Community Education

Peninsula School District calls out ‘slurs’ in fight against harassment, intimidation and bullying 

“Slurs,” a new category that calls discriminatory language what it is, teased out 92 incidents of the pernicious behavior in Peninsula School District during the 2025-26 school year.

The district trained all staff on how to quickly and decisively shut down hate speech. And some principals have noticed a more positive culture in their schools.

Staff leading the district’s ongoing fight against harassment, intimidation and bullying reported these wins during a school board study session on Sept. 22. PSD did not record the meeting and the group’s report will not come before the board in a regular session, according to Chief of Schools Michael Farmer.

The report answered questions raised by the school board after a systemwide audit that began in 2024 and recommendations from a HIB task force in April 2025.

Needs improvement

In the “needs improvement” category: Students get inconsistent exposure to “social emotional learning,” a broad range of topics that address mental and physical wellness, conflict resolution and social norms that foster a civil school environment. Competing instructional demands often erode time for SEL at the high school level, the group’s report said.

Only 42 percent of students surveyed in 2026 said their school “engages in difficult conversations about race, gender, oppression and discrimination.”

And students may still be reluctant to report unwanted or threatening behavior because of the lingering perception — despite staff efforts — that “nothing will get done,” according to Gig Harbor High School Principal Bob Marshall. 

Students can report an incident or concern by telling a trusted adult or emailing the district at [email protected]. They can also report anonymously at HearMeWA.org.  

Who’s leading the charge?

The school board asked: “Is the task force still active, and if not, how will its recommendations be carried forward?”

The Bullying Action and Prevention Task Force, formed in 2024, no longer meets. An Equity Diversity and Inclusion staff team meets monthly with school leaders and is implementing task force recommendations.

The EDI team includes one representative per school. Its goal is to ensure consistent staff training and approaches to address HIB across schools and grade levels, said Julie Schultz-Bartlett, assistant chief of schools.

The EDI team is compiling a “tool bank” for staff to address HIB incidents. The team is identifying “recurring systemic needs across buildings.” The group “serves as the central hub for inclusion and belonging strategy.”

In addition, the superintendent and athletic director host student groups that provide feedback on multiple issues, including HIB. The district is considering how to involve parents and community members in the anti-HIB initiative, Schultz-Bartlett said.

Consistent practices

The school board asked: “What was done during 2025-26 to improve consistency in HIB practices across schools?”

Beginning in August 2025, the district trained principals to recognize HIB and report it using accurate, consistent data and common terminology, the report says. That training continues. In addition, the district adopted the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Responding to Hate and Bias at School” as a framework for  staff.

Schultz-Bartlett said previous discipline data had just one “bucket” for all types of harassing behavior.

“When we really dug into that, what we saw repeatedly was that discriminatory harassment or slurs were the No. 1 type of offense that was getting buried, but we didn’t have a category to put that in that would help to name it,” she said.

The new “slur” category, added in the 2025-26 school year, created a baseline for harassing language throughout the district.

The HIB report cited increased reporting and documented consequences across all buildings as evidence of progress. The district needs to continue monitoring building-to-building consistency, it said.

Stopping slurs

The district’s Student and Parent Handbook defines “slurs” as any form of speech — verbal or written — that makes reference to “real or perceived ethnicity, national origin, immigrant status, religious belief, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, political affiliation, manner of speech, or any other physical or cultural characteristics.”

Examples of slur speech include “epithets, threats, verbal abuse, use of profanity or derogatory comments, including spreading rumors, jokes, notes, stories, graffiti, drawings, pictures or gestures.”

The SPLC recommends a three-step response to hate speech. The report advised staff to follow this process.

• Stop: Interrupt the behavior immediately. Do not let it pass. 

• Name: Identify what was said specifically and why it is harmful. 

• Respond: Offer calm, firm redirection toward respect and belonging. 

Staff should put a hard stop on slurs by saying something like, “Those words hurt and anger a lot of people. We don’t use them here.” 

The district does not track cyberbullying as a standalone category and struggles with managing conflicts that arise or persist online, Schultz-Bartlett said.

Barriers to reporting HIB

PSD defines HIB as behavior that physically harms a student or their property; substantially interferes with their education; or is so persistent or severe it creates a threatening environment for other students.

Marshall, the Gig Harbor High School principal, said the district still struggles with getting students to report incidents that may or may not rise to the level of harassment, intimidation or bullying. Different discipline for different levels of offense and student privacy laws can create the perception that nothing came of a report, Marshall said.

“One of the things that we struggle with at the high school level is a misnomer that nothing will happen, so I don’t report,” Marshall said. “We have a lot of students that refuse to report because they believe nothing will happen, and part of it is because of maybe inconsistencies in the past.”

Marshall said his school climate has improved because of efforts to promote inclusiveness and individual respect for each student, but change is gradual.

Kim Kinney, assistant principal at Key Peninsula Middle School, said that having a clear definition of discriminatory language “is very powerful and meaningful to students who’ve been targeted.” She has noticed an increase in reporting and a more positive climate at her school. 

The district is working to implement restorative justice practices, according to the report.

Supporting teachers

Elementary and middle schools schedule time for Social Emotional Learning, part of the district’s effort to stop HIB. High schools, however, teach SEL in homeroom (or advisory) along with a boatload of other topics and tasks.

Not only do teachers have limited time for SEL, some are more adept than others at talking about sensitive or difficult topics, Marshall said.

“That is something that we are struggling with, too, at the high school level, is that comfort level of, ‘I don’t like this topic, and I don’t really know how to communicate this topic.’ So, there’s been a lot of emphasis on training and trying to help support staff and understanding how they need to be involved in that process,” Marshall said.

Teachers’ varying levels of comfort and skill result in students getting uneven results from SEL, he said.

Student representatives at the study session confirmed that the effectiveness of SEL depends on the teacher. One said her teacher skimmed over talking about Suicide Prevention Month (September) to give students more time to complete homework.

Schultz-Bartlett said Henderson Bay, which carves out time daily for social emotional topics, is the only high school in the district that teaches SEL with “full fidelity.” The district needs to work on embedding SEL in lessons throughout the curriculum, she said.

Survey results

The district gives a yearly school climate survey to students, staff and families. The Center for Educational Effectiveness (CEE) Survey, which a number of other districts also use, was given in March.

James Cantonwine, director of research and assessment, presented student survey results that showed improvement in some areas and stagnation in others. For example, under the category “Belonging and Identity,” 86 percent of students in grades 4 through 12 said they “feel good about my cultural or ethnic background,” a 5 percent increase over 2025.

The number of students who said they feel safe at school increased from 68 percent in 2025 to 77 percent in 2026.

Only 42 percent said the district “engages in difficult conversations about race, gender, oppression and discrimination,” however, down from 45 percent in 2025. Just 43 percent in 2026 agreed “most students are respectful of others at this school,” compared to 42 percent in 2025.

Whatever happened to DEI?

Peninsula School District no longer uses the term “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” for initiatives aimed at making the district safer and more welcoming to all, including people in historically marginalized groups. The shift took place in 2021, when debates over race were at a peak.

The district, in policies and documents like student handbooks, shows a commitment to all three of those terms. But it doesn’t use the initials “DEI”together. Instead, it’s “EDI,” Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.”

Gig Harbor Now asked Farmer, who is heading up the anti-HIB work, “Why not just say DEI? Is the district trying to fly under federal anti-DEI radar?” Farmer side-stepped the question and answered, “Equity, diversity and inclusion align with our strategic plan and reflect goals around learning, environment and student belonging.”