LANSING – Schools would have to modify their policy prohibiting bullying to include cyberbullying and include assurance of confidentiality for an individual who reported an act of bullying, as well as procedures to safeguard that confidentiality, under a bill passed by the Senate on Thursday.

SB 74 saw some perhaps unexpected debate on the Senate floor, however, about whether the bill was too much of an overreach of state government into creating policies that require schools to regulate behavior outside of their property.

The bill was passed 30-7, with Sen. Tom Casperson (R-Escanaba), Sen. Patrick Colbeck (R-Canton Township), Sen. Bruce Caswell (R-Hillsdale), Sen. Judy Emmons (R-Sheridan), Sen. Mike Green (R-Mayville), Sen. Phil Pavlov (R-St. Clair) and Sen. Dave Robertson (R-Grand Blanc) voting in opposition.

“Why do we have to mandate the schools do it? They can do it themselves,” Green said in a statement on the Senate floor. “We don’t need to tell them everything they can or can’t do.”

But Sen. Glenn Anderson (D-Westland) said the accusation of an overreach was a mischaracterization.

“This bill essentially addresses a couple of shortcomings in the law we passed a couple years ago,” he said, referring to previous anti-bullying legislation that became law. He also noted that, at the time, Governor Rick Snyder indicated support for extending that law to cyberbullying. And he said the state superintendent of public instruction also supported the proposal at hand.

“Cyberbullying is a serious problem, and if we fail to address that, we’ll continue to see children abused in our districts,” Anderson said.

The legislation requires a school district, intermediate school district, or public school academy to submit a copy of a modified bullying policy to the Department of Education within 30 days after adopting said modification, and then for the department to report to the Legislature one year after the deadline for modification of a bullying policy, summarizing the status of the implementation of modifications.

The bill also requires the department to report incidents of bullying on annual basis and make information on reports readily available to the public. SB 74 was sent to the House Education Committee for further consideration.

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