Laying down the law; Schools toughen policies on bullies.

Byline: Donna Boynton

Catherine Bradwell's son first threatened to kill himself when he was 9 years old. The Worcester student, diagnosed with ADHD, had been the target of bullying at his elementary school. But it wasn't until her son threatened to kill the classmate who had been bullying him that action was taken.

Her son, now 10, was suspended from school.

"He was just so tired of that kid pushing him around and picking on him," Ms. Bradwell said, adding that she does not dispute the disciplinary action. "I addressed it with his teachers. I had hoped it could be addressed before he acted out so dramatically like that."

Ms. Bradwell hopes

complaints such as hers will be dealt with promptly under the new state law that requires all school districts to have a bullying prevention and intervention plan in place by the end of the year.

"My son has been bullied for a while, and I pushed it away until I heard about that girl (Phoebe Prince of South Hadley) choking herself. It scared me because my son had already threatened to kill himself when he was 9," Ms. Bradwell said. "But for me to hear that he threatened someone else, that was just scary. I don't want my son to be that kid who does something because no one did anything."

As school districts prepare to welcome students back for another school year, administrators have been working on bullying prevention and intervention plans since the spring. The suicides of two students after repeated bullying at their schools - 11-year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover of Springfield and 15-year-old Phoebe Prince - prompted the creation and passage of the bullying prevention and intervention law in May. Schools have been required to have anti-harassment policies in place, but up to now have not had a specific requirement to address bullying.

Not only does the law address reporting and investigating bullying complaints, it also offers - for perhaps the first time - a clear definition of what bullying is: the repeated use by one or more students of written - either on paper or through social media and e-mail - words or actions that cause emotional or physical harm to another person. The law also recognizes that while those incidents may take place out of the school, they can disrupt the learning process and create a hostile environment within a school for the targeted student.

The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education released a model plan for bullying prevention and intervention last week...