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ABSTRACT
Bullying threatens the mental and educational well-being of students. All states have enacted antibullying laws. This study surveyed 634 educators about the implementation of the North Carolina School Violence Prevention Act, which enumerated social classes protected from bullying: race, national origin, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, gender identity, appearance, and disability. Results showed that local antibullying policies most often included race as a protected class and least often included sexual orientation and gender identity. More educators had been trained on bullying based on race than any other social class. Students were more often informed that bullying based on race was prohibited and were least often informed about prohibitions regarding sexual orientation and gender identity. Reporting, investigating, and remediating bullying was highest for racial bullying, followed by disability bullying, and was lowest for bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Acknowledgments
We thank the organizations that assisted with the survey design and data collection: Safe Schools North Carolina and the North Carolina Association of Educators. Thanks to the educators who kindly volunteered to participate in the survey. We also thank Natasha Bowen, Barbara Fedders, Mark Fraser, and Kathleen Rounds for their valuable feedback during the creation of this article.
Funding
The first author was supported by the National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Traineeship from the National Institute of Mental Health sponsored by Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University School of Medicine (Grant T32 MH019117).