(Seguin) — The Seguin ISD is taking its own steps in addressing bullying and the handling of the issue within its campuses. A Town Hall Meeting to discuss bullying and other concerns is being planned for 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 18 in the Seguin High School Performing Arts Center.
Meanwhile, the community can’t help but note that the town hall meeting comes at the heels of a pair of TV news stories from San Antonio in which they hone in on the alleged bullying problem in the Seguin ISD. Recent tragedies involving the loss of students at Seguin High School reportedly prompted the area media outlet to provide more insight into the issue interviewing parents whose kids have been victimized.
Although the district provided a written statement to the TV station, the district’s perspective was never really revealed.
That’s at least according to Superintendent Dr. Veronica Vijil who tells Seguin Radio KWED that there’s more to the story.
“I’ll say two things about that. One is as a proactive measure; we reached out to the news channel and actually, I just completed an interview with that same reporter that conducted the other two stories. So, we wanted to get our story out there and that’s how I opened. Thanks for giving us a chance to have a voice in this and secondly, just recognizing that I haven’t’ been here a long time but I am a community member of Seguin and what I recognize is we are in mourning. That mourning manifests itself in different ways in different people. But what we are trying to do is for our students, inform them about ways that they can manage conflict.
That they can address stress in their lives and just provide them with the tools that they need. It gave us the opportunity to say exactly that – that we live in a society where all of these topics are encountered. It’s not just Seguin ISD. So, however, they chose to do that. We wanted to have our voice out there too just to make it known. Maybe just stating the obvious. This is not a Seguin problem. This is a national problem,” said Vijil.
Vijil says this added attention has since directed the district to further engage the community on the issue of bullying.
“Rather than be reactive, we’re trying to be proactive so this town hall, what I want to illustrate is the fast forwardness of our thinking that we can get more community members involved with this to work toward a solution, a plan, a way to enhance what we already have. So, the purpose of the town hall meeting is that it is going to be set up in such a fashion that we are going to have something set out where anybody who has a question, we will ask them to submit it by Friday. We will provide a link. So that is going to kind of drive some of the topics that we discuss. We can see what is out there. What do people still have questions about after we have responded and also, I will invite different people from organizations of resources that we already have and that we already utilize – letting the community know what we do have in place and where there are areas for improvement,” said Vijil.
Vijil says making this dialogue difficult for the district to address are the federal laws and district policies surrounding student privacy which prevent them from discussing the cases with the public. However, in this town hall meeting, she says the district will be addressing its practices along with the procedures surrounding student safety.
“So, while we can’t get into any specific cases, any specific reports that have been brought forth – in general, I think that we can all agree that bullying has always been a widespread challenge to school districts, to campuses and we are always searching of ways to improve the reporting, the investigating, the closing the loop, the communication, the ways to report bullying, the types of bullying. There is a lot to it. It’s not just bullying as we said in our initial response. These are challenges that we have maybe enhanced by technology, and we are trying to stay a step ahead of young people nowadays. It’s all sorts of topics,” said Vijil.
Vijil says next week’s meeting is designed for progress and hopes that folks remain engaged so that together – they can work toward a solution.
“I think really what I would ask is that people come to us with an open mind and just a solutions-oriented attitude. This is a community problem for us that we are trying to address. It’s going to take a community. Every voice counts but also informing the community about some things that they may not be aware of,” said Vijil.
Parents are encouraged to check their emails for the link in which to submit questions for the town hall meeting. The deadline to submit questions will be 5 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 15. The link is also available on the school district’s website or social media pages.