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By Tom Chorneau
Friday, January 25, 2013
Spurred perhaps by disturbing disclosures out of the school shooting incident in Taft earlier this month, the Bureau of State Audits has launched a review of how local educational agencies deal with on-campus bullying as well as state oversight.
The audit, which state schools chief Tom Torlakson announced to district administrators in a letter last week, comes in the wake of the Jan. 10 shooting at Taft Union High School where a student burst into a classroom with a shotgun and critically wounded another student.
The 16-year-old assailant has told authorities that he targeted classmates as retribution for being bullied for more than a year.
State auditors have been specifically tasked with looking at how the California Department of Education supports and monitors LEAs’ compliance with state laws and regulations that prohibit discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying.
There is an expectation that the review will also produce a set of best-practices for broader dissemination.
District administrators will be asked in the coming weeks to participate in a survey to help the auditors with information gathering. Torlakson has urged all LEAs to participate.
In addition to the shooting at Taft there have been a number of tragic incidents nationally in the recent past where