Governor’s anti-bullying bill won’t move this session

DES MOINES - It was supposed to be one of Gov. Terry Branstad's signature pieces of legislation this year.

But the governor's anti-bullying bill couldn't even get enough support from members of his own party to get a vote on the House floor.

Anti-bullying advocates were left deflated and defeated when it became apparent that the bill wasn't going to move this session.

Those advocates include officials with the governor's office who promised there would be a push for the bill again next year. Still, that would likely mean doing something different than it did this year, and what that is remains somewhat ambiguous.

“There were just too many questions still out there,” Republican Linda Upmeyer of Clear Lake said. As majority leader, Upmeyer has final say on which bills get called to the House floor.

Before those bills are called, parties meet in closed-door sessions called caucuses to express their support, voice their concern and count up their votes. The caucuses are invite-only and closed to the general public and the media. Both parties do this.

With few exceptions, lawmakers know how they are going to vote on every bill well before public debate begins on the House or Senate floor.

It was in the House Republican caucus that the anti-bullying bill died sometime before the April 15 funnel deadline when non-monetary bills must be passed out of one chamber to still be alive.

But when she's asked to name names of who was for or against it, Upmeyer says she can't specifically recall. “Just generally there were a lot of questions,” she says. “There were questions about having the school's authority go so far off school grounds, and if we should have that.”

Too far?

The anti-bullying legislation came out of a statewide anti-bullying summit held last fall that included workshops by legal experts, sociologists, authors and school administrators for a daylong symposium.

The summit itself was in part a response to the suicide of 14-year-old Kenneth Weishuhn of the South O'Brien School District and a documentary film, “Bully,” which featured the Sioux City School District.

After the summit, Linda Fandel and Adam Gregg, who serve as the governor's special policy adviser and his lobbyist with the General Assembly, respectively, hammered together a bill with the School Administrators of Iowa and sent it to the House of Representatives where Rep. Josh Byrnes, R-Osage, was charged with getting it to the House floor.

Perhaps the most significant thing the legislation did was specifically say that school officials could treat off-campus reports of bullying as they would an on-campus incident. It also gave those same school officials immunity from liability if they failed to act.

“I'm not surprised the bill didn't move forward,” said Sioux City School Superintendent Paul Gausman, a supporter of the legislation who became intensely involved in the bullying debate after his 13,900-student district was featured in the documentary.

“It was obvious there were a lot of questions, even among the administrative groups I belong too,” Gausman said. “Do we have enough staff to do what it wants? Do we have the person-power to hold students accountable for social media? There were a lot of challenges with the details.”

Byrnes says he's not sure why the bill died. “I see my role as getting it through the committee and then giving it to leadership and it's their decision after that,” he said. “I do think there was some concern about all the amendments that Democrats wanted to add on to it - they were the kind of things that would look bad if you voted ‘no' on, but weren't really practical. I think there was a feeling it needed to be a clean bill.”

For example, one amendment required school districts to train people to specifically deal with bullying reports. Byrnes said that would be fine for bigger districts that may have the student populations that warrant it and money to pay for it, but it could be a struggle for small, rural districts.

“That's the first time I ever heard someone say possible amendments were the problem,” said Chris Hall, D-Sioux City, who pushed legislation this year that would hold parents responsible for the actions of their bullying children - much like parents or truants are held responsible when their child excessively skips school.

“My only comment to that is, they are the majority party, they control what bills get called up and which ones don't,” Hall said. “It's on them.”

Through it all, only Sandy Salmon, a freshman Republican from Janesville, has cast the only official no vote on the bill. She did that when Byrnes presented it to the education committee. The rest of the members - more than 20 - voted for the bill.

“It gives school administrators the power to interfere with parental rights,” Salmon said, explaining her opposition last week. “That's not somewhere I want to see us go.”

Or not far enough

Karen Weishuhn, Kenneth's step-grandmother, doesn't believe the 14-year was gay. She believes other people believed he was, however, and that Kenneth, whom she called “K.J.,” was harassed for it - to the point of suicide.

“I know K.J. got a telephone call one night, and the next day he was dead,” she said. “I don't think I'll ever know why he did it until I see him again in heaven. There are so many questions that are still left out there.”

She said any anti-bullying bill should include incidents in school, out-of-school and even in the home if it's going to be effective. She still questions herself whether there was more that could have been done.

“You ask yourself over and over ‘How come I didn't notice this or that?' and ‘Why didn't I say something when I saw some things?'” she said.

Matt Carver, legal services director with the School Administrators of Iowa, agrees with Karen Weishuhn that any law must address off-campus bullying to be effective.

“The problem is we didn't spend enough time educating lawmakers on the legislation,” Carver said. “We'll have to make sure we can answer those questions going forward.”

Branstad plans on hosting another summit this fall, spokesman Tim Albrecht said, but details haven't been finalized.

“The governor wants a continuing conversation on bullying. This is an ongoing problem that needs ongoing discussion,” Albrecht wrote in an email. “This is unrelated to the bullying legislation, though the legislation is still a priority of the governor's.”

Meanwhile, Karen Weishuhn says she's under no illusion that a state law will stop people from being bullies.

“Really it's going to have to start with people,” she said. “And people have to ask themselves ‘Do I want to be part of tearing this kid down, or building this kid up?'”