Nearly 160,000 students attend New Jersey’s private and religious schools. A New Jersey proposal would add anti-bullying requirements for nonpublic schools statewide, and it carries the name of a 17-year-old boy who died by suicide after enduring months of bullying at an elite boarding school.
Jack Reid died by suicide in April 2022 at The Lawrenceville School near Trenton, after what the school has acknowledged was roughly a year of bullying rooted in rumors it later determined to be untrue, according to WHYY. Jack had attended The Lawrenceville School and the Buckley School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, according to seed reporting from The Philadelphia Inquirer. He faced a rumor alleging unwanted sexual advances that escalated into a sexual-assault allegation, and he was bullied and harassed over the course of a year beginning in spring 2021 while notifying administrators, per that same report. Lawrenceville later determined the sexual-assault allegations against him were untrue.
What Lawrenceville Has Admitted
As part of a settlement reached with Jack’s parents, William and Elizabeth Reid, Lawrenceville admitted it knew Jack was being bullied but failed to protect him, and the school acknowledged that bullying and unkind behavior, and actions taken or not taken by the school, likely contributed to Jack’s death, WHYY reported, quoting the school’s own statement. NJ.com reported that the school conducted a five-month investigation into Jack’s death and announced the settlement agreement in 2023. According to the Inquirer’s reporting, the school expelled the student targeting Jack, but for an unrelated violation, and then allowed that student to return to campus unsupervised; Lawrenceville administrators also did not check on Jack after students gathered outside his dorm and said harsh words about him.
Following the settlement, Lawrenceville agreed to hire a dean focused on student mental health and implement other corrective actions, including contracting with a specialist on school bullying and training staff on adolescent mental health, per NJ.com.
The Bill Named for Jack
State Sen. Shirley Turner is among the sponsors of a New Jersey proposal named for Jack Reid. The bill would extend the public-school anti-bullying mandate to nearly 160,000 students attending private and religious schools, require schools to establish procedures for reporting and investigating alleged bullying, require schools to notify students of investigation outcomes, and require schools to take appropriate action to protect students when bullying is confirmed. It would also prohibit nonpublic school students from bullying or harassing other nonpublic school students on school property, at school functions, or off school property.
The proposal would supplement Title 18A. New Jersey’s Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act is P.L.2010, Chapter 122.
Religious School Groups Weigh In
Agudath Israel of America’s New Jersey office, which represents about 200 Jewish day schools enrolling about 73,000 students, supports the bill but has raised concerns about holding schools accountable for off-campus conduct that may be difficult to manage, the Inquirer reported. The New Jersey Catholic Conference of Education also supports the bill, and diocesan schools already have anti-bullying policies in place, according to that reporting.
Jack’s parents, Elizabeth and Bill Reid, have advocated for anti-bullying protections for private-school students.
A Law Already Spreading Beyond New Jersey
Similar legislation was signed in New York the previous year, according to a co-sponsorship memorandum filed with the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania has a similar bill pending, and that measure, also modeled on the Jack Reid Law, would extend comparable protections to the more than 250,000 Pennsylvania students currently attending nonpublic schools without the same statutory anti-bullying safeguards as their public-school peers, the memo states.
That Pennsylvania proposal, House Bill 2816, would require nonpublic schools to adopt and review bullying policies, investigate alleged incidents, notify involved students, and inform students and parents of investigation outcomes. Its listed last action was a referral to the Education Committee on October 2, 2026, according to the Pennsylvania General Assembly’s bill page.
What the Numbers Show in New Jersey
Statewide, confirmed harassment, intimidation and bullying reports in New Jersey’s public schools have been declining. There were 7,455 confirmed reports during the 2024-25 school year, a 12% decrease from the 8,494 confirmed incidents the prior year, and down further from 9,011 confirmed incidents in 2022-23, according to NJ.com’s analysis of state data. That same reporting noted that the state’s figures do not detail the specific allegations in each case or how they were resolved, a limitation that mirrors the information gap nonpublic-school families currently face without a law like S4467 on the books.
