School District Designates “Anti-Bully” Week

POUGHKEEPSIE – In the same week as we honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we acknowledge the importance of celebrating an “anti-bullying” approach in our schools and in our community.

Dr. King urged all of us to stand up for the oppressed and persecuted, Dr. King stated: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends,” and added “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”

The Poughkeepsie City School District (PCSD) is celebrating the life and legacy of Dr. King by responding to his exhortation to “stand up.” The Anti-Bully Week emerged as a response to our culture and climate surveys, in which the greatest expressed concern we heard from our students and families was “the insecurity and anxiety of Poughkeepsie’s youth,” consistently in elementary, middle and high school “about bullying and harassment.”

To date this school year, the District has welcomed the Siena Upstander Program, a new peer-to-peer initiative sponsored by AT&T, and hosted a Family University Day in December 2017, which addressed several aspects of bullying, including the national epidemic of “cyber-bullying”.

The Upstander/Mentoring program at PHS is spearheaded by 9th grade English Teacher, Janiqwa Worsley and Assistant Principal Kiesha Tillman at Poughkeepsie High School.

Currently there are 22 PHS students participating in this program. Along with the initiative of cyber-bullying, the mentoring program is also bridging the gap between grades by mentoring middle school scholars. As noted by Ms. Tillman, “Programs like the Upstander program are a necessity in our school community. It is really great for our scholars to be trained to know what they should and should not do”.

As part of the District’s anti-bullying campaign—led by the District’s Family and Community Engagement Task Force, which is composed of District and community members—facilitated family workshops will be held at all District Schools during the month of January.