Thalia Pontano spent a good part of her school year in grade five dealing with rumours that she was saying nasty things about a good friend.

"The person started believing it and they all just started ganging up on me," said Thalia.

The lies flew around Crestview Elementary in Laval and among the pre-teen's Facebook accounts.

"At the end of the day I would come home crying," said Thalia.

After enduring the torment, Thalia made up her mind to not be a victim and to combat her bullies, but the experience left her and her father Perry uncertain if schools dealing with bullying are able to cope in the modern age.

"I don't know if the schools have the right mechanisms to take care of these things," said Perry.

Thalia's school board, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, is not sure it knows how to cope with bullies either.

Administrators say they are being asked to deal with bullying on a daily basis, with some requiring police intervention and others need principals to conduct detective work. With the blend between home life, social networking activities online and school, every incident requires its own approach.

"I've had parents say they want me to punish a bully for something that hasn't started in the school yet," said a principal in the Sir Wilfrid Laurier school board.

With multiple high-publicity incidents in Quebec and North America in recent years, such as last year's suicide of Marjorie Raymond in the Gaspe, administrators have been feeling under significant pressure.

"We have to make sure in terms of a legal perspective are doing everything we can to make sure that students are looked after and taken care of, making sure that we address the situation that we don't let it fester, we don't let it get to the point that a child feels that's the only answer the only resolution to their issues," said Clif Buckland of the Sir Wilfrid Laurier school board.

Recently principals and administrators attended a conference to share stories, ideas and solutions to bullying.

"We needed to come up with processes that principals could use, policies that the board could use so the board could be more ahead of the game," said Buckland.

The board came up with what it calls a comprehensive action plan that has every principal and every administrator getting expert guidance on how to protect their students and themselves.

Alissa Sklar is an educational consultant who says teachers and principals can no longer rely on verbal warnings. She says they have to keep a paper trail to document what they have done to deal with bullies, violence and threats.

"It's also really important for dealing with parents because what we're hearing in these unfortunate cases that we hear in the news, is parents who say I complained to the school and nothing happened," said Sklar.

One challenging case is taking place at Thalia's school.

One of Thalia's classmates is being targeted by anonymous messages that have escalated to physical threats.

"She's been getting death threats and I feel horrible for her. She's like the nicest person ever," said Thalia.

In this case the principal has brought girls in for one-on-one meetings in an attempt to identify the perpetrator.

"I was a little bit scared, I was crying," said Thalia.

Even her father found the process intimidating.

"You had a principal and two teachers there as well and one child," said Perry.

When the grade six students learned that some class trips were being cancelled many felt they were being punished.

"It also made the girl who was being bullied feel like she felt like it was her fault," said Perry.

The Sir Wilfrid Laurier school board acknowledged that some students were frightened by the school's approach especially since police officers were present at some meetings with students.

Officers had been called in because this bullying case involved death threats and the board says it was police who recommended cancelling the school trips.

However the board concedes administrators could have done a better job of explaining the situation, saying in a statement: "Perhaps in retrospect we could have addressed the situation by calling the parents of the children involved."

As of March 7, 2012 the threats have stopped, but the bully has not been identified.