Based on this letter, it appears that bullying is beginning to get the attention it needs.  Let's all pull together.  Following is the content of the letter

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

OFFICE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS

October 26, 2010

Dear Colleague:

It's not often to find a child brave enough to speak out about being bullied. If they talk, they take the risk that the bullying could escalate. But one local teen and his mother said there's too much at stake to ignore the growing problem.

Bryan Patrick Sands, an eighth-grader, said he's been bullied since he first went to Follansbee Middle School and now it's too much to handle.

"Since fifth grade, they've thrown rocks at my head and shoved my head in the fence," Sands said. "Someone's going to kill me or something. I feel like they're really trying to hurt me or something."

Still reeling from gay student Tyler Clementi’s fatal plunge off the George Washington Bridge, New Jersey legislators this week proposed the toughest law against bullying in the nation. The Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights is society’s strongest message yet that schools are expected to pay close attention to the social relationships of students, an idea that took hold after the 1999 Columbine shootings.

The “Lord of the Flies” model is out. Enough child suicides have shown that students cannot be left to their own cruel devices. Without monitoring or consequences attached, school bullying policies often went unenforced. This new bill goes much further, pledging to discipline teachers and administrators if they indulge or ignore student bullies.

The bad news: half of all high school students, regardless of gender or type of school, say they have bullied someone in the past year, and 47% of students say they have been bullied in a way that seriously upset them. The good news: overall rates of bullying are down from 2008, according to the Josephson Institute's comprehensive Ethics of American Youth survey.