New Jersey District Adds Incident Reporting Tool To Comply With Anti-Bullying Law

  • By Tim Sohn
  • 10/29/12

A New Jersey school district has deployed a new Web-based incident reporting platform to comply with requirements of the state's anti-bullying law, which was enacted last year.

The Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act, which was signed into law on Jan. 5, 2011, created "standards and procedures for preventing, reporting, investigating and responding to incidents of harassment, intimidation, and bullying of students that occur on school grounds and off school grounds under specified circumstances."

Freehold Borough School District has selected TIPS, a platform developed by Awareity. TIPS, which stands for threat assessment, incident management, and prevention services, allows Freehold faculty, students, parents, and visitors to report incident and location online. Those people reporting incidents can choose to make reports anonymously or not. Alerts are then forwarded to the school's threat assessment team so the appropriate action can be taken.

TIPS also generates real-time documentation that can be used for audits, accreditations, and analysis. Types of available reports, such as prevention, receipt, acknowledgment, response, historic, and compliance, can be stored in the Awareness & Accountability Vault.

"TIPS is helping our school administrators become more aware of student safety incidents and concerning behaviors within our schools. When a report comes in through TIPS, principals can immediately investigate the incident, confirm its validity and take the necessary steps towards intervention and response," said Michael D'anna, the district's anti-bullying coordinator.

Freehold Borough School District in Monmouth Countyserves more than 1,000 students in grades K-8 with 100 teachers. The districts three schools include the Freehold Learning Center, Park Avenue Elementary School, and Freehold Intermediate School.

For more information about TIPS, visit tipsprevent.com. Go to freeholdboro.k12.nj.us. to learn more about the Freehold Borough School District.

About the Author

Tim Sohn is a 10-year veteran of the news business, having served in capacities from reporter to editor-in-chief of a variety of publications including Web sites, daily and weekly newspapers, consumer and trade magazines, and wire services. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @editortim.

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