Bullying reports are up in Baltimore schools. Here’s what to do if your child is being bullied — or is the bully.

At an anti-bullying presentation March 14 at Westport Academy, former NFL player Joel Gamble and children’s book author Stephen McGill read from their respective books: “The Justice Duo” and “The Electrifying Adventures of Mr. Powers.”

Students were asked to use characters from the books to identify signs of bullying and learned what their “superpowers” were, such as speaking with a school liaison.

“This is where we want students to understand what bullying is,” said Ketia Stokes, the school system’s director of student wholeness. “This is … a way of … helping people to understand how to recognize it.”

At least once a week throughout March, the Baltimore City Public School System held events at different schools to try to combat bullying. City schools had 781 incidents of bullying reported in the 2022-23 school year, up from 625 the year before, Stokes said. District data presented at a January school safety hearing with City Council showed that bullying has been increasing for the past three years.

Stokes attributed the growing number of reported incidents to raised awareness regarding protocols for reporting bullying. But she noted a national trend of increased bullying among school-aged students due to prolonged isolation and education disruption during the coronavirus pandemic, which affected students’ social and emotional health, and peer-to-peer interactions. The pandemic also resulted in increased screen time for kids, which has created opportunities for cyberbullying within a school community, Stokes said.

If your child is being bullied or is the bully, here’s what to know.

What constitutes bullying?

Bullying is clinically defined by three key aspects: unwanted aggressive behavior, a power imbalance and a high likelihood the behavior is repetitive, said Rashida Barner, supervisor of the Executive Function Clinic in the Baltimore-based Kennedy Krieger Institute’s Department of Neuropsychology.

Baltimore City schools categorizes bullying into verbal, physical, cyberbullying and/or social bullying — behavior like excluding others, spreading rumors and turning friends against one another.

“From my clinical experience of working with children getting comprehensive evaluation, a third of students have been involved in some level of bullying,” Barner said.

The demographic for bullying varies but happens the most in middle school, followed by high school, she said.

What effect can bullying have?

Barner said those who have experienced bullying can develop physical and mental health issues, including increased anxiety and depression. Kids also can display changes in sleep and eating, as well as in academic achievement. They can lose interest in activities and avoid social situations.

“Bullying can be very traumatic for children,” Barner said. “When I was growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, we did not know how negative bullying was, and we thought it was just a part of childhood.”

How can you help a bullied child?

Parents need to be aware of those warning signs of bullying, Barner said.

Guardians should initiate open conversations about what qualifies as bullying and can share personal stories to educate their kids, Barner said. Let the child know that the priority is to keep them safe and that communication needs to be open to best determine how to help.

Barner also suggested getting the school involved so students can be connected to a counselor and so the bullying is documented. Baltimore City schools allows parents and students to submit an online bullying, harassment and intimidation reporting form.

After receiving and responding to a report of bullying, the school system decides what kind of resolution — and how many — will best suit the student’s needs, Stokes said.

“It’s not a one-to-one thing when it comes to our resolutions,” Stokes said. “Sometimes, we need to use more than one type of resolution for a student.”

What are the potential resolutions?

The school system can provide support resolutions for both parties in a bullying situation, such as counseling, student conferences, parent-student conferences, restorative counseling, behavior contracts and safety plans.

Stokes said restorative counseling entails a conversation among staff and the students about the actions involved while trying to understand the reasons behind them. This method is typically used when it’s determined the students have a misunderstanding of each other that causes the bullying or if the bully has had a previous experience.

Behavior contracts are agreements between a student and the school system on desired behaviors, typically enforced through positive reinforcement, Stokes said. But if the student isn’t meeting those expectations, a bigger conversation on a next step will be had.

The school system also can implement a safety plan, which often puts a student in an environment away from the conflict, Stokes said. This could mean moving a student to a different class or providing extra attention to the particular students involved in the incident.

Last school year, the system reported 444 student conferences, 186 restorative counseling sessions, 48 behavior contracts, 47 detentions, 146 out-of-school suspensions, 30 in-school suspensions and 343 parent-student conferences as bullying resolutions.

How does a child become a bully, and what can be done?

Barner said children learn to bully from their environments and by observing the consequences of such behavior. To avoid this, adults should make a point to model kindness and respect, plus explicitly state that bullying will not be tolerated.

If parents do learn their child is or has been bullying, they should speak calmly, explain why bullying is not acceptable, discuss alternatives to aggressive behavior and ensure adult supervision, Barner said.

Additionally, parents should consider pursuing professional services, such as counseling and partnering with school and community leaders to address the behavior, Barner said.

She advises parents to go to stopbullying.gov or the National Bullying Prevention Center website for additional resources.

How can schools prevent bullying?

Barner suggests systems be consistent across schools with embedding prosocial behaviors — voluntary actions that benefit others — that discourage bullying within the culture.

“From the school standpoint, it is very effective for schools to have a schoolwide approach towards bullying,” Barner said. “A lot of times, schools will have different values or characteristics in good and successful students.”

BCPSS takes an approach of educating about bullying and social-emotional learning. All schools have regular morning meetings during which students can express what they’re seeing and how they are feeling about their environments, according to Stokes.

Schools across the system have posters that teach students how to report bullying, Stokes said. The posters feature QR codes that take students directly to the website to fill out the reporting form.

“We want to create a community where families and students are comfortable with sharing what’s happening in the school,” Stokes said. “We want to give language to our emotions.”