The State Isn't Asking If You Got It Right (It's Asking If You Followed Your Plan)

When I was an administrator, I knew the bullying requirements. I knew the definition, the investigation steps, who had to be notified, and that a safety plan had to be part of the response. What worried me was never knowing the rules. It was keeping track of all of them at once, in the middle of a highly charged situation, with an upset family on the phone and the rest of the building still needing me.

I suspect most administrators reading this know that feeling. A report released this spring put numbers on it.

What the report found

Students at Northeastern University School of Law, working with Massachusetts Advocates for Children, a nonprofit legal advocacy group that pushed for the law, looked at how Massachusetts' anti-bullying law (M.G.L. c.71 §37O) is working sixteen years after it passed. The law requires every district to adopt a Bullying Prevention and Intervention Plan: a written plan for how the district will prevent bullying, and how staff will report it, investigate it, notify families, and keep the targeted student safe.

Part of the report was a review of 42 decisions from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), the state's education agency. DESE's Problem Resolution System handles complaints from families who believe a district didn't follow the law. Each of these 42 was a family's complaint that a district had mishandled a bullying situation, decided between July 2024 and March 2025.

In 39 of the 42, DESE found the district out of compliance with the law or its regulations at least once.

That number is striking on its own. The part that stuck with me most, though, was what DESE was measuring.

Your plan is the rubric

When a bullying complaint reaches DESE, the state generally does not decide whether bullying happened. In its own words, the Department "does not ordinarily substitute its judgment for that of the district" on that question. It looks at something narrower: whether the district followed state requirements and its own Bullying Prevention and Intervention Plan.

In other words, the plan your district wrote becomes the standard you are graded against.

The report shows what that looks like in practice. One district's plan required principals to start an investigation within 15 school days of a complaint, and DESE held that district to 15 school days. When a plan names no timeline at all, DESE uses its own judgment about what "promptly" means. In one case, it found a district out of compliance for starting an investigation 13 days after a report.

The plan has to be current, too. The law requires districts to update it at least every two years. Twelve of the 42 decisions found plans that had not been updated on time. Several dated to 2017 or 2018, and one had not been revised since 2014.

For superintendents and school committees (what Massachusetts calls school boards), this changes how to think about the plan. It is the checklist the state will pull out when a family says your district got it wrong, and it deserves the attention that role implies.

If you lead schools outside Massachusetts, the details will differ. Every state now has an anti-bullying law, and most require districts to adopt their own policy. The question still applies: if someone reviewed how your district handled a bullying complaint, what would they measure it against? Most likely, the policy your district adopted.

Where districts fell short

The most common problem, in 20 of the 42 decisions, was that a formal bullying investigation was never opened.

That does not mean nothing happened. In several cases the school responded. One added safety measures for the student. Another offered mediation between the two students. But because neither treated the situation as a bullying investigation, the response did not meet the plan's requirements, and DESE found the district out of compliance.

A few other patterns came up more than once:

• The parent didn't want a formal investigation. Districts still have to open one once they are notified. A family's preference does not remove the obligation.
• The report came in the "wrong" way. One parent sent several emails describing repeated targeting and asked for an investigation. The school told her to file on its website form and waited. The law requires clear ways to report, but it does not say a report has to take a particular form.
• Safety waited for the label. Ten decisions found schools had not done enough to keep the targeted student safe. In seven of them, the reason was that the school never recognized the behavior as bullying, so the safety assessment never started. In one case the safety plan came five weeks after the complaint.
• Investigations started late. Nine decisions found the investigation itself began too late.

Reading these, I don't see administrators who didn't care. I see people who responded the way that made sense in the moment, and a process that didn't catch the step they missed.

Why good administrators still miss steps

The plan is written at the district level. It is carried out in a building, usually by a principal or assistant principal, often on the same day the report comes in.

In that moment, the administrator is holding a lot at once. Does this meet the definition? When does the investigation have to start? Which families need to hear what, and when? Does the targeted student need a safety plan today? Does either student have an IEP or 504 plan that changes how the interviews should go? And is all of it being written down in a way someone could follow six months from now?

The report found that schools often fail to open investigations partly because staff don't share a clear understanding of what counts as bullying. That matches what I remember. The rules were never the hard part. Applying them in heated situations that are often more gray than black and white was.

Add turnover to that. A newer assistant principal may be handling their first bullying complaint using a plan they have read once, during a week when everything else is also urgent. The plan can be complete and current, and the response can still miss a step, because nothing between the plan and the person doing the work makes sure each step happens.

Check your plan this week

If the state reviewed one of your bullying cases tomorrow, it would start with your plan. Here are six questions worth asking now, wherever your district is:

1. 1Does the plan put a number on "promptly"? If it sets timelines for starting the investigation and notifying families, you know the standard. If it doesn't, whoever reviews the complaint will decide for you, after the fact.
2. 2When was it last updated? Massachusetts requires an update at least every two years; check what your state requires. Then check the date on the version posted on your website.
3. 3What does it say when a parent doesn't want a formal investigation? In Massachusetts, the obligation to investigate still applies. Wherever you are, staff should know what your plan requires in that moment.
4. 4Does it accept reports however they arrive? An email, a phone call, or a conversation at pickup should start the process, without waiting for a form.
5. 5Does safety planning start at the report? The plan should make clear that assessing the targeted student's safety doesn't wait for a finding.
6. 6Could you show it was followed? Pull your last few bullying cases. For each step the plan requires, could someone outside the building find the date it happened and who did it?

The last question matters most. A strong plan protects students only if the work follows it, and the record shows it did.

Closing the distance between the plan and the work

That distance between a district's plan and what happens in the building is why I built IncidentMethod. It walks the administrator through each step of a bullying investigation as it happens, from the report through the finding and the required notices to both families, and keeps a timestamped record of each one. The plan stops being something you hope people remember and becomes the steps they follow.

If you're a superintendent or school board member thinking about how your district would answer that sixth question, I'd welcome the conversation.

Sources

• Northeastern University School of Law and Massachusetts Advocates for Children, bullying report (final draft, March 15, 2026)
• GBH News, Dozens of school districts failing to investigate bullying complaints, report finds (March 31, 2026)