Documents show big divide between anti-bullying camps

Just before 9 a.m. on Feb. 5, state Rep. Quentin Stanerson fired off a one-sentence email to Adam Gregg.

'Office of harassment and antibullying policies?????? Holy Cow,” he wrote.

Stanerson, R-Center Point, was the floor manager of the House anti-bullying bill. Gregg is Gov. Terry Branstad's legislative liaison to the General Assembly.

Stanerson's 'Holy Cow” was a response to his first look at the Democratic-controlled Senate's anti-bullying proposal, a portion of which called for the creation of such an office.

The email was one of 478 documents reviewed by The Gazette-Lee Des Moines Bureau that show how intractable some of the differences between the two parties were when the idea of an anti-bullying bill became ill-fated legislation.

It's an idea Branstad will still pursue, spokesman Jimmy Centers said. But the governor hasn't pursued the policy with the same gusto he has in the two previous off-sessions.

At least, not yet.

'A third bullying prevention summit is a possibility, but no decision has been made,” Centers said, referring to a pair of anti-bullying summits the governor hosted in the Des Moines in the fall of 2012 and 2013. 'This remains a priority of Governor Branstad, and in coming months he will outline his legislative priorities.”

The breakdown

Rep. Chris Hall, D-Sioux City, worries the 2014 session was 'probably the best opportunity” for the General Assembly dto tighten up the state's anti-bullying law since 2007. He has been working on the issue since first taking office in 2011.

The governor's proposal expanded the definition of bullying, explicitly allowed school officials to enforce the bullying code for off-campus incidents and required training of school personnel to identify bullying.

By mid-February Democrats and Republicans were finding problems in the details, even though they seemed to agree on the overall concepts.

'We can agree to almost all the changes proposed,” Gregg wrote to Stanerson on Feb. 14, in response to an amendment being offered by House Democrats. 'We cannot agree at this time to items impacting the budget ...

” Gregg's email continued and went into a list of five items.

In the end, even the big items caused hang-ups. House Republicans decided they didn't like the part of the bill that gave school officials the explicit ability to police off-campus incidents, and Senate Democrats didn't like a parental notification clause in the bill.

'I understand the way things unraveled,” Hall said. 'I don't know if there is a compromise that could have been worked out. I'm one of the people who actually supports both of those items, and there's a good chance I'll continue to work on the issue.”

What's next?

Nate Monson, executive director of Iowa Safe Schools, said he is positive there will be legislation introduced in 2015.

'We're leading conversations now, trying to get the stakeholders and community groups involved a lot earlier in the process,” Monson said.

He thinks the main points of contention could be taken care of pretty easily with more discussion.

He said school officials already have the authority to police off-campus incidents that 'impact the learning environment” - which, he contends, bullying certainly does. So although he said explicit permission in a bill 'might be nice, it's not necessary.”

He also said giving children a say in whether school officials call parents is important.

'You could have a situation where you have a LGBT (lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender) student who is outted because of bullying at school and maybe he has really religious parents,” Monson said. 'A counselor, with no bad intentions, calls the parents and tells them about the situation.

'Then maybe he gets punished worse at home. Maybe you have a kid who's kicked out of his home.”

The Branstad administration worked closely with the School Administrators of Iowa to draft both anti-bullying bills. Dan Smith, executive director of the organization, said he wasn't sure if there should be another summit or not.

'Our concern is the problem of bullying needs to be looked at as a communitywide problem,” he said. 'In addition to the schools, we need to be working with the communities going forward.”

l Comments: (515) 442-9061; michael.wiser@lee.net