Goochland Middle School is taking on bullies.

The school has introduced a new prevention program and some new anti-bullying rules.

Students and staff kicked off the program October 8.

Assistant principal Christin Ciminelli said that although there is not a big bullying problem at GMS, the goal is to be “proactive rather than reactive.”

“You hear about it in the news,” said Ciminelli. “Kids don’t want to come to school, their grades drop, they get depressed.”

She recalls getting a phone call from a parent whose child didn’t want to come to school because of bullying.

“I want the kids to know that they have people to talk to,” said Ciminelli, who said she had been thinking about the problem even before she attended an anti-bullying conference in 2008.

After receiving information from School Superintendent Linda Underwood, Ciminelli applied for and received a $7,000 grant from VCU to start the program, which is based on the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, a widely used program that is a proven way to reduce bullying incidents, said Ciminelli.

Trainers came out to work with the faculty in October 2009.

And this year the school formed their Bullying Prevention Coordinating Committee composed of students, teachers and staff and community representatives to put the program into high gear.

The students promoted the October 8 assembly.

“We read bullying stories and made signs and posters,” said 6th grader Riley Powers, 11. “The posters had all the bullying rules on them and we went around waving them.”

The entire student body attended.

“We had a skit with the teachers to represent the bullying thing,” said seventh grader Andrew Harcum, 12.

Seventh grader Hunter Bailey, 12, played one of the bullies.

Bailey described their skit, where he badgered another actor for help on a test.

“I said if you don’t give me the answers to the test I’m going to beat you up after class,” said Bailey of his role.

“We tried to give examples of different kinds of bullying with the skits,” explained Ciminelli.

There are member ways students are pushed around, said Ciminelli, citing cyber bullying, physical bullying, verbal bullying, exclusion and gossip.

Using the skits and reading stories about kids who have been bullied, the committee members encouraged all students to adopt the following anti-bullying rules:

1. We will not bully others.

2. We will try to help students who are bullied.

3. We will try to include students who are left out.

4. If we know that somebody is being bullied, we will tell an adult at school and an adult at home.

There is some bullying going on at the school, said seventh grader Daric Clarke, 12. “Like little verbal stuff.”

But there’s also some confusion about bullying as opposed to teasing and horseplay.

“Bullying is a one-person thing against another person, and it’s a constant thing between those two people, where one person is being continually hurtful,” said Ciminelli.

Now that the program is started the committee will hold monthly meetings.

And there is a community component, with Brian Sniveley of the Goochland YMCA working with the committee.

“We’re using it in the middle school afterschool program,” he said.

Educating the students is an important first step, as they learn what is really bullying.

“At this point we are getting a lot of reports but not all of them are valid,” said Ciminelli.

The program will be fine-tuned as time goes and Ciminelli expects bullying to decrease.

“Now that the kids know we are watching them,” she said.