telephone or other wireless communication device, computer or pager.”
Outlining what action the district can take has been moved out of the definition and placed in the section that addresses off-campus behavior. Under the current and proposed policies, the district is legally limited in disciplining behavior that occurs off school property, but it has jurisdiction over cyberbullying that uses the district’s technology, happens on district grounds or disrupts a student’s education.
The committee reopened the bullying policy for possible revision in August 2025. Harper raised a discrepancy between the frequent number of anecdotal reports of bullying the board heard and data provided by the administration.
“We decided we needed to take a very hard look at the policy,” Harper said in a Missourian article in May. “We took a new stab at it, thought about the language and kept tweaking it until we felt like we had something better than what we had before.”
The revised policy went to the board in July, but action was delayed to get more public input.
Members of the committee sent emails out to parents, staff, administrators and others in the district to get feedback. Harper said the majority of it centered around how the policy would be implemented once the board approved it.
The revised bullying policy also removes any mention of hazing, but the committee has proposed a new policy specifically describing how the district responds to incidents of hazing.
“It’s really two different things,” Harper said in an interview with the Missourian. “Hazing is not really the same thing as bullying and even our model policies separate them, so we felt that we needed to separate them so that they aren’t confused together.”
The Policy Committee will hold its next regular meeting at 4:45 p.m. Sept. 28. The full board will hold its next regular meeting at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 14. A successor to departing board member Jeanne Snodgrass will be decided this week and sworn in then.
