Hazing and anti-bullying policies will be the focus of a special school board meeting in Lehighton Area School District at 7 p.m. Wednesday.

Board President Larry Stern called the meeting, to be held virtually, at the request of several directors, namely David Bradley, who sent multiple emails on the issue over the past week.

“We called for a meeting on student safety and bullying to seek input on protecting the students, fix our hazing policy and adjust the means to which the board can be engaged by stakeholders on the topic,” Bradley said in a YouTube video posted late Sunday night.

Speaking last week on the topic of staff training, Lehighton Superintendent Jonathan Cleaver said social and emotional learning programs have become a focal point for the district. Social and emotional learning includes skills that are necessary to help students manage their emotions, work with others, and set goals.

“There is also a de-escalation training program done through intermediate unit,” Cleaver said.

Three items are listed on the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting, including:

• Create a districtwide suggestion box by entering into a rental agreement with the United States Postal Service for a P.O. Box in Palmerton.

• Assign a director to manage the suggestion box.

• Instruct the district’s policy committee to seek stakeholder input, review policy and make recommendations to update policy 247 and 249, which deal with hazing and anti-bullying. October’s policy committee meeting is scheduled for Oct. 6 at 6:45 p.m.

In his video, Bradley cites statistics from the 2019-20 Safe Schools Report, for which each district is required to complete data and submit to the Pennsylvania Department of Education on an annual basis.

“When you look at that, our district has all 22 arrests reported across Carbon County school districts for that year,” Bradley said. “Lehighton also has 69 of the 89 incidents reported in the county that required law enforcement involvement. This report should have went through board oversight and it did not.”