Brockton subcommittee reviews updated Bullying Prevention and Intervention Plan, staff will return with data

At the March 10 Mental Health and Wellbeing Subcommittee meeting, staff presented a proposed update to the Brockton Public Schools Bullying Prevention and Intervention Plan that mainly modernizes titles and references to new building supports.

The assistant superintendent of unified school services, who also serves as the district’s civil rights officer, told the committee the plan is maintained as a district implementation document and noted it is a regulatory requirement to update the plan every two years. She said committee adoption is not required but the subcommittee may endorse or request changes.

In response to a member’s request for data, the assistant superintendent offered to prepare a late‑May or early‑June briefing summarizing the year’s reports and outcomes — the number of reports received, how many progressed to formal investigations, and how many investigations were sustained versus not sustained. She said some investigations remain open and that compiling an accurate year snapshot requires closing those cases first.

Staff also explained the district now tracks informal concerns that do not rise to formal complaints and emphasized that bullying reports often intersect with Title VI (civil‑rights) and Title IX (sex‑based) complaints. The assistant superintendent described the district’s investigative model: assistant principals serve as primary investigators, principals decide remedies and the district monitors compliance and timeliness.

Committee members asked whether any particular student groups are being disproportionately targeted; staff said they are not seeing a clear pattern by group but noted some Title IX investigations show more female recipients in sexual‑misconduct cases. Staff said location and time patterns are more consistent (higher incident counts during unsupervised periods such as recess and passing times) and said they will include trend breakdowns by location and other indicators in the year‑end summary.

The subcommittee scheduled a follow‑up meeting in early June to review SEL screening data, MTSS programming outcomes for 2025–26 and the requested year‑end summary of bullying and civil‑rights investigations.