By Kristina Hong
The Maryland General Assembly and Senate committee passed an anonymous two-way texting bill on Wednesday, March 29 designed to fight against bullying.
The bill offers an optional public school system implementation that introduces the use of a private alert system within schools to report bullying, harassment and other forms of suspicious activity to authorities.
“In short, it is a two-way text messaging bill geared to assist in identifying bullying in our schools,” Delegate Steven Arentz, R-Queen Anne’s County said.
Passing unanimously through the Maryland House of Delegates, the bill saw many changes in order to reach the Senate. Originally, it was introduced through a companion bill and placed emphasis on one-way sending of information but was not effective enough.
“The bill changed from purely a texting bill due to the way the State does business,” Arentz said.
“As a texting-only bill, it would preclude competition, as products that can actually perform this application are limited.”
Alvin Butler, the software developer, affirmed the changes to the original bill.
“It was modified because it was just sending,” Butler said. “It was originally mandated that schools install it but was really watered down in order to pass through the House.”
The software allows students, family members and faculty and to securely report any suspicious activity directly to law enforcement and authorities in instances where face-to-face communication may not be an option. Hoping to allow ease of use and familiarity, this two-way send and receive platform allows it to keep up with the preferred social standards for communicating.
“A student has someone to text to,” Arentz said. “Many kids don’t want to actually speak to someone… they prefer the impersonal text and feel that they are safe due to remaining anonymous.”
In some instances, students may fear the consequences of being wrong and avoid confrontation by refusing to report something they may have seen.
“One of the main reasons that people don’t want to complain is the fear of being wrong,” Butler said. “I think the fact that this is anonymous and that we’ve opened up a line of communication where you don’t have to give your name, we eliminate the risk of being wrong.”
Not only would it be an easier method of reporting for when face-to-face is not an option, but it reduces the risks caused when students go to a teacher.
“Too many times a person is identified as someone that told on another,” Arentz said. “This further pushes the problem and ends up with the reporting student identified and subject to bullying…The kids feel safer because no one knows but them.”
Under the bill, the State Board of Education is expected to set up a grant in order to fund local school systems that use the software. Local school systems that participate in using the software would receive the funding every fiscal year as well as increased funding without interfering with the State budgets and revenues.
Based on the average cost between $1.25 and $1.75 per student, the estimated cost per year would be between $1.07 to $1.5 million, according to the Maryland State Department of Education.
“As a Queen Anne’s County Commissioner, I had met the developer on another matter and as we discussed the software the direction became clear,” Arentz said. “I looked at my own children and my own life and thought how important this vehicle would be in assisting the schools in keeping our children safer.”
Based on the state of bullying and other serious issues in his home district, Arentz saw that it called for new and innovative initiatives that would prove beneficial and necessary for other counties throughout the state of Maryland.
“We need more tools to fight back the results,” Arentz said. “We installed it in Queen Anne’s County high schools and we were off and running with some great successes… Suicide prevention being one of the major offshoots from the original scope of what we felt the product could do in our schools.”
“We’ve intervened in countless bullying systems,” Butler said. “The culture of schools have changed. So if you take that and consider 8,000 to 867,000 students across the state with seven suicide interventions, you can imagine the impact it’s going to have.”
After witnessing the results in his Queen Anne’s County, Arentz realized the true potential of the anonymous tip line and its abilities to target beyond the scope of bullying.
“At the time, Delegate Arentz was the president of the Queen Anne’s County board of commissioners and spoke to the Superintendent about getting this funded in schools,” Butler said. “She said yes and this is our fourth year with the program… bullying is down by 71 percent.”
“Kids do talk to other kids and friends do hear things that they are sworn to keep to themselves,” Arentz said. “You can read about the young man in St. Mary’s County that killed himself… Had this been available, you just don’t know.”
Having passed anonymously through each aspect of the General Assembly, the bill awaits approval by the Governor.
“Getting it to the schools is only the first step,” Arentz said. “High schools do not like bad things to be known to the public…We have to start understanding that we need to address these problems earlier to prevent them from ruining lives.”