Trauma is the psychological, emotional response to a life event or experience that’s deeply disturbing or distressing to an individual. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are negative life events witnessed or experienced firsthand by children 18 years old or younger. Trauma is a widespread health concern that has become quite costly for schools around the world. It can affect a student’s cognitive ability – at times limiting rational thought, problem solving and other complex thinking skills often required in school – thereby limiting their academic potential. That’s why training in trauma-informed practices is essential to the everyday educational setting.

We recently published courses that can help comply with Pennsylvania’s SB 144 trauma-informed education requirements.

SB 144 Trauma-Informed Education Requirements

The bill requires each school entity to provide at least one hour of training in trauma-informed approaches to help school staff recognize the signs and impact of trauma in students and provide appropriate supports.

How SafeSchools Training Can Help

Easily manage, deliver, and track training online. Our special education course library includes over 70 expert-authored courses on a wide range of topics, including:

1. Trauma Awareness (35 minutes) 
2. Trauma-Informed Practices (42 minutes)
3. Secondary Trauma Awareness – coming soon!

The special education course library can easily be added to the SafeSchools Training System to help you assign, manage, and track all you training in one system.

Our safety and compliance course library can also help you address additional PA training mandates, including:

1. PA Act 71: Youth Suicide: Awareness & Prevention
2. PA Act 126: Act 126- Part 1: Child Abuse Recognition & Mandatory Reporting
3. PA Act 126: Act 126- Part 2: Educator Discipline Act & Sexual Misconduct
4. PA Act 195: Medication Administration: Epinephrine Auto-Injectors

View our full course library of state-specific courses.

If you would like to learn more about our courses or solutions, please contact us at 1-800-434-0154 or request a demo.

According to CPO Magazine, there is a ransomware attack every 14 seconds in the U.S. But, did you know that cyber attacks on schools tripled in 2019? In fact, since 2016, the education industry “has been the most targeted industry for ransomware attacks.”

With schools becoming increasingly more reliant on technology, how can you help protect your school from a cyber attack? Employees need to understand what the correct process is for communicating data and how to avoid risky behaviors.

We recently published a Texas Cybersecurity Awareness for Employees course that has been approved by the Texas Department of Information Resources (TX DIR) to meet the new HB 3834 cybersecurity training requirements.

HB 3834 Cybersecurity Training Requirements

• All employees who have access to a state or local government computer system or database are required to complete annually a 2-hour certified cybersecurity training course.
• The initial training deadline is June 14, 2020.

If you are a current SafeSchools Staff Training customer, your subscription includes this new course.

Other Texas-specific SafeSchools Training courses include:

1. Bullying: Recognition & Response
2. Child Abuse: Mandatory Reporting
3. Child Abuse: Mandatory Reporting (Spanish)
4. General Ethics in the Workplace
5. Health Emergencies: Diabetes Awareness (HB 984)

View our full course library of state-specific courses.

Members of the TASB Risk Management Fund also receive access to a complimentary bundle of SafeSchools Training safety and compliance courses based on lines of coverage. Visit our TASB RMF partner page to learn more.

If you are not yet a SafeSchools Training customer and would like to learn more about the Texas Cybersecurity Awareness for Employees course and the SafeSchools Training System, please contact us at 1-800-434-0154 or [email protected]. Free trials are available!

As educational institutions prepare for summer and the back-to-school season, a lot of uncertainties remain. What will schools look like when (or even if) they reopen? How will schools offer PD to their staff? What about complying with state and federal training mandates? Will face-to-face training and PD still be an option?

Making a Smooth Transition to Online Training

As you adjust your safety and compliance training plans, an affordable, easy-to-implement alternative is to utilize online courses. You can easily automate your staff training AND policy acceptance online with the SafeSchools Online Training System, which features automatic training plans that are customizable by role, location, or individual training needs, new hire training plans, email notifications, easy real-time reporting, and built-in policy acceptance to simplify training management. Here are five ways SafeSchools Training can support your transition to online training:

1. 100% School-Focused Training. Access and assign hundreds of courses, all written by leading K-12 experts. Each course includes scenarios in school settings so the content is relevant and applicable. Our courses can help you maintain compliance with state and federal training mandates, including OSHA, Title IX, Mandatory Reporting, FERPA, and more, even in a remote learning environment.
2. Full Automation. Your administration can schedule and completely automate your staff training and policy acceptance through our easy-to-use online system. Every course completion is tracked automatically and reports are delivered right to your inbox.
3. Policy Acceptance and Custom Course Creation. Upload and track district- or school-specific policies right alongside your staff training. Our Custom Course Tool allows schools/districts to create their own courses in our system and assign them to staff. These features can easily help your school or district distribute new information or policies related to COVID-19 to your staff.
4. Flexible and Convenient. Your staff will appreciate the flexibility of taking their assigned training when it’s most convenient for their schedules, from any web-enabled device.
5. On-Demand Access to Training Content to Meet Rapidly Changing Needs. As you deal with rapidly changing plans and new guidelines, you may need new or different training resources for your school staff. Our new Coronavirus courses can help you address topics, such as CDC guidelines for using cloth face masks, disinfecting common work areas, and managing stress and anxiety. And new Trauma-Informed Practices courses in our Exceptional Child course library can help you address the growing concerns around student mental health and trauma that may result from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Districts Around the Country Successfully Use Online Training

Our customers have turned to SafeSchools Training to help them continue to provide important training to their staff during this time more than ever. We’ve had over 25 million online course completions in the past 12 months! Which is a 34% increase over the previous year. In fact, we had a record-setting number of course completions in March and April.

One of the questions that we get asked the most is “what are your top taken courses?” Here are the top 15 courses with the most completions from the first half of 2020: 

1. Coronavirus Awareness
2. Bloodborne Pathogen Exposure Prevention
3. Sexual Harassment: Staff-to-Staff
4. Bullying: Recognition & Response
5. Child Abuse: Mandatory Reporting
6. Common Illness Prevention
7. Youth Suicide: Awareness, Prevention and Postvention
8. FERPA: Confidentiality of Records
9. Slips, Trips and Falls
10. Email and Messaging Safety
11. Stress Management
12. De-Escalation Strategies
13. Discrimination Awareness in the Workplace
14. Back Injury and Lifting
15. Coronavirus: Preparing your Household

Other top courses include Communication Styles and Skills, Active Shooter, First Aid, Student Mental Health, Diversity Awareness: Staff-to-Staff, Students Experiencing Homelessness: Awareness and Understanding, Cultural Competence and Racial Bias, Sexual Misconduct: Staff-to-Student, Fire Extinguisher Safety, and Disruptive Student Behavior.

To learn how SafeSchools Training can help your school or district with safety and compliance training, email us at [email protected]. You can also request a free trial.