Community Conversation Grant To Create A Discussion On Bullying

By Eliza Hallabeck

Members of the Newtown public school system applied for a grant awhile ago, and now the $2,500 grant will be creating a community conversation about bullying.

The William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund has been giving money to communities in the state for 11 years to help them further educational topics among the community.

“What it does is it allows communities to pick something of their own concern, something that is important and specific to their own community,” said Newtown Public School Health Coordinator Judy Blanchard. “Then to open it up so that the entire community will join together and have a conversation.”

Ms Blanchard said the communications are led by the schools, but they consider issues that affect far more than the schools. Bullying was chosen as the topic for the community conversation that will be opened in Newtown.

The conversation started with a planning committee that met in October and had 20 members on it.

“The task of the planning committee is in charge of planning the event, all of the details,” said Ms Blanchard, “but also for each of those 20 planning people to invite five other people, also diverse community members.”

Ms Blanchard said the hope is to get roughly 100 representatives of the community to participate in the further meetings about bullying.

The date has not yet been set for the first full meeting, but it will consist of a breakfast, lunch, and everyone will be broken into groups.

“We’re going to train moderators and recorders,” said Ms Blanchard. “Each group is going to have a more in-depth discussion on bullying and mean behaviors.”

After the smaller groups discuss the topic they will come back to the larger group to discuss what they agreed on, and after that another meeting will be held on a separate day.

“Everyone who cares to then comes back and really set some action plans up,” said Ms Blanchard, “and really improve how we can lessen bullying behaviors and meanness.”

She said Assistant Superintendent Linda Gejda, who was unavailable for comment before this edition of The Bee went to press, came from a district where they had been awarded a William Caspar Memorial Fund grant before.

“So when she saw this and realized Newtown hadn’t done this, she got [Reed Intermediate School Assistant Principal] Tony Salvatore and myself together to put together the grant,” said Ms Blanchard. She also said that the award followed.

Most of the money from the fund will go toward mailing invitations, paying for food at the meetings, and paying for things like babysitting at the meetings, Ms Blanchard said.

The details are still being worked on, according to Ms Blanchard.

“What you’re looking for from this conversation is to find out how the community perceives the issue,” she said, “because we as a school have identified bullying and mean behaviors. As a community, you want to get that conversation going, what do they think about it and what ideas do they have?”

Eventually, Ms Blanchard said, the community conversations will lead to action plans that can be followed.

“Although it is called a community conversation, is really is action oriented.”

She said more than 100 people have already been suggested to take part in the conversation.

“I’ve been in the community a long time, so I know a lot of the people who are on the invitation list,” said Ms Blanchard. “I think it’s going to be a lot of fun in addition to really making some positive changes in the community.”

She said the ideal is to have a high level of community involvement.