Queen Anne’s County Public Schools Host Inaugural Unity Day Event

Posted: 3/5/2019

Queen Anne's County Public Schools hosted its inaugural Unity Day event on Wednesday, Oct. 9. During the day Ravens cheerleaders, super fans and Looney Tunes Characters visited each school to promote bullying prevention. At the start of the school day every student and school employee was given a "Bullying stops with me" T-shirt to help spread the message – about 10,000 shirts! The goal was to have all school employees demonstrate their commitment to bullying prevention to their students. The purchase of these shirts was made possible by the generous support of parents, community members and local businesses. Linda Austin, community member and owner of Rita's, was the force behind providing over 10,000 t-shirts for the students and staff of Queen Anne's County. She and her co-chair for the event Stephanie Jarrel from the Queen Anne's County Sheriff's office worked tirelessly to make the event successful.

Also during the day each elementary school revealed a Friendship Bench, a bench for those to sit on if they ever feel left out. After the students get into their new shirts, students from each school will be taken out to fields on school property and spell out “no bullying.” Visitors to county schools included Baltimore Ravens cheerleaders, Captain Dee-Fense, The Oriole Bird and various Looney Tunes characters from Six Flags.

The efforts of Queen Anne’s County aren’t limited to October 9th. District and school administrators have developed a plan to extend the Olweus bullying prevention program from the few schools it’s in now to every school in the county by 2014. Supervisor of Student Services Brad Engel also reached out to community members to create a committee to work in conjunction with the schools to prevent bullying.

For Engel, bullying is a personal issue. During his teen years he was a target of bullying and as a father; he has seen his own son go through the same thing. “I can tell you that there are a lot of parents all across the country who have had many a sleepless night worrying about their children becoming targets of bullying. We can greatly reduce the number of bullying incidents in our schools. I know we can…I have talked to many of our staff members and they feel just like I do. They want to make sure that every child in Queen Anne’s County is able to walk into their school each day with their heads held high and that all children in the Queen Anne’s County school system are treated with dignity and respect. We won’t rest until that goal is achieved.”