Prevent, Reduce, Respond: Building Blocks for School Safety
My nephew and his wife were beginning to plan for putting their daughter in school. As new parents, they were very concerned for her safety as well as her academic success. They wanted advice on what to look for during their search pertaining to school safety. As one can imagine, putting your child in the hands of an institution for the first time can be very stressful. After many years as a school administrator with a focus on climate and culture, and violence prevention; I shared with them four areas that every parent should spend a considerable amount of time reviewing at each school.
The policies, procedures, practices, and mandates are crucially important to its safety plan(s). There are several moving parts when creating a safe school environment; however, the code of conduct, social skills program, violent and disruptive incident data, and the building level safety plan are the center pieces for establishing behavioral expectations in school, on the bus, and at school sponsored events. These documents provide a foundation for individuals to determine how a school will prevent, reduce, and respond to violent and disruptive conduct.
Code of Conduct
The code of conduct is a living document. It should be regularly revisited and updated. The items contained within the document should support the school’s mission statement. It is an adaptive tool that helps all constituents within the school to assimilate into positive contributing members of the school community. The code of conduct is a snapshot of the school’s climate and culture. It provides guidelines that are used to protect the things that the school community values.
Social Skills Program
There are many data supported schoolwide, classroom, and individual social skills programs that a school can utilize for creating an experience that preserves the dignity of all students. Some of the key aspects of an effective social skills program are:
Effectively teach appropriate behavior to all children
Provides intervention early before unwanted behaviors escalate
Use researched based, scientifically validated interventions
Monitor student progress
Taking the time to review data will help guide you when choosing what program(s) fit your school’s unique needs. If the program targets your schools’ specific areas of need it will allow for the most success outcomes.
Violent and Disruptive Incident Report
Most state legislature's requires P-12 public and charter schools to report information on violent and disruptive incidents. Each year, school district superintendents are required to certify and submit said data for their district and separately for each school in the district. Charter school leaders are required to report data for each charter school, to their state annually. The violent and disruptive incident report contains data for the current school year and summer months, including the summer school session. It also includes information (such as the number of incidents, offenders, and targets) collected in individual incident reports, as well as other information relating to school safety and the educational climate.
The Violent and Disruptive Behavior report is a critical piece of data to use when developing a code of conduct and social skills program. The data gained from this report provide school boards of education, district/school administrators and teachers a road map to follow when updating codes of conducts. Adhering to what the data says saves, time, money, resources and helps to prevent and/or decrease the likelihood of future violent and disruptive incidences. If the required data entered in the report is inaccurate, the outcome will not reflect the reality of the school’s culture regarding violent and disruptive incidences which will lead to ineffective policies and worst-case scenario, no policies at all.
Building Level Safety Plan
Many state education departments require that every public school develop and annually update, a Building-Level Emergency Response Plan (ERP) that includes details about how school personnel and students would respond to different types of emergency situations that may occur in their school. In addition, each public school district, and charter school must also develop and annually update a District-Wide School Safety Plan that provides critical information to parents, educators and the school community about the policies and procedures that the school has in place related to school safety. As the recent COVID-19 pandemic and response has demonstrated, the importance of having a plan in place for how the school and community will respond in an emergency cannot be over-emphasized.
The building level safety plan is the document that details a school’s plan to deal with emergency situations. Its primary focus is on the school’s plans to keep the school community safe. You will also find the code of conduct, social skills program(s), and the Violent and Disruptive Incident report.
The code of conduct, social skills programs, Violent and Disruptive Incident reports, and the building level safety plans are the non-negotiable building blocks for a safer school.
