Elkhorn Public Schools is giving students and parents a new resource to ensure safety.

In a letter to parents, Elkhorn Superintendent Bary Habrock points to the dozens of reported threats to metro school last week. Now, the district is launching the SafeSchools Alert Online Tip Reporting System to let students and parents report any issue of concern.

“You or your child can now use this communication tool to easily report tips on bullying, harassment, drugs, vandalism, or any issue of concern. Every tip will be logged and our administration is notified so they can investigate and take appropriate action,” the statement read.

Reports can be made online, by email, through text message or with a phone call. Tips can also be submitted anonymously.

School officials encourages parents and guardians to talk with students about the importance of their vigilance and the reporting of statements and behaviors of concern.

According to a new study, 76% of high school principals surveyed say they do not have a procedure or policy in place to respond to a teen dating violence incident. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that about 1.5 million high school students experience abuse from a dating partner. Next month is National Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month so it’s a good time to educate your staff on the warning signs of teen dating violence.

The National Resource Center on Domestic Violence has a number of great resources for your school staff to help promote teen dating violence prevention among their students.Besides raising awareness on the topic, it’s helpful to know warning signs of domestic abuse. Common signs and symptoms that a student may be the victim of dating violence include:

• Bruises.
• Unlikely explanation for injuries.
• Wearing heavy makeup to cover up bruises or wearing inappropriately heavy clothing to cover bruises.
• Missing class or withdrawing from campus activities.Injuries that occur with increasing frequency or severity.

Teen dating violence is often kept a secret because the parties involved tend to be inexperienced with dating relationships, have romanticized views about love, feel pressure from their peers to be in a relationship, and want to be independent from their parents.

Always carefully follow your district’s policies and procedures regarding reporting on violence.

To help prevent dating violence, your district can provide students with information about the characteristics of healthy relationships and warning signs of violent relationships. By learning about dating violence, and increasing your awareness about its impact on students, you are already taking an important step in reducing this danger.

The SafeSchools Online Staff Training System includes an informative Dating Violence: Identification and Prevention course geared to help your staff recognize the signs and symptoms of dating violence.

With the recent school shootings in Arizona and Ohio, it’s important for your staff to know and understand the link between student behavior and mental health. A student’s mental health affects his or her classroom behavior. When a student causes disruption in the classroom, it can often be an indicator of more serious issues.

The National Institute of Mental Health defines mental illness as a complex illness that may come from a combination of genetics, chemical imbalances, congenital anomalies and conditions, or events. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), as defined by the CDC, can contribute to student mental health issues. ACEs are events such as the death of a close family member, illness of a parent, family financial problems, divorce, physical, sexual or emotional abuse, domestic violence, or ongoing social exclusion and bullying. Students under severe distress may exhibit:

• Highly disruptive behavior.
• Inability to communicate clearly.
• Threats to harm others.
• Overtly suicidal thoughts.
• Anger, irritability, and increased interpersonal difficulties.
• Marked changes in personal hygiene, noticeable weight gain or loss.
• Acting tired or lack of energy.
• Appearing noticeably anxious or panicked.

How can your staff identify and help a student with a potential mental illness? First, awareness is key. Be aware of the warning signs and changes in student behavior. If you have access to a school psychologist, he or she can be a valuable resource for students who may have potential mental health needs. If there isn’t a school psychologist readily available in your school or district, there will be a district policy or procedure to help students with potential mental health issues.

SafeSchools Training offers a Student Mental Health course that provides an overview of student behavior and mental health. This course is not meant as a diagnostic tool, however, this course may give you information that should be helpful in referring a student to a qualified professional. Diagnoses must always come from a certified professional who specializes in mental health.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, more than six million children are reported as abused or neglected each year. April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month so this month is a good time to make sure you’re familiar with your duties in regards to preventing and reporting child abuse.

To help remove barriers that affect students’ readiness to learn, school personnel must be able to recognize when children are being abused and quickly intervene on their behalf.

Child abuse can be more than just bruises and broken bones. Child maltreatment includes physical abuse, neglect, sexual abuse and exploitation, emotional abuse, threat of harm, and abuse of children with disabilities. While physical abuse may be easier to detect, emotional abuse and neglect leave deep, lasting, invisible scars. Research shows that maltreatment can cause:

• Neurological damage.
• Low self concept.
• Depression.
• Anxiety.
• School adjustment problems.
• Poor academic outcomes.

While each state has their own laws and regulations as to reporting incidents of child abuse, in nearly all states all school employees are considered mandatory reporters. This means that if any school staff member has reasonable cause to believe a child is being abused, they must report suspected incidents to one or more of the following: local law enforcement, child protection services, and building or district administrators. In order to protect the child, state statutes require school employees to report when they “have reason to suspect,” “have observed,” or “know or have a reasonable cause to believe” that a child is abused or neglected. It’s important for you, as a school staff member, to know which standard your state applies to you so that you can properly protect children from abuse.

The SafeSchools Online Staff Training System offers a Child Abuse: Identification & Intervention course and a Child Abuse: Mandatory Reporting course. We also offer state-specific versions of our Child Abuse: Mandatory Reporting course for Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia.

For more information on these courses, please contact us at 1-800-434-0154 or [email protected].

We heard your valuable feedback: while all accidents are incidents, not all incidents are accidents, and so we’re thrilled to announce that our SafeSchools Accident Tracking System is getting a new name: SafeSchools Incident. We’re thankful for your input and are excited that this change reflects the versatility of the system. Rest assured if you’re a current SafeSchools Accident Tracking customer, the update will be seamless and your system will not experience any down time.

New! OSHA Reports

We’re also excited to share that the system now allows you to generate OSHA 300, 300A, and 301 reports.

• The system now makes sure all incidents at each location contain the required information for OSHA.
• Incidents added to the system that do not have all of the required information will be flagged in order to populate missing fields quickly and easily.

For more information on our SafeSchools Incident System, please give us a call at 1-800-434-0154 or email us at [email protected].

Are you tired of trying to manage a large number of safety data sheets (SDSs) in binders all around your building? Does rummaging through all those binders for a specific SDS take a lot of time? What if you could keep your school’s SDSs in a central location AND be able to sort by location? SafeSchools can help!

The SafeSchools Online SDS Management System lets you protect your school with an easily accessible and well-organized online SDS and chemical inventory database:

• Create, update, and store your chemical inventory lists and SDSs into virtual binders, accessible from any web-enabled device.
• Organize your chemical inventory and binders by work area.
• >Print out physical binders, secondary container labels, and location posters with QR codes that provide key information on chemicals in a specific location.
• Use our powerful search feature to quickly find a specific SDS in case of an emergency.
• Compliant with GHS.

Our system includes a repository of tens of thousands of searchable SDSs that you can use, or upload your own. You can also have an unlimited number of administrators at no additional charge!

For a free trial or demonstration of SafeSchools SDS, call 1-800-434-0154 or email [email protected] today. We look forward to working with you!

How is your school or district currently training employees and staff on special-education related topics?

Many schools and districts are effectively using online training to help automate their safety and compliance training while saving both time and money. But online courses can also offer districts an affordable and efficient way to provide scalable professional development on key special education topics to a wide range of staff across multiple locations. And there are many ways that online courses can complement what you’re already doing for PD:

Support Professional Growth Plans

Assign courses to a group of staff as part of ongoing district professional learning plans around a particular initiative, or assign as part of an individual’s professional growth plan.

Try a Flipped Classroom Approach to Onsite PD

Assign online courses as “homework” and use onsite PD days for discussion and collaboration around real-life application.

New Hire Training

Create a custom training plan to ensure all new hires get the same information as existing staff to get them up to speed.

Paraeducator Training

Anytime, anywhere access makes it easier to provide paras with important training on their roles and responsibilities, behavior management, and specific disabilities.

On Demand, Personalized Professional Development

Give teachers more choice and autonomy in choosing courses that meet their individual needs.

Exceptional Child is our online professional development system that includes over 50 evidence-based courses on a wide range of special education topics, written by leading experts. The system includes full length courses 30-45 minutes and a series of 15-20 minute micro-courses to help provide paraeducators and other support staff with a basic understanding of their roles and responsibilities and some foundational information about special education, behavior management, and specific disabilities they may encounter. Our Essential micro-courses include ADHD Overview, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Overview, Emotional Behavioral Disorder (EBD) Overview, Paraeducators: Roles and Responsibilities, and Special Education Introduction.

Exceptional Child can be implemented as a stand-alone solution, or SafeSchools Training customers can add the Exceptional Child course library to their SafeSchools Training System.  Call 1-800-434-0154 or email [email protected] today!

On February 14th, 17 people tragically died when a gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The gunman, 19, arrived on campus and began shooting students just as school was letting out. People who knew the shooter say the warning signs of future violence were there, including online posts about shooting people, social media accounts featuring weapons and photos, and exhibiting peculiar behavior.

In the wake of this tragic school shooting, our SafeSchools Alert customers in Richland, WA and Blaine, WA are hopeful that the anonymity of our bullying reporting system will prompt more people to share safety concerns. In fact, a day after the shooting, Lee’s Summit School District received an anonymous tip on its SafeSchools Alert website that a student brought a gun to school, and the gun was quickly recovered.

When we heard the news about the Parkland school shooting, our hearts were broken again. Our thoughts and prayers will continue to be with this community now and in the days ahead.

This week, there’s been many conflicting reports in the media about how many school shootings there have been since the Sandy Hook tragedy. Were there 297 or 22? To us, the number isn’t what matters. One school shooting is one too many.

In an effort to help with the healing that’s needed right now, we are making our SafeSchools Training course, Managing the Aftermath of Tragedy, available to any educator, free of charge, for the next 60 days. This course, written by school safety expert, Dr. Scott Poland, provides valuable information on how to help your school deal with a tragedy, should one occur.

To access this free course, go to www.SafeSchools.com/Cares.

Our Creative Services team recently updated the Back Injury & Lifting course in the SafeSchools Online Staff Training System.

We’ve updated the content and added a number of rich media elements throughout the course, including:

• A visual makeover.
• New video scenarios.
• More video content, including lift demonstrations.
• New interactive exercise.
• New ‘Knowledge Check’ questions to reinforce content presented up to that point.

This course is authored by Joanette Lima, PT, MS, CPE. Joanette has worked with a variety of industries to develop and implement effective strategies for ergonomic risk reduction and injury prevention, including workplace design, furniture and equipment selection, and management and employee training. Ms. Lima has been a CPE (Certified Professional Ergonomist) since 1996, holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physical Therapy, and earned a Master’s of Science in Exercise Science. In addition to her consulting work, she teaches Ergonomics at the University level. She is affiliated with the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, the American Society of Safety Engineers and the American Physical Therapy Association.

For more information on the SafeSchools Online Staff Training System, please contact us at 1-800-434-0154 or [email protected] today! You can also check out our new website www.SafeSchools.com.

School districts are warning parents about a widely discussed social-media app that purports to instruct preteens to carry out increasingly dangerous tasks and self-harm over 50 days, ending in suicide. Users are also encouraged to tag friends on social media and challenge them to participate in the game. Common Sense Media has called the game “one of the scariest and most mysterious YouTube challenges” kids will try.

Many school administrators have already sent letters to parents, warning them about this game and the warning signs their children may be participating in it. Experts also suggest:

• Asking younger children if there are any new games or popular challenges that they or their friends are hearing about or playing on social media or online.
• Searching for hashtags like #BlueWhaleChallenge and/or photos of a blue whale on kids’ social media accounts.

The American Association of Suicidology also has resources on suicide identification and prevention.