Be a Hero!

Dr. Brooke Rudis and Meredith Sargol from Chesapeake Public Schools, step into the spotlight to shed light on the pervasive issue of bullying in our schools. With personal stories and professional experiences, they guide us through the murky definitions and impacts of bullying, pulling from their unique perspectives to provide us with an in-depth understanding of the power imbalances that lie at the heart of this issue.

Dr. Rudis and Mrs. Sargol also share how Chesapeake Public Schools takes a stand against bullying and inform us of the various policies and strategies to combat bullying and ways to offer support. 

Our conversation doesn't end there. With a special feature by Undersheriff Dave Rosado, we learn about his innovative approach to prevent bullying - "Be a Hero, Not a Zero!" We'll explore his magical blend of tricks and conversation, all designed to encourage kindness and positivity among students. Dave also emphasizes the vital importance of resources and the need for students to report any incidents to a trusted adult within the school. Join us on this journey towards creating a safer and more empathetic environment for our students.

Chapters

• 0:00 Bullying Prevention in Chesapeake Public Schools
• 10:58 Understanding and Addressing Bullying in Schools
• 18:32 Bullying Safety Plan and Parent Resources
• 23:15 Bullying Prevention in Chesapeake Public Schools
• 31:27 SROs and Reporting Bullying in Schools

Transcript

Matt: 0:00

Welcome to Amplified the Chesapeake Public Schools podcast.

Richie: 0:13

Chesapeake Schools is located in the Hampton Roads area of southeastern Virginia. We serve 40,000 students in 45 schools and three centers. This podcast is designed to tell the stories behind our story and to introduce and celebrate the people and programs that make us one of the premier school districts in Virginia. And welcome to our third episode here of Amplified the Chesapeake Public Schools podcast. I'm Richie Bab and I'm here with Matt Graham. Yep, and can you believe, Matt? I mean, it's almost November.

Matt: 0:46

I know.

Richie: 0:47

I mean it's crazy right.

Matt: 0:48

The temperature is great, though.

Brooke: 0:49

I love this. I love the fall in Chesapeake. Is that your season?

Matt: 0:52

That's your season, fall is my season, man, I'm not into the pumpkin spice thing that everybody's in, but like just the air is crisp.

Richie: 0:59

You know, I'm surprised by that. Actually I'm surprised.

Matt: 1:02

No, I love the fall. I think it's the best time around here.

Richie: 1:05

You know it is great, I love summer. But the only consolation for me that summer is over is college football Roll tie.

Matt: 1:14

Nice blur Thanks.

Richie: 1:16

Yeah, thanks. So on top of all that, though, october is National Bullying Prevention Month. We had an opportunity to talk to a few people, both in the school system and actually the Sheriff's Department, about bullying. Well, as you may know, it is National Bullying Prevention Month, and to help us get into this a little bit, to understand what bullying is and what parents and families can do about it, we have our Assistant Director of Student Conduct and Support, dr Brooke Rudis, is here, and Meredith Sargal, our Student Engagement Counselor, both from Chesapeake Public Schools are here. And let's start with you, brooke. Let us get to know you a little bit how long you've been in the school system. Where'd you come from?

Brooke: 1:56

Well, thanks for having us, Richie. First of all, I appreciate you. I've been with Chesapeake Public Schools for 22 years now and an education for 25. Okay, so I started my educational career after I graduated from Old Dominion. I graduated with a degree in recreational therapy.

Brooke: 2:14

Really didn't know what to do with that and I started working actually at a residential treatment facility and started working with kids there and realized that the need that kids had.

Brooke: 2:22

One of the students I was working with there didn't even know how to read. He was 11 years old, so it kind of tore up my heart strings and he was going through a lot in his life and I went on to get my master's degree in special education and I worked at Southeastern Cooperative Education Program for three years with students with emotional disabilities and after working there, I continued my administrative degrees through George Washington University and started working at Chesapeake Public Schools and I started here as a teacher for emotional disabilities at Chittam Elementary and I was there for a few years and I taught emotional disabilities at Hickory High School for a few years and then I went into administration and I was assistant principal at Deep Creek Middle for four years and at Hickory Middle for four years and then I became the supervisor of the Office of Pupil Discipline and we grew and our name changed to the Office of Student Conduct and Support and I was promoted to the assistant director.

Brooke: 3:12

And here we are. So my passion has always been working with students who have challenges with their behaviors and I'm grateful for this role to be able to help more kids.

Richie: 3:21

Now, meredith, you're relatively new to the school system, right?

Meredith: 3:23

Yes, yes, I actually, I started in July.

Richie: 3:27

Oh really.

Meredith: 3:28

Yeah, I am originally from Ohio and had gotten my master's in counseling, so with school and mental health specialties and I decided to go into the school because that's kind of what felt like home to me. But I actually had moved out to Arizona and I was working in Arizona for the past 12 years. I primarily worked with middle school sixth, seventh and eighth for the majority of the time and saw a lot, a lot of drama, a lot of bullying that happens there. That's definitely kind of helps with my passion to help prevent bullying. But I decided my husband and I decided we wanted to be on this side of the Mississippi.

Meredith: 4:07

So, we decided our kids are young. So I have two young kids and we decided that we were going to pick up and move.

Richie: 4:16

So you threw darts at a map. No, it was a little bit more strategic than that.

Meredith: 4:22

I did want to a state where I felt like education was really valued, and to come to a city where the schools were hyper-performing and really wanted to have that for my family is selfishly, for me as well. So, I had applied to be a school counselor because that's what I've been.

Meredith: 4:40

I've been a school counselor for the last 12 years and just applied to be a student engagement resource counselor. So I'm not thinking like, oh, that'd be great to be able to make more of an impact and work with more schools and work with more students. And what do you know? Here I am.

Richie: 4:55

Here you are.

Brooke: 4:58

We interviewed her and snatched her right up. You are a bullying queen. Put you right in charge of that.

Meredith: 5:04

Bullying MTSS, give me all the stuff.

Matt: 5:07

So we've all experienced bullying. I know I was bullied, especially elementary metal where your kind of focus is. Do you all mind sharing a time where you might have been bullied and how you kind of dealt with it?

Meredith: 5:20

Well, I know I can speak for myself. I experienced bullying in primarily in seventh and eighth grade, so I was my junior high years and it was pretty severe, I think, especially considering thinking about the definition and going into what bullying is. It was a lot of threats, a lot of tears, a lot of kids saying that they were going to Beat me up if I went to the bathroom by myself. Notes in my locker saying that they wished I was dead. Nice Petitions. I had petitions from you know 20, 30 students would sign it saying how much they hated me.

Brooke: 5:58

That's crazy.

Meredith: 6:01

I had, I remember, one experience waiting for my mom to pick me up after cross-country practice and a fellow student came out and it was the group of students that were primarily targeting me and she spit on me. And I found out later I didn't know it at the time. I would go home and I would just cry and cry and say how much I hated school.

Matt: 6:20

I didn't wanna go to school my grades were dropping and everything.

Meredith: 6:23

And so my parents I didn't know it, but at the time they went in and they talked to the school to try and get it to stop. And my mom told me later that she said that she kind of was giving the brush off, that there wasn't much they could do because they didn't have any evidence. They didn't really have any proof. There wasn't really much they could do and I mean eventually it stopped. I mean I learned very young, I guess at that point, that who I could and couldn't trust and I did. I had one friend. She was going through a very similar experience and we kind of supported each other.

Brooke: 6:54

Those are kind of the experiences we draw off, because that is a challenge for our administrators. What do you do when there's not evidence? How do you support?

Brooke: 7:02

a student who is being bullied and you can't prove it Her word against another child's word. And then what do we do to empower kids so that they feel like they can counteract some of the bullying that's going on, because we know what happens? Like you said, we've all been bullied. We've all been those situations and we reflect back on a situation like Meredith is talking about and how can we train our administrators better to intervene? What tools can we give our counselors to intervene? And so we definitely rely on our own personal experiences as to how we can better serve our students so that they don't go through what Meredith has and going home and crying and parents going up to school and talking to administrators and feeling that they weren't supported. It's a tough position but certainly that we need to take it all seriously, which is why we're so glad Meredith's on our team to bring that experience that she's had not only herself as being bullied, but also all the wonderful experiences she's had helping kids through that.

Meredith: 7:58

And I will say too, getting through that was, I think obviously I had a good friend, but my parents were so supportive and I guess I can say I was lucky in the sense that it was during the generation where we didn't have internet at home.

Brooke: 8:16

I could go home and get away from it, and kids these days don't have that luxury anymore.

Meredith: 8:21

It can be constant and chronic, and so I was lucky in the sense that I was able to go home and I had family and I had a brother and a sister who were older than me that tried to help me through it, and I definitely went through a very, very serious period of depression but eventually the bullying stopped and I learned a lot of things about how bullying can impact a person, and that has definitely influenced how I talk to students, especially those kids going through those fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grade years, where that's when bullying is at its peak.

Richie: 8:59

So that's definitely why they, you know so fortunately I mean more so than then bullying is. There's a lot more awareness of bullying right In the schools than it was then. But bullying takes a lot of different forms, including on social media, on cyber bullying. What's the difference, though? If you guys could enlighten me of the difference between bullying and just somebody being mean every now and a while.

Brooke: 9:23

There's a big difference between bullying and teasing. There's a big difference between being mean and bullying.

Meredith: 9:30

When we talk about bullying, specifically about bullying and its impact on mental health I know a lot of people are concerned about. Well, if my child's being bullied, you know my child could become depressed, they could commit suicide. Well, when we're talking about bullying, there's a really specific definition that we wanna refer to. There are three main parts for something to be considered bullying. One is that there's an act of aggression. Now, that act of aggression can be verbal, but it can be physical. So we you know the name calling, the taunts, the threatening. It can be physical tripping, pushing, even somebody who's like constantly stealing their things or messing with their things you know, somebody who's getting their stuff knocked out of their hands.

Meredith: 10:07

you know, we see those kind of classic images, but it can also be that emotional piece being excluded. Everybody's invited to this party except for that person. You know that social exclusion, especially at those, you know, middle school ages, is so impactful. So actual acts of bodily harm, demeaning commentary, all those can be seen as aggression. And so that's the first part. There's an act of aggression. The second part is that it occurs over a period of time and we're not talking about just something that happens. Well, it happened three times in one day. That's bullying. No, we're talking about something that occurs over a period of weeks, sometimes months, and we don't wanna let that behavior get to that point. But when we're talking about bullying, bullying can be very subtle too.

Meredith: 10:51

And so sometimes it goes missed or dismissed. So it's something that is occurring over a length of time. And the last piece is that there's an imbalance of power, so you have maybe multiple students picking on one student, so there's an actual numbers game happening. But it can also be social power, somebody who maybe has more friends. They're seen as being better off in terms of socioeconomic status. They have more money, they have more friends. They might even be somebody who everybody knows is a bully. They have fear. There's power there and so and they need be the people who are picking on somebody with less power. It could be somebody who's smaller, younger, maybe new to school and, honestly, especially students with disabilities are a prime example of somebody who might have just less power, less social power, and I'm not just talking about physical disabilities, so that's certainly you know a category I'm not talking about students with maybe learning disabilities, kids with ADHD, kids who are on the spectrum, who may come across as more socially awkward and don't interact in the same way as other students.

Meredith: 12:03

So those three pieces, okay, have to all be there for us to consider that bullying. Now, if something happens once and it's unintentional, we might call that rude. If something happens once and it's like deliberate, that's being mean right. If kids are mutually joking around, everybody's having fun, that's teasing right.

Meredith: 12:23

Teasing is everybody's having fun, nobody's getting hurt. And then the other one that bullying frequently gets conflated with is conflict Conflict. You have groups of equal power or two people of equal power. Now there may be ongoing back and forth, but that power differential isn't there and frequently there's a solution. Like you can mediate conflict, you cannot mediate bullying. So really those are.

Meredith: 12:49

it's kind of a complex definition You're looking at a lot of moving parts, and that's why it's so important that we do the investigations, that we do to make sure that when we say, hey, this is bullying or this isn't bullying, we need to make sure that we've really looked at all the pieces.

Matt: 13:03

Right. So when you're doing the investigations, what sort of takes place with that?

Brooke: 13:08

Certainly we actually have a procedure to investigate bullying. The first thing administrators have to do is determine is it actually bullying, as Meredith was talking about? And if it's determined to be bullying and fitting under that definition, then administrators do a very thorough investigation. They'll talk to the students and find out what's going on. It might be in conjunction with a school counselor so that there's a safety feel for everyone involved. It may not be but identifying what the behaviors are of concern and then there is a notification process. So recently we just passed House Bill 1592 talking about we're required to investigate bullying and now we're required to report bullying of any student who may be involved in that, whether it's the victim or perpetrator. Any parent of a student who has allegedly been involved with bullying has to be notified within 24 hours and that's actually a bill that we have to follow. So some parents may get calls about an allegation that administrator hasn't thoroughly investigated yet, because we have to follow the law.

Brooke: 14:08

But then we have five days to do to investigate that allegation and that involves interviewing kids, finding out what's going on. We want our administrators to separate the students so we can get statements from them confidentially and they can share information. We like to get written statements Sometimes we don't, Sometimes it's verbal, especially depending on the student's age and then talk to the teachers, see if there's a witness. And those are some things. When Meredith was talking about administrators, you know brushed it off, didn't have the evidence. That's something we also talked to the kids about. You know, if you think you're being bullied, look around you. Who was around that might be a witness.

Brooke: 14:42

You know who heard this that administrator can go talk to, because we want to stop it. We don't want kids to be going to school bullied and we want kids to come to school and feel safe. So then they do the investigation and they weigh the totality of the evidence and they make a finding from that and then parents are informed of the outcome of that investigation. We have a whole form and procedures in place that our administrators follow, that we share with them and we train them on it. There was actually a module that each administrator in our district, each school administrator had to complete with accompanying questions at the end so that we made sure our administrators were aware of the new law and aware of the investigation, and we took them through step by step, the form that must be completed anytime that they feel like bullying has taken place, Anytime they've determined that bullying was taking place.

Richie: 15:25

Yeah, so obviously something like bullying that the general assembly gets involved in and there's a what sounds like a legal definition of bullying. It sounds like then the consequences for bullying are fairly serious.

Brooke: 15:40

Well, they can be. It depends on, you know, we have to look at the developmental age, we have to look at the history of the student. I mean, first and foremost, we want to educate them on the proper way. So Meredith said there's not mediation with bullying. Well, there is, but that's not the first step.

Brooke: 15:54

The first step is to look at it and apply whatever consequences in education we can give the child. And then, once the child's been educated on the proper behavior or why their behavior was considered bullying, then we can maybe mediate with the students. But we have to make sure that that's taken care of. And you know, oftentimes, especially back when we were in school, we saw kids oh you're, you're getting suspended. So nowadays parents, you know they're like why didn't you suspend them? Well, first, we can't really share with you what we do to another student. That's, that's illegal. I can't talk to another parent about someone else's child.

Brooke: 16:26

But you know, that's what came to our mind when we were in school. They got suspended. That's how you knew they were in trouble. Well, research has shown that's not the most effective and productive way to deal with it. Really, research shows let's educate the students, let's get them to understand what they did was wrong, maybe find out why they were doing it and come up with a resolution or a different kind of behavior which goes hand in hand with our new initiative, with our ISS coordinator.

Brooke: 16:48

So we still have in school suspension in our schools, but we are training our in school suspension coordinators now to do interventions to talk to kids about bullying to. They have curriculum now that we've kind of developed that they're utilizing within in school suspension, so that we're hopefully not just giving a consequence but we're giving education as well. Every single ISS coordinator that we have in just people public school has undergone four days of training in responsive classrooms. They've gone through a full day of training that my office provided them, and then every single person in my office has been assigned an ISS coordinator to monitor and mentor throughout this year's to assist them with their, with how they're providing interventions to our students. It's a great opportunity to take advantage of that time while the child is serving a consequence where they can learn what you know, what they can do better to be a better citizen, to, to contribute to a positive school climate and hopefully, hopefully, you know, reduce the number of the Recidivism.

Meredith: 17:43

you know we don't want we want. If you're serving in consequence, we want you to learn from the consequence.

Meredith: 17:48

And that's definitely with bullying. We want to make sure that it's not just the student who is being bullied that we need to empathize with, sometimes the student who is doing the bullying. Maybe they in turn were bullied at another point. Now they're bullying another student. Maybe there's some things going on that they need to. They need to understand how their behavior is impacting others. You know there's a lot of pieces where parents involvement is really important and helping our parents understand what bullying is and that there are resources out there to help not only the student who's being bullied, but also, if your child is the one that's doing the bullying, what can parents do to help educate their own child, to make sure that you know they don't have any of those bullying behaviors going forward?

Brooke: 18:32

A part of that bullying investigation I was talking about earlier does involve a safety plan for a victim. It does involve, you know, if a child's been identified as a victim of bullying, there's a safety plan that can be put in place, measures taken to identify a trusted adult in the building that they can talk to, to give them a plan of action. If they're being bullied, what can they do, how can they advocate for themselves. So we do have a safety plan to address our victims because they're, they have been violated.

Richie: 18:59

Yeah right.

Meredith: 19:00

Yeah, that form has has. It says you know the part of what the school's responsibility to do is identify interventions for the victim and identify interventions for the aggressor. So they need to be addressing both.

Richie: 19:11

Right, so are there community resources for parents.

Brooke: 19:16

Absolutely. I think it's parent university that our face, our family and and engagement counselors offer. There's a parent university that has information on that. We also have information from our partnership with the city where there's resources there.

Matt: 19:32

There's a lot on the on the face page family and community engagement website yeah, they have the peak parent university.

Meredith: 19:39

Yeah, and actually I'm working with the face department. We are going to be putting together a bullying webinar for for parents to to go on to peak parent university so that they can see and, and we'll be listing some resources, and so we're we're in the process of working on that so that we can put that out to parents as well.

Brooke: 19:56

Sometimes the parents just need the tools. Right, they, they may they know what's wrong, or they, you know they identify there's an issue, but where do you go from there? How can they help their child? You know cause? We know parents are sending us their best. They're not sending us their, their worst, it's the very best that they have, and they want the best for their child, so we try and assist them with that as well.

Richie: 20:15

So practically, if my kid comes home and tells me and it sounds like bullying, then as a parent, what? What's my process? What do I do?

Brooke: 20:22

You want to call the school, find out information, tell me what happened. Did you tell a teacher? Did you tell? Sometimes the kids will say, oh, I told my mom and you talked to the parent and they never told you know they never told their parent, or vice versa. You know, they go home and they say oh yeah, um, dad, I told the teacher and she didn't do anything. Well, come to find out the teacher never was told um you know cause they weren't comfortable.

Brooke: 20:46

There was a reason for it, so you know. Starting with, where did the situation occur? How relevant is it? If it occurred in a classroom, reach out to the teacher, find out what's going on. If you're not getting results from that, reach out to the school counselor Always. Our administrators are available too. Um, but finding out and just don't take your child's word for it Always that they did report it, because oftentimes we'll find that they did not, and then we're in a position where we can't help them because we don't know anything about it.

Richie: 21:11

Right. Knowledge is power Right, and our advice to kids would be find a trusted adult in this school.

Matt: 21:16

Yeah, and screen shot or save the evidence is another biggie. Definitely, I know that.

Meredith: 21:21

Definitely Cyber bullying is any of the the following the the definition that we had talked about.

Brooke: 21:27

you know it's if it's happening on technology, social media platforms, email there's a big caveat, though, that parents need to be aware of Um, we have jurisdiction, right. We have jurisdiction where we can get involved and handle situations, and we call it door to door. So if it's not happening at school or around school, we can't really intervene with consequences, right.

Brooke: 21:49

We can certainly intervene with helping to mediate when we can. But if there's something going on on social media, within the community or amongst, you know, kids on the social media, we've seen some ugly things happen there and some parents have gotten upset that we haven't issued consequences. But if it's not in our jurisdiction, we're not allowed to.

Richie: 22:07

Right.

Brooke: 22:07

So in those cases we don't want to just say, oh well, we want to counsel with the children. You know, use our school counselors. Oftentimes if it's an ugly ugly case, you know our school resource officer may get involved to provide assistance to that family. But there there are some important notices about the social media piece. Sometimes the best things parents can do is just at night have them put the phone on the kitchen counter and charge it overnight in the kitchen counter. Don't let them take it to their rooms.

Brooke: 22:33

And then be aware of your wifi options. You can restrict your wifi and cut your wifi off at nine o'clock for the kids so that they can't go and get on their Chromebooks and do other things. It's important that the kids do. As Meredith said. She was fortunate there wasn't social media when she was growing up. It's important that they get that break and sometimes as parents we have to force that break. And they're savvy, these kids. I tell you. I still go to my grown kids and tell me please show me how to do this. They're savvy on being able to do those things and that's a way to protect your children from bullying is just to give them that break of what all is going on and focus on, you know, on the family and definitely you know if the kids are are doing some different things on social media.

Meredith: 23:15

Remember, we always tell the kids save the evidence, don't respond back. Save the evidence and don't share.

Brooke: 23:21

Don't share it out. Don't share it. Don't share it. That makes it worse. Don't put that person on blast. Look what they, what they, you know that that just complicates the situation.

Meredith: 23:30

But save the evidence so you want to report it to your parents, and parents definitely need to remember. Hey, there are options such as blocking and reporting. You know sometimes if, if somebody's you know bullying on like a media platform or a gaming thing that might violate their rules, and so making sure you're reporting those things. It's definitely something for parents to look into. Well, Dr.

Matt: 23:47

Rootis and Meredith Sargl. Thank you so much for coming in and sharing this important information with us and our families. I know it's bullying prevention month, but it's good to know that Chesapeake Public Schools and your office is on it like every day.

Brooke: 24:02

Right, so it's very, very nice to know that.

Matt: 24:05

And I think that with this information that's out there, it definitely provides yet another resource for our families. So thank you so much again. Meredith, thank you for sharing your story with us too.

Brooke: 24:16

And we appreciate the opportunity to be here.

Meredith: 24:18

Yes, thank you.

Matt: 24:29

Impact 8 survey cards were sent home on October 17th. Please remember to sign or return completed cards as soon as possible. The Impact Aid program generates close to $3 million in federal aid money that is used to support all of our students and programs across the district. We are very fortunate to have with us under Sheriff Dave Rosado here to talk about the things that are going on within Chesapeake Public Schools that the Sheriff's Department is taking part in. It's good to be here, thank you.

Richie: 25:04

Sure, sure, it's good to see you. I've known you a long time, but I don't know very much about your background. Tell us some of your story.

Dave: 25:11

Sure, I'm from Brooklyn, new York, born and raised. My parents are from Puerto Rico, so I guess I'm a New Yorker, as they say. And before moving out to Virginia, I worked with Geraldo Rivera on his talk show for about 10 years.

Richie: 25:26

Really, yeah, wow. So how long have you been in the Sheriff's Department? 不知道, 22 years in October. Wow, um, so you actually have like a bullying program you take out to elementary schools.

Dave: 25:37

Correct. We started this program as Be a Buddy, not a Bulley back in 2012 and now it's called Be a Hero, not a Zero, and that phrase in itself Helps the kids understand that they can do something about bullying, because heroes help and zeros hurt. So that's a really nice phrase and and these kids? They chance it, they sing it and they Repeat the phrase over and over so about the show, can you tell us a little bit what takes place?

Matt: 26:07

Yeah?

Dave: 26:07

Yeah, it's a fun, fast-paced magic show. Okay, because I'm also a magician right.

Richie: 26:13

So it was easy we were gonna get you to do some trick for us today, but there's no video. You don't have any audio magic tricks.

Matt: 26:21

I assume right throw a voice or something.

Dave: 26:25

Uh, so it's. Uh, it's a 40 minute show and we go over the the basics of of bullying and bully prevention, bully tips and again it's geared towards the elementary school age Children. What's most important with us restarting this program within the schools is now we have the SROs that are deputies in the elementary schools, so that ties in great because they see their first interaction with law enforcement is a friendly interaction. It's a smile that they see every day when they go to school and that builds trust we want the kids to run towards us and that run away for us, right, right.

Richie: 27:05

So what? What's the message that you're given to these elementary school kids?

Dave: 27:09

The message is we're out there in uniform, whether the SRO or myself, at each school and I'm in front of every student at the schools. I'm only there for 40 minutes at a time and I want to let them know that the SROs that are there, they're your friends, and this anti-bullying campaign that we do through the be a hero, not a zero, school assembly program Want them to know that bullying is not okay. We follow the golden rule be nice to others like you want them to be nice to you. And when I explain what bullying is, it's basically being mean to another kid over and over. So if they get that concept, then they know that one.

Dave: 27:51

If you are doing that, you can change, because I tell them that heroes they help others. And if you're not helping others and you're standing by, either Participating or from afar, not doing anything, then, along with the bully, you're a zero. So that concept they can get. No one wants to be a zero, they want to be a hero. Right, so we do. Heroes help with thumbs up and zeros hurt with thumbs down. And then they follow that and right at the end of the show they're smiling, they're high-fiving and they're chanting that on the way out to the oh, okay, wow.

Dave: 28:27

And I was at a school once and there was a little girl, a girl, up in the front row and I told her Wow, I'd like your smile and I like your shoes. Your shoes are so nice. She lit up. You know, she lit up and it's just a small little compliments, right. Being nice to someone makes their day so in a school of Couple hundred students, if everyone is nice to each other, that's just.

Richie: 28:53

You know, it's, it's amazing, spreads it right and this is important because bullying carries a lot of effects Uh on on kids and, potentially, families even it does so.

Dave: 29:03

As parents, we know our kids. We know when they're there's something on their mind, we know when they're agitated, we know when they're sad and when they're happy. So if your child comes home and it's not acting like they normally act and something's wrong, and that's when you have to have that conversation. You know what's wrong and you could also If, if they're sad, if they're Uh, if they feel alone, if they're they isolate themselves, then there's definitely those are some look for us, for parents and families.

Dave: 29:33

And and kids. The statistics say that one out of every three elementary age students Are bullied and one in every five of kindergarten students are also.

Dave: 29:46

Wow if you have friends and they're sad and they're lonely, they're nervous, they're agitated, um, they're scared, then say something. Right, like like the term see something, say something. It's important. And it's not about tattling and that's what I talked to the kids about. It's not if someone you know spilled their juice and you tell on it, that's who cares about that.

Dave: 30:11

But when someone is being hurt and you can do something about it, that is not tattling, that is Telling right. And who do you want to tell? You want to tell an adult, an adult that you trust, right, and that's really important. That's why, in uniform, we tell the students trust People in uniform, a firefighter, police officer, deputy sheriff you know we're here to help. And of course, within the schools, you have your principal, you have your teachers, your guidance counselors, you have the school security officer at the front and and you also have parents that work within. So grab an adult, tell an adult, and that's really the most important thing that you can do. Right, ruling is never okay, but for the parents, basically you know, coach your kids in impossible ways.

Dave: 30:58

If bullying occurs, what to do. The school is your ally. I know the school has a zero tolerance policy on bullying. We are just trying to share that with the kids and of course, you take it, you know, after we leave. But if we can come to the school, put on this anti-bullies school presentation and help with the schools, because because that's what we want to do. We're partnering with you to help keep the kids safe and to make them feel connected to the community, which is us as well.

Matt: 31:27

Yeah, and y'all go to, I mean, all the elementary schools, right?

Dave: 31:30

So the this program is offered to all the schools now I've gotten seven calls and I've Booked seven of these assembly shows for this month alone and I'm still getting calls.

Richie: 31:42

Wow, that's great. They're gonna go back to back to back yeah wow, this has been great conversation and we're very appreciative of, for what you and all these sROs are doing, what your, what the sheriff's office does. This sort of one-on-one connection with kids I think is crucial and and and we appreciate and we appreciate your time today.

Matt: 32:01

Yeah, thank you so much for coming and sharing all this information with us in our community.

Richie: 32:08

Thanks for listening to the stories behind our story. We hope you found today's episode helpful and if your child or someone he or she knows or someone you know is being bullied, they should contact or you should contact a trusted adult in the school to report that. Also available on every page of the cps website is a link to the cps report line. You can anonymously or not necessarily you can include your name Report incidents of bullying and other concerns you may have about your child and his or her school.