Nik Rajkovic / news@whmi.com

October is National Bullying Prevention Month, and there's been a lot of online chatter in recent weeks regarding school bullying here locally.

Howell Public Schools Superintendent Erin MacGregor among those urging students and parents if they see something, say something, adding his district focuses on sitting students down to work out their differences in an effort to move forward.

"We want to repair those relationships amongst kids to say how do we sit you guys down and talk through those differences and make sure you can continue on with your education in a safe and meaningful way," said MacGregor.

"Just like we would in the real world, if we have a disconnect or difference with our colleague, we're going to have to figure out how to repair that relationship and move forward."

MacGregor is confident Howell Public Schools has measures in place to adequately address bullying.

"We're always looking to create environments where our kids feel they belong and connected to their schools. Can we take additional steps with that? All the time. But I feel we do a really good job with that," MacGregor said.

"There are times where students make poor choices with other students. We have systems in place to address that and respond to that. That's going to happen in any school district across the state, and I do think we have those systems in place to say when that's reported, we're going to take action and address it accordingly."

Social media often plays a key role in many bullying incidents, and MacGregor says that's why he's focused on what's called healthy screen time.

"I think social media has added exponentially issues that come into our classrooms and schools, and how do we teach kids to use that responsibly?" he asks.

"Again, there are things going on all the time on social media, so I just think we need to make sure our parents are engaged in that process. There's a parental component, we can't do it all on our own."