All schools will have to put anti-bullying policies in place and report harassment to the state, under a bill passed last week by the state Senate.

But the Kenosha Unified School District already has such policies and much of the information is already reported to the Department of Public Instruction.

“We have a lot of this already in place, and I would suspect most districts are already on top of this,” said Joe Kucak, the district’s student services administrator. “We do have a harassment policy that covers fighting and name calling; it’s just incorporated in a variety of different ways, so we’re already on this.”

Sen. Neal Kedzie, R-Elkhorn, wrote the bill and was pleased to see it passed, he said, since he’s worked on it since 2005.

“It’s an ever-growing problem for school districts, and there’s a fair amount of confusion as to where the responsibility lies,” he said. “Some schools don’t know where to start, so they have an opportunity to draw from a boiler-plate program created by the state, or they can come up with their own.”

Kedzie said he became concerned about the issue after one of his own children had an issue with a bully and after constituents reported that bullying had pushed their children to suicide.

“It’s not just physical bullying,” he said. “It becomes cyber bullying.... There’s a wide array of this stuff that just goes unchecked, and we can’t let it become widespread throughout society.

“What happens is these perpetrators look for an Achilles’ heel, and they’ll prey on whatever weakness they can find,” he added. “They attack it, and there are a lot of kids out there who can’t handle it emotionally, and can’t handle it physically.

“This isn’t just shoving some kid in the lunch line. It becomes sophisticated, with texting and the Internet. Bullies grow up and become future criminals. We need to influence behavior of our children at a young age so they can become productive citizens.”

Kucak said schools already teach children how to avoid bullying and to report harassment to adults. He said the district already compiles a wde range of data, including students who are referred to discipline boards, out-of-school suspensions or have truancy issues, so it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to include a report on bullying.

Pam Stevens, School Board president, said the board would most likely adopt a policy that complies with the state, though there is already a zero-tolerance policy in place.

“If this passes, obviously we would update our policy,” she said. “I would want to make sure what is compiled and sent to the state makes a difference.... I don’t want to create something that’s just going to take more paperwork and cost taxpayers.”