Jr./Sr. High School principal says bullying not tolerated

A concerned mother and father wrote to the Fitzhugh this summer to share the story of their child who was bullied at Jasper Jr./Sr. High School. The letter read, “We, among others, have fled the school due to bullying and lack of effective support in dealing with it.”

Because the letter contained a great deal of specific information, it cannot be printed in the paper. However, the Fitzhugh  brought it to the attention of Mark Crozier, the high school’s new principal this year. Crozier insists serious instances of bullying will not happen under his watch.

“The bully’s not going to win,” Crozier said, calling his actions “firm but fair,” in instances where he can confirm that a student has been picking on another. “If i’m able to establish for sure they did it, I’m going to take a very firm action,” he said. “I believe there’s a limit we should set in our schools and if you cross that line unfortunately you won’t be in our school for a little while.”

Suspensions, he said, are a necessary method of establishing a point. “You get so far in school and there’s a point where you stop talking and address it with other means,” Crozier said. “Everyone needs to be safe in our school and feel comfortable, we can’t have students saying ‘I don’t want to come to school today because I’m worried about what people are going to say to me’.”

However, suspending students is not Crozier’s preferred avenue. “It’s our job as educators to be teaching about how to behave as citizens, what’s right and what’s wrong,” he said. “Our number one priority in school is to be proactive.”

He said character education, or instilling values such as respect, honesty and responsibility, is one means of preventing bullying behaviours. Teachers at Jasper Jr./Sr. High School are expected to take time to learn how to get such values across.

“Hopefully we’ll make these students passionate about being respectful,” Crozier said.

There are other programs as well that address bullying, such as one implemented by the RCMP and one that promotes empathy, available as the year goes on. 

The school has received a high rating on a government survey of schools across the province, but there’s always room for betterment. “We’re looking at how we can improve that, to keep moving forward,” he said. “Because one student bullied is one too many.”

Coni Bowen, a parent on the school advisory board, said she doesn’t think bullying is a serious issue at the high school, though she had heard of an incident a few years back when parents removed their child from the school and moved away.

She said she doesn’t think it’s a serious problem, though that may be because her own child never had any complaints. “But if I was a parent of a child being bullied I would take it seriously,” Bowen said. “Bullying is just not called for.”

To the parents of bullied kids, Crozier said Jasper is a fantastic school. “If you were to re-enroll your student in our school the teachers and I would work extremely hard, we’ll work in partnership with you to make sure (the bullying) stops,” he said. “We don’t tolerate that.”