Consequentialism

According to Shafer-Landau, consequentaimlism says that an action is morally required just because it produces the best overall results, and advances a five step process that is supposed to determine whether an act produces the best overall results. The five step process is the following: 

"1. First, identify what is intrinsically good-valuable in and of itself, and worth having for its own sake.
  2. Identify what is intrinsically bad.
  3. Determine all of your options. Which actions are open to you at the moment?
  4. For, each option, determine the value of it's results. How much of what is intrinsically good will each action bring about? How much of what is intrinsically bad?
 5. Finally, pick the action that yields the best balance- the highest ratio of good to bad results." (119).

Accordingly, I want to examine which action is morally required in the following situation:

In the article Bullying May Have Lasting Health Effects on Kids, author Amy Norton discusses new findings, which indicate that bullying has been shown to have detrimental effects on young children that stay with them as they age. These effects sometimes may even cause "low mental well-being" later on in life. 

These findings led me to wonder…

Is it morally required for schools to have anti-bullying policies?

It seems that if we want to determine whether this action is morally required just because it produces the best overall results, then we must determine this by way of the five step process.

1.  What is intrinsically good-valuable in and of itself? At this point, it is my opinion that good mental well-being (i.e., happiness) is intrinsically good.
2. What is intrinsically bad? If it is the case that happiness is intrinsically good, then it would seem to me that sadness (i.e., low mental well-being) is intrinsically bad- as it is the opposite of happiness.
3. The options in this case would be to either:
                       a. require for schools to have anti-bullying policies
or
                       b. not require for schools to have anti-bullying policies.
4. For, each option, determine the value of it's results. How much of what is intrinsically good will each action bring about? How much of what is intrinsically bad?
-It seems that option A would not necessarily bring about happiness, but it could bring about some. It could also bring about sadness as the bullies would be prevented/punished for doing something that they enjoy doing.
In regards, to option B, it seems that taking this route would certainly bring about a lot of sadness as bullying would still be acceptable and so we run a higher risk of having more sadness or low mental well being produced. However, this might bring about some happiness in bullies who enjoy engaging in such behavior and would have the opportunity to continue to bully.
5. It seems that the action that would yield the best balance of good to bad results would be option A because while the bullies would be sad for a while, this sadness would only be temporary. While allowing bullying to persist has been shown to cause detrimental and on-going sadness in the victims of bullying seemingly bringing about a lot more of what is intrinsically bad.

In this case it seems that that the consequentialist would say that is it morally required for schools to have anti-bullying policies.