S C H O O L S A F E T Y

Keep your students safe3 ways to prevent bullying and help every student feel safe, physically and emotionally, in your schools

A W H I T E P A P E R P R O D U C E D B Y K 1 2 I N S I G H T

Why student safety needs to be part of everything you do

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Every student deserves to come to school feeling safe and secure every day, yet too many students do not. And there is mounting evidence that students who don’t feel safe don’t learn.

Everyone cares about school safety. But the idea that safety is part of everything that we do as school leaders is not yet part of our DNA. Schools do not obsess over safety the way, say, airlines do. From ticket takers to flight attendants to pilots, everyone who you encounter on a cross-country flight knows that their job is to get you to your destination safely.

That same fanaticism must be embraced and embedded in our schools, which, day in and day out, are responsible for our future’s most precious cargo. This special report explains the challenges of school safety, such as bullying and abuse, and offers the three key steps that school leaders and their teams can take to create a safer, more empathetic school culture and climate.

Want to learn more about school safety? Read on. 〉〉

1 in 4Number of students who say they have been bullied in school. Source: National Center for Education Statistics, 2016

THE CASE FOR SAFER SCHOOLS School leaders who want to improve school climate and promote student success have to ensure that safety is chief among their concerns. “Safety is one of the essential foundational elements of school climate, or the quality and character of school life,” according to the National School Climate Center.

It’s especially important for school leaders to survey students about their feelings about school safety. “The single most common school climate survey finding is that students typically report feeling much less safe in schools than parents and school personnel believed,” says Jonathan Cohen, president and co-founder of the National School Climate Center.

Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance might offer insight as to why. Eight percent of high school students reported being in a physical fight at school in the past 12 months, 6 percent reported being threatened or injured with a weapon in the past 12 months, and 20 percent reported being bullied on school property. Such statistics make it easier to understand why 6 percent of high school

students reported that they did not go to school on one or more days in the past 30 days because they felt unsafe.

School leaders also need to be aware of experiences students have when they are not at school, says Kelly Vaillancourt Strobach, director of government relations for the National Association of School Psychologists.

“It’s really recognizing that for all kids who walk into that school building they have a history and they have a set of experiences that may or may not require some type of mental and behavioral or social and emotional support in order for them to learn and to thrive in the school building,” she says. Exposure to extreme poverty and domestic violence, for example, can influence students’ feelings of safety and their reactions to their environment.

Evidence is mounting that childhood traumatic experiences can cause extensive and permanent damage to the brain, threatening memory, organization, causal relationships, personal relationships, communication skills, and coping skills, as well as an elevated risk for a range of health problems, from substance abuse to suicide.

Schools are now expected — whether as a result of parental pressure or legislative

“Safety is one of the essential foundational elements of school climate, or the quality and character of school life.” THE NATIONAL SCHOOL CLIMATE CENTER

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mandate — to develop formal policies and procedures meant to ensure the physical and emotional safety and well-being of students and employees. Cohen says there’s good and bad news about such efforts to date.

“The bad news is that most school violence prevention efforts have been ineffective. And the reason for that is most of our past efforts have been short-term and fragmented,” he says. “On the other hand, the good news is that we now know that comprehensive, multi-year school climate and social-emotional learning programs help to tremendously enhance students and adults feeling safer and to support academic achievement.”

It is imperative that schools work with their communities, including parents, students and staff, to create and institute data-driven safety policies and procedures. It also means that such efforts should be considered a perennial work in progress. That means constantly tweaking and modifying safety policies as needed. What follows are three critical steps school leaders should take to ensure their students and employees view their schools as a safe haven, both physically and emotionally, for learning.

The bad news is that most school violence prevention efforts have been ineffective.JONATHAN COHEN, PRESIDENT AND CO-FOUNDER OF THE NATIONAL SCHOOL CLIMATE CENTER

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BY THE NUMBERS

Your schools might not be as safe as you think

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance

18%

20%

8%

6%

6%

of students in grades 9-12 seriously considered suicide in the previous 12 months

of students say they were bullied on school property in the past year

of students in grades 9-12 reported being in a physical fight at school in the past 12 months

of students in grades 9-12 reported being threatened or injured with a weapon on school property in the past 12 months

of students in grades 9-12 did not go to school on one or more days in the past 30 days because they felt unsafe

THE ‘3Ps’ OF SAFER SCHOOLS

1 POLICYCreate school safety and student discipline policies

Having worked with many schools, Cohen says, “One of the things that everybody says, not surprisingly, is that we want everybody to feel safe.” That’s good, because making safety a priority is an important first step, he says. The next step would be to evaluate how school community members feel about the current state of safety, so school leaders get a snapshot of strengths and needs.

He recommends that school leaders work with students as “co-leaders” from the outset. Both Cohen and Vaillancourt Strobach agree that including students helps bring attention to blind spots that school leaders and others may miss when it comes to safety considerations. It also helps them earn buy-in from the people most immediately affected by their decisions.

Cohen says the following questions provide a strong framework for any school safety policy:

F What kind of school do we want our school to be?

F What are our current strengths and challenges and needs?

F Given the gap between our vision and current reality, what goals do we want to work on together?

Vaillancourt Strobach emphasizes that your school safety policy should address both physical and emotional needs. Appropriate and reasonable physical safety features might include locked doors, adequate lighting, and sufficient adult supervision, to name a few.

Emotional safety features might include a discipline policy that teaches and recognizes positive behaviors. “The end goal is not to punish the student; the goal is to help them,” says Vaillancourt Strobach. Cohen agrees, adding that it’s important to cultivate a culture of “upstanders,” meaning people who help when they witness someone hurting or being hurt. Part of that requires teaching students about the importance of empathy.

Finally, school leaders need to ensure that their policies are aligned with the latest school safety knowledge and research. For example, both Cohen and Vaillancourt Strobach caution against instituting zero-tolerance policies and relying on suspension and expulsion, both of which have been linked to feeding the school-to-prison pipeline.

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2 PLANDevelop and implement a plan to communicate your policies

Too often, school leaders confuse the policy with the plan. Your school safety policy won’t work unless people know about it. The plan is how you communicate your policy with your community. This isn’t a one and done deal. You need to share your plan widely in your school community and invite feedback on a continuing basis.

A good starting point might be to establish a school safety and crisis response team if you don’t already have one, Vaillancourt Strobach suggests. The team should include a top-level administrator, teachers, a school resource officer, and at least one person responsible for each of the following areas: mental health, the school building, transportation, and communications. The team might also include members from community law enforcement, fire, and community mental health.

These team members can provide leadership in communicating the policies, garnering feedback, and getting buy-in from others in the school community. It is equally important that the tenets of your safety and discipline policies aren’t relegated to a written policy or considered only the responsibility of the safety and crisis response team. The goal should

be to create an “entire school-wide mindset” predicated on a welcoming, respectful, and trusting environment. That means writing a policy that everyone can understand and use.

Vaillancourt Strobach also recommends developing a robust reporting system where students can share concerns or fears about themselves or fellow students without fear of reprisal. A good reporting system and dashboard for tracking key performance indicators relative to your safety policy helps ensure students get the help they need and it also provides critical feedback to make improvements over time.

At the Temecula Valley Unified School District in California, students and parents use an online tool called Report Bullying. The solutions, built on the Let’s Talk! platform from K12 Insight, makes it possible for students and parents to immediately report instances of bullying, threats of suicide or other safety concerns directly to administrators from a computer, smartphone, or tablet 24 hours a day.

In just a few months, district officials said they received more than 100 concerns from students and parents, including two reports of potential suicide attempts for which they were able to quickly intervene using established safety protocols.

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“It was a sigh of relief that we had something in place,” says Laura Boss, public information officer. “That these students had a way to do this, and that they felt compelled to do it, could well have saved two students’ lives.”

3 PROCESSCreate a process to ensure the policy actually sticks

Training members of the school community — especially dedicated safety and crisis response team members — and rehearsing what they are supposed to do in different situations is critical. You don’t want to be dusting off a 15-year-old safety policy when faced with a school shooting or a suicidal student on campus.

One way to ensure your policies and plans stay top of mind is to proactively seek feedback from your school community. An interactive dashboard is a useful tool for tracking what happens when an incident is reported, who is responsible downstream, what steps are being taken to remedy the incident, and what the outcome is.

“It’s a never-ending process. You never put something in place and you’re done. It’s a forever thing,” says Vaillancourt Strobach.

RELATIONSHIPS MATTER

How can you tell if your efforts are actually making schools safer? For one, try the feel test. “You can walk into a school building and tell if there is a good climate,” Vaillancourt Strobach says.

Anecdotal evidence is good. But hard data and personal feedback is even better. Consider a school climate survey to determine if your schools offer “a safe and supportive environment for all students, so students feel safe, they feel welcome, they feel respected, and they have good connections with at least one adult in the school building,” Cohen says.

“We know from a tremendous amount of research that the single most important risk-prevention strategy is to ensure that every child in school feels connected to at least one or two caring and responsible adults,” Cohen says. When it comes to safety, “everything comes down to the three Rs: relationships, relationships, relationships,” he says.

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Are you building trusted relationships with students in your schools? The safety and climate of your schools depends on it.

National School Climate Centerwww.schoolclimate.org

The National School Climate Center was founded to help translate research into practice by establishing meaningful and relevant guidelines, programs, and services to improve school climate.

National Association of School Psychologistswww.nasponline.org

The National Association of School Psychologists is rich in resources, including a framework for safe and successful schools, a paper on creating trauma-sensitive schools, and school safety and crisis preparedness training and curriculum.

National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environmentswww.safesupportivelearning.ed.gov/scirp/about

Commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education Office of Safe and Healthy Students, the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments has a resource-rich School Climate Improvement Resource Package.

Centers for Disease Control and Preventionwww.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/ youthviolence/schoolviolence/tools.html

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a number of tools and resources to help prevent school violence, including toolkits, assessments, and training on a number of topics, such as school connectedness, bullying, and youth violence.

National School Climate Centerwww.schoolsafety.us

The National School Safety Center was established by presidential mandate in 1984. It now operates as an independent nonprofit organization providing training and technical assistance in the areas of safe school planning and school crime prevention.

Safe Havens Internationalwww.safehavensinternational.org

Safe Havens International is an international nonprofit campus safety center that has worked to help schools and school systems improve crisis preparedness and campus safety for more than 10 years.

Looking for new ways to empower students and parents to report bullying and other safety concerns in your schools? Want to create a safer school culture? K12 Insight works with more than 400 school districts to improve school safety and well-being.

Contact us at www.k12insight.com or call 703-542-9600. Our expert consults are always free.

MAKE SCHOOL SAFETY PART OF YOUR CULTURE

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