WOONSOCKET – As videos and rumors depicting violence in Woonsocket schools spread online, administrators and Supt. Patrick McGee say they want to make it clear that misinformation and social media are to blame for exaggerating issues and causing unnecessary fear among the public.
On March 18, there was an altercation between many students at Woonsocket High School that was recorded and posted to social media. While it was spread online that there was a weapon involved, news outlets have confirmed that what was thought to be a knife was, in actuality, just a cell phone. Three students were arrested that day for their involvement in school altercations, and the incident drew community questions as to how a fight could get so out of hand.
At the Woonsocket School Committee meeting of March 23, McGee offered numbers on reported instances of bullying found in each school between September 2021 and January 2022. Reported incidents were compared to the number of bullying cases found to be valid, often dropping the actual number of incidents to zero. The highest number of bullying cases was at Kevin Coleman Elementary School, at five cases, but dwindled down to zero cases at Villa Nova Middle School, Woonsocket High School, and the Woonsocket Area Career and Technical Center.
“Lots of times parents will reach out and students will say, ‘No, we’re friends.’ There’s a lot of misinformation, or a situation of ‘one and done,’” Kim Luca, principal of Villa Nova Middle School, told The Breeze.
At the high school level, Principal Jeffrey Guiot said, students are more likely to advocate for resolution than beginning the formal process of writing out a report. He added that it’s important for teachers and administrators to have support staff as an early intervention if they see a chance for conflict between students.
“If they hear of a potential situation with more than two students, we try to act proactively, and do a check to see how involved they need to get,” he said. “It might involve parents, support staff, or an administrator.”
It’s common for students to not want to “snitch” as well, according to both Guiot and McGee, and see handling conflict themselves as a self-preservation tool, which accounts for the low reported numbers for bullying cases.
Since school has resumed in-person, not only do stories of violence between students spread online, but their conflict starts online, as well. In other instances, conflict may be sparked at school, and then it’s blown out of proportion online overnight, said school officials.
“In the age of social media, they don’t have the ability to step away. There used to be an opportunity to step away at the end of the day, and time could have healed whatever the situation was. There’s no way to take a break now unless they choose to,” Guiot said, emphasizing the inescapability of social media.
In addition to students always being connected via social media, he said, parents also learn what they believe to be the truth secondhand, whether or from social media or from the partial truths their child may tell them.
“One person’s version becomes the next person’s version. It doesn’t matter what the truth is … judgements are made before the facts are even known,” Guiot said.
McGee was adamant that these are not just problems for Woonsocket schools, but a larger societal battle.
“We live in a violent society,” he said. “We’re doing as much as we can to prevent it happening in our schools and to educate and provide our students with the resources and the skills to try to not turn to violence.”
McGee confirmed that teachers are neither encouraged nor discouraged from getting involved in student altercations, and that it is at the teacher’s discretion to intervene or not if they witness violence between students.
The anti-bullying and conflict resolution models that Woonsocket schools employ are based around restorative practices focusing on communication and empathy rather than continuing conflict, they said. As a restorative process, students may sit down with one another and school officials to mediate conflict. In light of the current attention being paid to physical altercations, the high school is also bringing in the Nonviolence Institute, bolstering a strong peer mentorship program, and starting transition programs between schools that, for example, would pair an 8th-grader with a 9th-grader, so that incoming students already have friends when they enter a new school.
“The vast majority of our students are fantastic. They come to school. They come to school to learn. They’re respectful,” McGee said. “The vast majority of the parents we work with are involved in their child’s education. They communicate with the schools. They’re respectful. It’s a small portion that we constantly deal with. We can provide them with all the support in the world, but if they don’t want to accept the support we’re trying to give them … we’re not going to change everyone. We do a lot here to support families, to support students. At the end of the day, the parent is the parent. We’re not the parent.”
Guiot also mentioned that students who do the right thing every day feel the criticism as well.
“They want to be proud of the school they go to, they want to be proud of the community they live in, but sometimes it’s framed as a place they don’t want to be in,” he said.
Hamlet Middle School Principal Jennifer Renigaldo said they’re beginning a partnership with the Boys & Girls Club of Woonsocket that will bring organizers into schools for programming once each week. She also noted ongoing partnerships with Community Care Alliance, Connecting Children and Families, Riverzedge Arts, and other social development organizations in the city.
“We’re spending 90% of our time on 5% of the population. We don’t have the time to celebrate all the wins. There’s way more wins,” Luca said.
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