New law strengthens schools' fight against cyberbullying

School officials will have slightly broadened authority to punish students for so-called cyberbullying under a law that went into effect Jan. 1.

The law is meant to address taunting and harassment that can occur on social media sites such Facebook and Twitter, proponents said.

Under AB256, authored by Assemblywoman Christina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, school officials can punish students for bullying by electronic means, even if the communication originated off school grounds.

Prior to the new law, a pupil could not be suspended or expelled unless the act was related to a school activity or school attendance.

"People are using other avenues to bully now," said Elena Lee, spokeswoman for Garcia. "Now we can actually deal with it."

The Association of California School Administrators originally opposed the measure, calling it too far-reaching and arguing it would saddle school officials with too much responsibility for pupils' online behavior.

"It was too broad in scope," said ACSA spokeswoman Julie White. "It called on administrators to oversee all kinds of cyber-activity for students at school and at home."

But those concerns were addressed and ACSA later got behind the law, she said.

Cyberbulling is something administrators are increasingly forced to deal with, according to White.

"It's an emerging challenge," she said. "The real challenge is that there isn't a lot of case law yet."

A key component of the new law, but one that also existed in prior law, according to attorney Penelope Glover, is that the bullying must be deemed "reasonably likely to cause a substantial disruption to a school activity."

Glover, an education law attorney in Pleasanton, said interpretation of what constitutes a disruption is critical.

"If it is someone whose feelings were hurt, you might not see the discipline," she said. "When you go to the legislative analysis and you go behind it, you realize the legislature is not attempting to circumvent the Constitution."

The American Civil Liberties Union opposed the legislation.

"Suspension and expulsion are types of exclusionary discipline which simply remove students from the classroom or school without addressing the actual cause of the student misbehavior," the ACLU's legislative counsel Tiffany Mock said in a statement. "Instead of reducing the likelihood of behavioral incidents, school suspensions appear to predict higher future rates of misbehavior and suspension among those students who were suspended."

Santa Rosa High School senior Trevor Greenan said the law isn't likely to prompt greater everyday scrutiny by administrators of students' Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat accounts. Greenan, editor in chief of the school newspaper, tackled the topic in an October issue of The Santa Rosan.

"Generally, I'm not usually for this kind of thing but I feel like there isn't that much that is able to be abused," he said.

"Teachers and administrators aren't going to go out of their way to follow (students') Facebook pages," he said. "I see them more doing it...if something comes up at school."

(Staff Writer Kerry Benefield writes an education blog at extracredit.blogs.pressdemocrat.com. She can be reached at 526-8671, kerry.benefield@press democrat.com or on Twitter @benefield.)