Texting and Twitter, Facebook and the phone: It's clear the face of bullying in schools across the country is changing.
"There are ways that you can bully now with today's technology that you couldn't do in the past," said Ohio Sen. Joe Schiavoni, D-Canfield.
For the past year, Schiavoni has been working on a bill that would update bullying laws already in place in Ohio schools.
House Bill 116 now will require every school in Ohio to adopt its own cyber-bullying policy. Teachers will be trained, students will be taught and parents now will be held more responsible for monitoring their kids' electronic activities.
Gov. John Kasich signed H.B. 116 into law on Thursday.
Local legislators said the bill will now do exactly what they wanted it to: Increase awareness, especially for parents.
"Sometimes they don't understand what's going on in their kids' computers and so that we can just stop this, to give kids every opportunity to learn in school rather than have to deal with all the negative things that come with going to school," Schiavoni said.
Administrators at Warren City Schools re-implemented their bullying policies just last month.
"Any instance of any bullying or suspected bullying is reported to an adult. The adults then have kind of an order of the way things are handled," said Aaron Schwab, communications coordinator for Warren City Schools.
Guidance counselors investigate each instance and keep every report of bullying, whether it's verbal, physical, or done electronically.
Those at Warren City Schools say these new guidelines won't change anything they aren't already doing.
"We have everything in place right now, we're right in line with what the state is going to be requiring, so we're ahead of the game there," Schwab said.
