You already reported the bullying. The school knows about it. Then your child comes home and says it happened again.
At that point, do not simply repeat the original complaint or start the reporting process from the beginning.
If you have not made the first written report yet, start with our earlier guide: Your Child Is Being Bullied at School. What Should You Put in Writing and Who Do You Contact Next? It explains what to document, what to put in the first email, and who to contact.
If you have already done that and the behavior continues, document the new incident. Connect it to the first report. Send the update to the administrator who already has the complaint. Then ask a more specific question: What is being done now to keep my child safe while this is being addressed?
JCPS publishes several reporting and support routes for bullying concerns, including school staff, its online reporting system, the JCPS Compliance Hotline at 1 888 393 6780, and the district Bullying Prevention Department at 502 485 7527.
The second incident also may matter when deciding whether conduct meets Kentucky's legal definition of bullying. State law defines bullying as unwanted verbal, physical, or social behavior among students involving a real or perceived power imbalance that is repeated or has the potential to be repeated. The behavior must occur on school premises, on school sponsored transportation, or at a school sponsored event, or it must disrupt the education process.
So if the school already received one complaint and the behavior continues, treat what happened next as new evidence.
Document the new incident, not just the original problem
Suppose you emailed the school on Monday because your child said another student had repeatedly threatened them during lunch.
Thursday, it happens again.
Do not write only, “The bullying is still happening.”
Document Thursday.
Record the date, approximate time, location, what your child says happened, and the names of anyone who may have witnessed it. Save screenshots, messages, photographs, or other evidence that may be relevant.
Reference the date of your first report too.
If your child remembers specific words, write them down as accurately as you can rather than cleaning them up or summarizing them.
It also helps to separate what you personally know from what your child reported. A sentence such as “My child told me the following after school today” makes the record clearer than writing every detail as though you witnessed it yourself.
Then document what happened after your first complaint. Did the school interview your child? Did an administrator contact you? Was your child told to report future problems to a specific adult? Did the behavior stop for a few days and then start again?
If an administrator already has the complaint, do not start over with the teacher
The current 2026 to 2027 JCPS Student Support and Behavior Intervention Handbook gives families a numbered reporting sequence.
First, notify the classroom teacher. If the concern remains unresolved, escalate the matter to a school administrator. If further support is needed, contact the school counselor. The next steps are the district's online reporting system and the JCPS Compliance Hotline at 1 888 393 6780.
Another section of JCPS guidance gives parents a somewhat different route. For concerns involving a student's emotional or physical safety, it tells parents to contact the building principal when feasible and, if that is unsuccessful, contact the assistant superintendent supporting the school. It separately directs bullying and harassment concerns to the district hotline or online reporting system.
Those two district instructions are not identical.
For a parent whose complaint has already reached the principal or another administrator, the practical point is simple: do not keep restarting at the classroom teacher every time another incident occurs.
Send the new information to the administrator already handling the matter. If the problem remains unresolved, use the JCPS reporting system or Compliance Hotline so there is another district record of the concern. A parent can also ask that the issue be elevated to the assistant superintendent supporting the school.
The JCPS Bullying Prevention Department can be reached at 502 485 7527 or jcps.bullyingprevention@jefferson.kyschools.us. JCPS says the department monitors and distributes Tipline reports and can observe students, offer recommendations, and conference with students, staff, and parents.
Ask what will be different tomorrow
Parents sometimes focus on whether the other student was punished.
You may not be told that.
Federal student privacy rules generally limit a school's ability to disclose personally identifiable information about another student from education records.
Ask:
What immediate steps are being taken while this is investigated?
Which adult should my child go to if another incident happens?
Does supervision need to change during lunch, recess, class changes, the bus ride, or another location where this keeps happening?
How should my child report another incident during the school day?
What steps are being taken to protect my child from retaliation for reporting this?
When should I expect another update from the school?
A school may not be able to promise that two students will never cross paths. It should be able to explain how future incidents should be reported, what support is available to your child, and what adults are doing while the concern is being addressed.
If there may be camera footage, ask quickly
If the incident happened on a bus, in a hallway, cafeteria, or another area covered by cameras, ask the school to preserve any relevant footage.
Do not assume that means the school must hand you a video file.
Under FERPA, when a school maintained video is an education record that directly relates to a student, the student's parent generally has a right to inspect and review it. Footage involving several students can make the process more complicated. Federal guidance also says FERPA generally does not require a school to give a parent a copy of the video.
Start with preservation.
Retaliation after the complaint belongs in the record too
Sometimes the original behavior changes after a student tells an adult.
The child gets called a snitch. Friends of the other student begin sending messages. Someone threatens the child for reporting what happened. Social pressure suddenly gets worse.
Document that separately.
Kentucky law requires district discipline codes to include a method for protecting people who report bullying from retaliation. JCPS's current handbook also says employees and other students shall not retaliate or discriminate against a student because the student reported a handbook violation or participated in an investigation.
If you believe the new behavior may be retaliation for the complaint, say that plainly.
Do not assume the school will automatically connect an incident that happened Friday with a complaint you made the week before.
What about bullying that happens online or away from school?
This is one place where the details matter.
Kentucky's definition is not limited only to conduct physically occurring inside a school. The statute also includes conduct that disrupts the education process.
JCPS's current handbook says bullying concerns that arise outside school hours, off school property, or outside the regular school year can still be reported to the Compliance Hotline for review. The handbook says those incidents fall outside the scope of school disciplinary action, but administrators are still directed to review the concern, document it, contact the students and families involved, discuss the seriousness of the complaint, provide appropriate resources, and identify next steps.
So an ugly group chat on Saturday is not automatically the same thing as bullying that occurred in a classroom.
But if the online behavior is spilling into school, affecting attendance, creating threats at school, interfering with your child's ability to participate, or otherwise disrupting education, include that information in your report rather than simply sending screenshots without context.
JCPS measures five day resolution, but that is not a five day guarantee for your case
JCPS has an unusually specific bullying measure in its Board Goals and Guardrails work.
The district tracks the percentage of hotline calls and online reports resolved within a five day period. The annual targets were 58 percent for 2025, 63 percent for 2026, and 68 percent for 2027.
In the September 2, 2025 monitoring report, 63.4 percent of hotline calls and online reports were resolved within five days, compared with about 53.1 percent during the prior reporting period. The same report said the average time to resolve reports involving peer bullying fell from 5.7 days to 4.9 days.
That does not mean JCPS promises every parent a final answer within five days.
It is a district performance measure. Kentucky's general bullying statute requires districts to have procedures for identifying, documenting, investigating, and responding to bullying complaints, but it does not establish a universal five day deadline for every individual bullying investigation.
If your complaint reaches day five and the problem remains unresolved, ask whether the investigation is still open, what has happened so far, and what protections are in place for your child in the meantime.
Bullying can become an IEP or Section 504 issue
If your child has a disability, pay attention to what the bullying is doing to the child's education.
The U.S. Department of Education says schools must assess the effect of bullying or harassment on a student with a disability even when the behavior was not based on the student's disability. If bullying interferes with the student's ability to access educational services, the situation can raise concerns about whether the student is continuing to receive a free appropriate public education.
Has your child started avoiding a particular class? Refusing the bus? Missing school? Skipping lunch? Avoiding services? Falling behind academically? Asking to stay home because of what is happening?
Document those changes.
If your child has an IEP or Section 504 plan and bullying is interfering with access to school or services, tell the school that directly and ask the appropriate team to consider the educational effect.
Some complaints may also involve discrimination or harassment
Bullying and unlawful discrimination are not automatically the same thing.
But bullying can overlap with harassment involving protected characteristics such as disability, race, national origin, or sex.
JCPS's Office of Compliance and Investigations handles allegations involving discrimination, harassment, sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, and retaliation. The district tells families who need guidance to call 502 485 3341.
What to send the school now
If you already reported the bullying once, your next message does not need to become a three page letter.
Reference the original report.
Describe the new incident.
Attach or preserve the new evidence.
Say whether you believe retaliation may be occurring.
Explain any new effect on your child's attendance, classes, transportation, activities, services, or ability to feel safe at school.
Then ask what immediate measures are being taken and when you should expect another update.
Keep the response.
Once the school has been told about the problem and the behavior continues, the question is no longer whether someone received the first email.
It is what happens next.