KEARNY –
Worried that your child is being bullied by his/her peers on the internet?
Are you wondering as a parent how much control you can exert over your child’s computer/phone?
Then you probably don’t want to miss a presentation on cyber safety geared strictly for parents on Tuesday, Nov. 15, at 6:30 p.m. in the auditorium at Kearny High School.
The panelist will be Tom Rich, a cyber-safety expert for STOPit, which its website describes as a technology company that provides a platform “that mitigates, deters and controls inappropriate conduct and provides organizational transparency.”
Rich, a police sergeant with the Summit Police Department, has served with the SPD for the past 18 years. He has presented to more than 1 million people nationwide and has appeared as a cyber safety expert on CNN, Good Morning America and Fox 5.
The Kearny program, which will also be tailored for two KHS student audiences during the afternoon on Nov. 15, is the brainchild of Denise Pais-Sotelo, the local district’s supervisor of health and physical education and anti-bullying specialist.
As the parent of two children, ages 8 and 4, an 18-year Kearny educator and longtime Kearny Recreation girls’ softball coach, Pais-Sotelo is naturally attuned to such concerns.
“We’ve been researching different programs on cyber safety,” Pais-Sotelo told The Observer, and, to that end, reached out to the Hudson County Consortium on Social & Emotional Character Development program for suggestions and all sources pointed to Rich, she said.
Rich was also a known quantity to KHS Principal Jacalyn Richardson who had hosted an appearance by the officer during her prior service as principal of Boonton High School in Morris County.
“As far as I know, we’re the first school in Hudson County to use his services,” Pais-Sotelo said.
She said the $3,000 fee for Rich’s presentations will be paid from a KHS account dealing with “assembly-based” programs which “aids in our training and educational responsibilities for students and staff in relation to the Anti-bullying Bill of Rights (ABR) Act. Each year we conduct a school self-assessment to evaluate the implementation of ABR with this being a core element of assessment for the state.”
Pais-Sotelo’s expectations are that, as someone intimately familiar with how juveniles tend to use social media to interact, Rich will be able to explain “what parents need to be aware of” when it comes to kids and cyber expression.
At the same time, she said, the officer figures to reach out to the Kearny student population to suggest “the skills they need to be safe when using social media and the ramifications for misusing it.”
Pais-Sotelo said the evening program is open not just to parents and/or guardians but also to the general public. “I believe it’s something worth coming out to hear,” she said.
Asked how Kearny schools have been dealing with periodic bullying complaints as they come up during the school year, Pais-Sotelo said that “the majority of our cases are based on social media” and in trying to come up with ways to combat inappropriate cyber behavior, “we believe that sometimes giving consequences is not enough to disrupt that pattern.”
Ideally, she said, it would probably serve both students and parents equally well if both were open to constructive discussions of things like “photo-sharing” on the internet and “how kids can talk to a trusted adult” about a cyber-related issue.
And, she added, parents who are paying for their children’s phones and/or computers probably should not have qualms about establishing “parental controls over settings” on such things as video games and the internet.
