In 123-page guide, state offers schools tips on stopping bullies

The goal is to dispel myths: that bullies have low self-esteem, that bullying is just a part of childhood, and that victims often overreact to taunts.

The advice is often simple: Increase supervision where students get on and off buses and in the lunchroom, where some of the worst bullying can take place.

These suggestions are part of a 123-page guide to the prevention of bullying that the state Department of Public Health will send to every school district in the state today. The guide lists tips and statistics that officials hope will help teachers and principals stop bullying.

"This guide is one way that we state that bullying isn't inevitable," said Carlene Pavlos, director of the Division of Violence and Injury Prevention at the Department of Public Health, who spoke yesterday at the Justice Resource Institute, where health and education officials discussed the booklet.

The guide is being released as more schools and states are under pressure to develop policies and laws to combat bullying. Last year, the New Jersey Supreme Court allowed a young man who had been bullied as a child to sue his school for not preventing the harassment.

In 2004, New York City passed an antibullying law that requires its schools to track bullying complaints and to train teachers to curtail bullying.

Most teachers or adults in school ignore bullying, according to a survey of nearly 5,000 grade school students in Maine, which was released in 2000, according to the guide. Lucki Bias, a 19-year-old retail worker who attended yesterday's meeting, said he dropped out of his Quincy high school because of bullying, which he said his teachers and coaches did nothing to stop.

"I think the message we need to get out is that bullying is not an issue that just happens now," said Bias, a tall, wiry man whose voice became hoarse with emotion as he told his story. "It affects people's future. It affects their mental being."

Bias said that when he was a freshman he joined the football team and told his teammates he was gay. Immediately the taunts began, he said.

Once in the lockeroom, Bias said, three teammates beat him so violently he was hospitalized for a week. By his junior year he had dropped out of school, returned briefly, then dropped out again when the abuse continued. He has since earned his high school equivalency diploma, but said dropping out hurt his chances of getting into college. "Those are some of the problems I deal with in my life," Bias said.

Teenagers and children who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender are five times more likely to skip school to avoid bullying and at least five times more likely to commit suicide than heterosexual students, according to the guide, which also warns that bullying is an early warning sign of antisocial and even criminal behavior.

The guide suggests school officials foster a more tolerant environment for gay students by posting positive events about the gay community on classroom bulletin boards and allowing students to bring a guest or date of the same sex to school dances.

The guide lists strategies that do not work, like zero tolerance policies that lead to expulsion and suspension of bullies.

Those policies only target individuals and often ignore the culture of bullying that exists at a school, said Dorothy Espelage, professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who was not involved with the guide.

"If you haven't changed that climate that in some ways is breeding that behavior, then it continues," said Espelage, who researches bullying and youth aggression. "Someone else will just take over."

She described Massachusetts' antibullying efforts as encouraging, but unusual. "Unfortunately, the trend is toward zero tolerance and suspensions and expulsions," she said. "We've had a real slowing down of prevention. . . . Very few states are taking this level of proactive preventative strategies."

Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com.