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Set to strike Nanaimo teachers voting on whether to escalate job action. PAGE 7 Readers alerted Events raise awareness about ‘challenged’ material. PAGE 18 Legends live Singers bring country music acts back to life at Port Theatre. PAGE 3
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VOL. 23, NO. 131
New online resource offers help on bullying
Bowen Road project gearing up for spring BY TOBY GORMAN THE NEWS BULLETIN
BY JENN McGARRIGLE THE NEWS BULLETIN
A new website will put tools to combat bullying at students’ fingertips. Nanaimo school district, with the RCMP and the Vancouver Island Crisis Line, unveiled the Teens Networking Together web and mobile phone site Tuesday, to coincide with Anti-Bullying Day Wednesday. The site, dubbed TNT, provides students with an avenue to report bullying incidents against themselves or other students – anonymously if they choose – educates them about what bullying is and includes links to 24/7 support if they are feeling scared, worried or suicidal. “It’s a 21st-century approach,” said Bob Esliger, district principal of student support services. “Students have their mobile devices on them at all times. This gives them a vehicle to report where they’re comfortable.” Investigating ways students can report bullying anonymously was one of the recommendations from a 2010 review of the district’s suicide intervention and bullying prevention programs, which was launched after a 15-year-old boy killed himself that January. The idea for a site that enabled youth to
CHRIS BUSH/THE NEWS BULLETIN
Tom Piros, district’s safe schools coordinator, shows off Teens Networking Together posters that will be put up in school areas where bullying is most likely to occur. The poster design is the same as the TNT website home page students can visit if they need help or want to report bullying.
report bullying via their cellphones came from Tom Piros, the district’s safe schools coordinator, and he believes TNT is unique in western Canada. He said the vast majority of behaviour incidents referred to secondary principals have an Internet-based component to them. “Kids stage fights with texting,” said Piros. “Unfortunately, they often play out in schools because that’s where kids congregate. We want to give them ethical ways to report prior to the fight, prior to the swarm-
ing, prior to the harm.” The district believes the site will get used because students from three secondary schools gave the district feedback on the design, he said, and staff plan to enlist local businesses to offer student discounts on the site as an incentive for teens to visit regularly. Posters will be placed all over schools with a barcode at the bottom that students can scan with their phones to link them directly to TNT. ◆ See ‘DESIGN’ ‘ /4
Construction on Bowen Road and the Quarterway Bridge is entering the final stages after a winter hiatus. The $11.1-million project began in March 2011 and is expected to wrap up at the end of October. The 12-metre bridge, the trigger for the entire project, is being replaced with an 18-metre span that will sit more than a metre higher than its predecessor to accommodate for a 200-year flood plain over the Millstone River. An 800-metre stretch of Bowen Road is being converted to four lanes to better handle an estimated 16,000 vehicles that travel through the corridor daily, on par with pre-Nanaimo Parkway traffic congestion. Much of the utility work, including sewer and storm drain improvements, relocating hydro, cable and phone components has already been completed at a cost of $2.2 million. It’s the city’s most expensive and expansive road works project to date, and will provide better access for motorists and pedestrians travelling to or from downtown. Jan Mongard, project manager, said the meat of the work is replacement of the 65-year-old Quarterway Bridge, which is scheduled for mid-summer. Paving will kick off the return of construction in the next couple of weeks, followed by bridge demolition from May to June. Sidewalks and streetlights will be installed in September with final paving scheduled to end the project by Oct. 31. reporter2@nanaimobulletin.com