A banner for the Unbreakable Movement sits on the wall above Sarah Ball’s bed at her home on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013 in Spring Hill, Fla. Ball, a victim of cyber bullying during her high school years, founded the Unbreakable Movement, an anti-bullying group that started at her high school and appears to spreading throughout Florida.NASHVILLE – A first-of-its-kind state report finds 5,478 confirmed cases of bullying in Tennessee schools last year with 255 or 4.6 percent of them occurring in Hamilton County.
The Department of Education’s Bullying and Harassment Compliant Report, required under a 2012 law, says 7,555 cases were reported statewide during the 2012-13 school year with 72.51 percent of the bullying and harassment confirmed.
Tennessee’s public schools have more than 935,000 students.
Hamilton County schools, meanwhile, reported 345 cases with 255 of them confirmed. That’s less than 1 percent of the nearly 42,000 students during the last school year.
Legislative sponsors of the law called the report “very, very alarming” as well as “sad.”