Forty-four states expressly ban bullying, a legislative legacy of a rash of school shootings in the late ’90s, yet few if any of those measures have identified children who excessively pick on their peers, an Associated Press review has found. And few offer any method for ensuring the policies are enforced, according to data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The issue came to a head in April when 11-year-old Jaheem Herrera committed suicide at his Atlanta-area home after his parents say he was repeatedly tormented in school. District officials denied it, and an independent review found bullying wasn’t a factor, a conclusion his family rejects.

Regardless, Georgia’s law, among the toughest in the nation, still would not have applied: It only applies to students in grades six to 12. Herrera was a fifth-grader.

Georgia’s law has one of the largest gaps between what it requires of districts and the tools it gives them for meeting those requirements. The state doesn’t collect data specifically on bullying occurrences, despite legislation that promises to strip state funding from schools failing to take action after three instances involving a bully.

After Herrera’s death, other parents came forward to say their children had been bullied and that school officials did nothing with the complaints, rendering the state’s law useless.

“There is a systematic problem,” said Mike Wilson, who said his 12-year-old daughter was bullied for two years in the same school district where Herrera died. “The lower level employees, the teachers, the principals, are trying to keep this information suppressed at the lowest possible level.”

Only six states – Montana, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, North Dakota and South Dakota – and the District of Columbia lack specific laws targeting school bullying, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Most states require school districts to adopt open-ended policies to prohibit bullying and harassment.

While some direct state education officials to form model policies that school districts should mimic, they offer little to assure the policies are enforced; only a handful of states require specific data gathering meant to assure bullying is being monitored, for instance.

“The states themselves can’t micromanage a school district – but they can say to a school district, ‘Look, you have to have consequences,’” said Brenda High, whose Web site, Bully Police USA, tracks anti-bullying laws across the nation, and who advocates for strict repercussions for bullies. The Washington state-based advocate’s son, Jared, was 13 when he committed suicide in 1998 after complaining of bullying.

“It needs to be written into the law that bullying has the same consequences as assault,” she said. “The records and such need to be kept so that if the child is a chronic bully, they – after so many instances – will end up in an alternative school.”

Alaska and Georgia have particularly specific statutes. Alaska’s Department of Education and Early Development must compile annual data on bullying complaints and report it to the Legislature.

Georgia’s 10-year-old law goes a step further. It specifies that three instances of bullying is grounds for transfer to an alternative school, away from the victim. School systems not in compliance forfeit state funding, according to the law.

Despite that record-keeping provision, the Georgia Department of Education cannot say whether any child has been transferred as a result of bullying because the department only tracks the number for broader offenses, including fighting and threats, spokesman Dana Tofig said.

“If the district is not enforcing its own bullying policy, and that’s been happening repeatedly, the law says they can lose their state funding,” Tofig said.

No school has lost funding under the law, according to the department.

Some school districts say they keep track of complaints, especially those involving a single child being bullied more than once, and that they address those cases. Without a legal obligation to report such data to state officials, however, it’s unclear how any such statistics are used.

In 2007, nearly a third of students ages 12 to 18 reported having been bullied during the school year, according to data on more than 55 million students compiled annually by the National Center for Education Statistics. That’s up from as few as 1 in 10 students in the ’90s, though bullying experts point out the rising numbers may reflect more reports of bullying, not necessarily more incidents.

Many children reported teasing, spreading rumors and threats, all harder to spot and manage, school leaders say.

“One of the questions is how do you quantify bullying? It could even be as simple as a rolling of the eyes,” said Dale Davis, a spokesman for schools in DeKalb County, Ga., where Herrera committed suicide.

District officials have said since soon after the boy’s death that there was no evidence that Herrera was bullied, and that outside factors including the death of a close relative influenced him to take his life.

Herrera’s death in mid-April came barely two weeks after Sirdeaner Walker found her son Carl hanged in her Springfield, Mass., home. The 11-year-old had complained of teasing almost immediately after arriving at his new charter school, she said.

Parents in Illinois likewise pointed to bullies after three suicides there in February: a 10-year-old boy hanged himself in a restroom stall in a suburban Chicago school, an 11-year-old boy was found dead in Chatham, south of Springfield, and a father found his 11-year-old daughter hanged in a closet of their Chicago home.

Dr. Diahann Meekins Moore, associate director for psychiatric services at the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services, cautioned that it’s unclear whether bullying could be considered a primary cause in those deaths or in any suicide.

All the same, every suicide with a hint of bullying, every school rampage involving a shooter who claims to have been bullied renews the debate over whether anyone can curb what most consider a harsh and inevitable part of childhood, and if so, who bears that responsibility.

“A lot of this has to be handled in the home,” said Peter Daboul, chair of the board of trustees at New Leadership, the Massachusetts school where her son was a 6th grader.

Teachers there will receive training on spotting childhood depression and bullying, he said, “but you also have the family unit where these kids are hopefully taught the difference between right and wrong.”

Sirdeaner Walker said reminding a child that they’re loved at home is less effective when they’re being teased in the classroom.

“I can say that all the time,” Walker said. “But again, I have to send my child back to the school.”

Teacher Diane Cleveland commented that the boy’s “fence swings both ways”; when he wrote a paper on Ben Franlin, Cleveland said he had a “thing for older men.” Another teacher, Walter Fison, said the boy “enjoys wearing women’s clothes.”

The settlement comes after an investigation by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights; the school district denies it violated the Minnesota Human Rights Act. Both teachers hae received “outstanding performance” awards from the district in recent years.

Reid-Pharr, a critical essayist and professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, turned him down.

“I asked him what he was doing and he said his mom was addicted to crack. He had been out all night because there were people doing drugs at his home and he couldn’t stay there,” Reid-Pharr recalled. “He said, ‘usually when guys take me home they give me food first.’”

Like the young man who Reid-Pharr encountered, gay youth take to the streets for a variety of reasons, some resorting to hustling to survive. Whether they are kicked out by their families for being gay or are forced to leave to escape abuse, staying at home may not be an option for many gay youth.

According to a 2007 study done by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 20 to 40 percent of homeless youth in the United States identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual. The same study also found that there are between 15,000 and 20,000 homeless youth in New York City, of whom 3,000 to 8,000 are LGBT.

Even when they are able to live at home, a gay kid’s life may not be easy. Bullying and a lack of support are pervasive problems in schools. A 1997 Massachusetts Department of Education Survey found that gay students hear anti-gay slurs as often as 26 times each day. Faculty intervention occurs in only about 3 percent of those cases.

Yet national attention for gay youth seems to be limited to only the most extreme stories, like the 2008 murder of Lawrence King, an openly gay 15-year-old student who was shot and killed by a fellow classmate.

When gay children are being murdered by their classmates, why are the issues of gay youth not more widely covered?

Carl Siciliano, the executive director of the Ali Forney Center, a housing center in New York City for homeless gay youth, explained why he believes gay youth are sometimes ignored or overlooked in the wide spectrum of gay rights. Siciliano believes that a new generation of gay youth has risen up, different from past generations of gay men and women who were accustomed to coming out later in life.

Kids are coming out earlier than in previous generations, Siciliano said, and gay organizations are only now paying attention.

Older generations were accustomed to coming out later in life when they were out of their parent’s homes and able to support themselves. Today, kids who come out as young as 12 and are kicked out of their homes need the help of these gay organizations to survive.

“Just the concept of a gay organization protecting gay youth is new,” said Siciliano. “We need to set standards because some of the [programs for gay youth] that have come around are lacking and grossly substandard.”

NEXT PAGE:How are LGBT youth adapting?

The bill requires that incidents of bullying be reported by students, teachers, and volunteers. The details of the reporting procedures and punishments, however, would be defined by each school district.

House Republicans opposed the bill, saying that it set a precedent for expanding gay rights into state personnel laws, anti-discrimination laws and hate crimes statutes. They wanted the categories of vicims – like gay students – to be stripped out and replaced with a general bill that protected all students and defined the punishments for the bullies.

“Yesterday we talked about the need for this bill because these kids, these youths in school are doing vicious things,” said Rep. Tom Tillis, a Republican. “Vicious enough to convince somebody to take their life. Today we’re saying that’s not enough to mandate consequences.”

House Democrats said that the punishments, which included corporal punishment, were intended to derail the bill.

No changes were made to the bill, however, and House Democrats passed the bill 58-57. Six Democrats joined 51 Republicans in voting no.

The bill now needs the signature of Gov. Bev Perdue to become law. Only seven other states have identified gay students among potential targets for harassment.

Read the full Charlotte Observer story here.

Inside Illinois Schools: The Experiences of LGBT Students surveyed 206 Illinois students about the level of harassment they receive in school, how much they skip school for being harassed, and how their grades are affected by this harassment.

The report showed that 89 percent of Illinois LGBT students experienced verbal harassment based on sexual orientation in the past year, 43 percent said they had been physically harassed and 21 percent said they had been physically assaulted.

“While we applaud Illinois for being one of only 11 states to pass a law that explicitly protects students from bullying and harassment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity/expression, Inside Illinois Schools shows just how much work still needs to be done to make sure LGBT students in Illinois are safe in school,” GLSEN Executive Director Eliza Byard said. “GLSEN is hopeful Illinois will continue to address this pervasive problem.”

Read the rest of the GLSEN report here.

But their program was different; it focused on gender.

The nine-week program, partially funded by the Burlington School District, was held at Vermont’s Queer Youth Center and called “Gendertopia.”

Gay, lesbian and straight students discussed a wide range of topics, from the characters in the book and movie “Twilight,” to taking photos around the city that show the different ways gender is portrayed in popular culture.

“Most people come into it thinking, ‘Oh, there’s two genders and two sexualities’ … ,” said David Kingsbury, a 16-year-old junior at Burlington High School who signed up for the program. “People assume it’s boy and girl, but it’s so much more than that. There’s a whole world out there full of different genders.”

The program is among the first of its kind to be funded, in part, with tax dollars, said Christopher Neff, the executive director of Outright Vermont, the social service organization running Gendertopia.

Neither the program nor the school district’s participation triggered any objection. The tempered reaction locally to the program shows how far Outright Vermont and the issues it raises has moved into the main stream of youth social service organizations.

“It’s got queer in its name. It scares the heck out of people. It’s so important that people be able to see beyond any concerns or misconceptions that they have,” said Eliza Byard, the executive director of the New York-based Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network, which has 35 chapters across the country. “Outright Vermont is fulfilling its mission in the most wonderful way.”

The program was designed to help young people identify the subtle signals used to express gender and how not being aware of those signals can lower self esteem and possibly lead to an increase in at-risk activities like substance abuse or dropping out of school, Neff said.

“We often see a lot of homophobia or transphobia that happens on the basis of how someone looks,” Neff said. “If you are making fun of me because I am wearing a pink shirt and that’s sort of expressing my femininity, my feminine side, that translates into homophobia, but it has nothing to do with whether I’m straight or whether I’m dating boys or whether I’m dating girls. It has to do with the fact that I’m wearing a pink shirt.”

Neff said the significance of the program is more than the money and the relatively small number of young people who participate.

“It’s incredibly symbolic and very powerful,” he said. “I was incredibly proud to be associated with them and I thought this partnership, this very unique partnership, between a queer youth center and a school district to run a gender identity based program was a new national model.”

Burlington School Superintendent Jeanne Collins said no one has objected to the program.

“The district has been in the forefront on this topic for at least a decade, if not longer,” Collins said. “We are very sensitive to celebrating the differences in people and accepting people for who they are and what they bring to the table.”

She said a factor that helped keep the program non controversial was that it was voluntary.

“We have very robust after school program,” Collins said. “This is one of the options for the students who are interested. They get a lot out of it that will help them be much more inclusive and accepting of differences in their own future, which can only help them be successful.”

Steve Cable, of Rutland the founder of Vermont Renewal, an organization that promotes what he calls traditional family values, said he wasn’t familiar with “Gendertopia,” but he knew Outright Vermont. He said he was supportive of the group’s anti-bullying efforts, but not what he said was its focus on adolescent sexuality.

“It just makes me really nervous that sexuality and these very complicated social behaviors are being normalized and talked about with kids who haven’t figured out even their life yet,” Cable said. “I know that Outright Vermont promotes all gender identities and expression of gender identities, no matter how weird that might be.”

In 2000, Vermont was the first state that passed civil unions for same-sex couples and earlier this year was the first to pass gay marriage without being required to do so by the courts. It’s also in the forefront with laws to protect gender identity and sexual orientation.

Outright Vermont describes itself as “one of the longest standing queer organizations in Vermont” and the only one focused on young people. Neff said that for years his organization has done anti-bullying presentations related to sexual orientation and gender identity in schools across the state. He said the presentations have been universally well received.

Byard said a number of national organizations have programs for girls that help them deal with the pressures that can lead to eating disorders or pressures that girls feel to be thin or beautiful.

“Now it’s only relatively recently that there has been real focus on the damaging effect of these same expectations on young men,” Byard said.

About 40 students signed up for the program, Neff said, and about 12 attended the weekly program. Sometimes the group watched a movie or had food. Much of the discussion was led by the students themselves, and it wasn’t just for gay and lesbian students.

“I’m straight, but I don’t like using that word because then it feels like if you’re gay then you’re crooked, you’re not meant to grow up in a certain way,” Sophia Manzi, 15, a Burlington high school freshman, said during this year’s final “Gendertopia” meeting. “I come because it’s a really good program. The people, it doesn’t matter what sexual orientation you are, they totally come in with open arms.”

Neff said “Gendertopia” wasn’t about sexuality or who people are attracted to.

“We’re really clear that gender and gender identify is separate from sexual orientation,” Neff said. “Hugh Grant and Russell Crowe have the same sex, they’re both male and they’re both heterosexual. But they have very different gender presentations. One is sort of seen as much more masculine than the other.”

Burlington High School After school Coordinator Amy Mills said no decision had been made yet on whether to run Gendertopia again in the fall, but she’d like to.

“I think it worked well,” Mills said. “They seem to have a lot of fun.”

The House Education Committee approved the measure Thursday over the opposition of conservative lawmakers who claimed it would special status to gays.  The bill now moves to the House Judiciary committee before going to the floor of the House for a vote.

It passed the Senate on May 6. A similar bill died in the legislature last year.

The legislation covers race, religion, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity. It would require any school employee who witnesses or knows of harassment or bullying to report the incidents to school officials.

North Carolina’s two Roman Catholic bishops have denounced the bill as a prelude to legalizing same-sex marriage.

The Christian Action League of North Carolina this month urged its members to call or send e-mail to lawmakers telling them to vote against the measure.  And the Family Policy Council of North Carolina said that if the bill passed it would lead to the expansion of the state’s hate crime law and anti-discrimination laws to cover gays.

But supporters of the bill pointed to a growing number of students in other states who were bullied because fellow students thought they were gay.

There have been at least four suicides of middle-school aged children linked to homophobic bullying according to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

Carl Walker-Hoover, an 11-year-old from Springfield, Mass., took his life April 6 after enduring constant bullying at school, including anti-LGBT attacks. Carl did not identify as gay, his family said.

Also last month, the parents of a Mentor, Ohio, high school student filed a federal lawsuit in connection with their son’s suicide. Eric Mohat, 17, went home from school on March 27, 2007, put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

In a federal lawsuit, his parents allege that he regularly “was called ‘gay,’ ‘fag,’ ‘queer’ and ‘homo’ among other names” and that the school did nothing to prevent it.

A 2007 study by GLSEN of more than 6,000 LGBT students found that nearly nine out of 10 LGBT youth reported being verbally harassed at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation, nearly half reported being physically harassed and about a quarter reported being physically assaulted.

The provision was added by the state House last week and LGBT groups say it sends a dire message to gay teens.

“The message this sends gay kids is, we’re not worthy, we don’t count – it makes them feel like second-class citizens, and isolated,” said Columbia, S.C. PFLAG founder Harriet Hancock to the Associated Press. “It gives our beautiful state another black eye.”

Some members of the House also criticized the exclusion. Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter (D) said the intent of the bill was hijacked homophobia.

“South Carolina has reiterated the myths and misconceptions people have about sexual assault,” said Cobb-Hunter, adding that domestic violence has nothing to do with sex or orientation, but control and domination. 

The measure requires school districts to create dating violence prevention policies for sixth- through 12th-graders and print the policies in school handbooks or Web sites by the summer of 2010.

Supporters of  the provision excluding same-sex teen relationships say they want to preserve South Carolina’s “moral values.”

“Same-sex dating is not traditional,” said Rep. Greg Delleney (R), a sponsor of the amendment. “Those groups want to destroy traditional values,”  he said.

The bill, with the contentious amendment, is now before the Senate.

Protestors urged senators to strike out the amendment and return the bill to the House.  But, there is little chance of the Senate taking up the bill. The current session ends on Thursday.

The Safe Schools Improvement Act was filed in the House by Reps  Linda Sanchez (D-CA), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY).

It would amend the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act – part of the No Child Left Behind Act – to require schools and districts receiving federal funds to adopt codes of conduct specifically prohibiting bullying and harassment, including on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as race and religion.  It would require states to include bullying and harassment data in their state-wide needs assessments reporting.

Current federal law provides important federal support to promote school safety, but does not comprehensively and expressly focus on issues of bullying or harassment.

The legislation is supported by LGBT rights groups.

“Tragically, last month alone, two eleven-year-old boys, Carl Joseph Walker Hoover and Jaheem Herrera, took their own lives after suffering bullying by classmates who perceived them to be gay. Their deaths remind us of the true costs of anti-LGBT school bullying and harassment to our families and communities,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese.

“We place our children in grave danger when we fail to adequately help school administrators and teachers create safe learning environments for all students, including those who are, or are perceived to be, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender,” Solmonese said in a statement.

“Bullying is a serious public health crisis that affects countless young people every day in America’s schools. The recent suicides by two young boys who experienced constant bullying at school are a tragic reminder that more needs to be done to address the problem,” said Eliza Byard, director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

Bullying and harassment of students who are or are perceived to be LGBT is widespread, studies have shown.

In the 2007 National School Climate Survey conducted by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, nearly three-fifths of students reported feeling unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation, and more than a third felt unsafe because of their gender expression.

In addition, 44 percent of LGBT students surveyed reported experiencing physical harassment and 22 percent reported being physically assaulted at school in the last year.

Numerous education, health, law enforcement and youth development organizations support federal legislation to combat bullying and harassment, including the American Association of School Administrators, American Federation of Teachers, American School Health Association, National Association of School Psychologists, National Education Association and National Parent Teacher Association.

(Raleigh, North Carolina) An anti-bullying bill that includes LGBT students has been given final approval in the North Carolina Senate and now heads to the House. Supporters of the measure say they believe the measure has enough support to pass.

A similar bill died in the legislature last year.

The legislation covers race, religion, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity. It would require any school employee who witnesses or knows of harassment or bullying to report the incidents to school officials.

The bill received final approval without debate.  On Tuesday, it gained preliminary approval with a 25-22 vote following impassioned arguments on both sides.

The inclusion of sexuality and gender identity was strongly opposed by conservative lawmakers and activist groups.

North Carolina’s two Roman Catholic bishops denounced the bill as a prelude to legalizing same-sex marriage. The Christian Action League of North Carolina urged its members to call or send e-mail to their senators telling them to vote against the measure.  And the Family Policy Council of North Carolina said that if the bill passed it would lead to the expansion of the state’s hate crime law and anti-discrimination laws to cover gays.

But supporters of the bill pointed to a growing number of students in other states who were bullied because fellow students thought they were gay.

There have been at least four suicide of middle-school aged children linked to homophobic bullying, according to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

Carl Walker-Hoover, an 11-year-old from Springfield, Mass., took his life April 6 after enduring constant bullying at school, including anti-LGBT attacks. Carl did not identify as gay.

Also last month, the parents of a Mentor, Ohio, high school student filed a federal lawsuit in connection with their son’s suicide.

Eric Mohat, 17, went home from school on March 27, 2007, put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. In a federal lawsuit, his parents allege that he regularly “was called ‘gay,’ ‘fag,’ ‘queer’ and ‘homo’ among other names” and that the school did nothing to prevent it.

A 2007 study by GLSEN of more than 6,000 LGBT students found that nearly nine out of 10 LGBT youth reported being verbally harassed at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation, nearly half reported being physically harassed and about a quarter reported being physically assaulted.