School tip lines, or anonymous tip reporting systems, are designed to help school leaders receive information about potential school safety threats, bullying, or concerns related to student well-being. Tip lines provide students, who are often reluctant to report information, with an opportunity to submit information anonymously to their school leaders about potential threats of violence, bullying, drug and substance abuse, self-harm, and other safety concerns.
RTI International, a non-profit research institution, recently published a report, Tip Lines for School Safety: A National Portrait of Tip Line Use which summarized findings from their 2019 research that set out to understand the implementation and use of school tip lines around the country. Here are several important highlights from the study.
Prevalence of School Tip Lines
- As of fall 2019, 20 states have passed legislation requiring school tip lines, and two additional states had pending legislation.
- 51% of public middle and high schools in the U.S. currently have a tip line in operation.
- 60% of schools with tip lines report that the tip lines have been in use for less than three years, while 15% have had tip lines in place for 10 or more years.
Most Common Problems Reported through School Tip Lines
School tip lines are used by students and others in school communities to report a wide range of problems, beyond just threats of violence. According to data in the report, the most frequently reported tips involve:
- Bullying or harassment
- Posses, use, or distribute drugs (including vaping)
- Suicidal ideation (reported by another person)
- School complaint
- Threat of planned school attack
- Sexual assault/harassment
- Non-safety concern
- Self-harm
- Threat of assault
- Threat to safety
- Cyberbullying
- Depression
- Possess, consume, or distribute alcohol
- Child abuse
- Fighting
Benefits School Administrators See from their Tip Lines
Principals and school safety personnel that are using tip lines reported several perceived benefits. The issues they reported their school tip lines are helping them to address can have a significant impact on school safety and student well-being. Key benefits administrators see from their tip lines include:
- 77% – More aware of potential safety issues
- 73% – Helped prevent incidents of self-harm/suicide
- 67% – Respond more effectively to bullying
- 56% – Helped prevent violent incidents
- 52% – Respond more effectively to drug use
While some challenges exist with the use of school tip lines, such as raising awareness about tip lines with students, educating students about the types of issues to submit through tip lines, and training students on how to submit tips with sufficient information for their schools to act on, according to the study, tip lines are largely seen as an effective component of an overall school safety plan by principals and other administrators.
SafeSchools Alert Helping Districts Prevent Incidents
With the SafeSchools Alert Online Tip Reporting System, students, staff, and parents can choose from five convenient options to submit tips: mobile app, phone, text, email, or website. Administrators are immediately notified of every tip, and can easily track and manage incidents in our web-based system. Districts around the country are using our tip reporting system to help identify and address potentially dangerous safety threats and concerns.
- Cherokee County School District
- Fannin County School System
- Monroe Public Schools
- Mason City Schools
To learn more about SafeSchools Alert, please contact us [email protected] or request a demo.
As Reported in the Ledger-Enquirer on Dec. 02, 2019
Have safety concerns at your kid’s school? There are easy ways to report them.
It’s now easier for anyone to notify the Muscogee County School District (GA) about safety concerns involving Columbus public schools.
Through a national service called SafeSchools Alert, MCSD launched the new system that allows reports to be submitted multiple ways anywhere and anytime. The reports are submitted anonymously.
SafeSchools Alert is designed for users to notify school district officials about concerns such as threats of violence, bullying, harassment, mental health, weapons, illegal substances and gangs. For emergencies, however, residents should still call 911.
Along with the tips, users can attach image and text files as supporting documentation. SafeSchools Alert automatically routes each tip to the appropriate administrators, who can electronically track the status of the tips through the system.
Cobb and Cherokee county school districts in Georgia have been using the system successfully, MCSD communications director Mercedes Parham told the Ledger-Enquirer in an email. “Each of those districts mentioned positive results in decreasing illegal substances, bullying and weapons within the schools,” she said.
Early Success with Anonymous Tips
Officials already see evidence that the system will improve safety in Muscogee County schools. In the two weeks since SafeSchools Alert was activated here, MCSD received 11 tips, said Tracy Fox, the district’s risk management director.
For example, after an anonymous tip about drugs in a school, MCSD’s police department responded and “resolved the issue,” Fox told the L-E. The other tips were about bullying, gang activity and a concern about a student, she said.
A phone message left on a hotline was the only centralized way MCSD previously had for people to anonymously report safety concerns, Fox said. So the new system “allows us more access to be able to respond a lot quicker,” she said.
It also helps MCSD officials contact the tipsters for more information if needed. “This allows us to respond and say, ‘Hey, we’re looking into it,’” Fox said.
Administrators see the tips on an electronic dashboard that records how the district handles them.
“It’s just another accountability piece that we didn’t necessarily have in the past,” Fox said.
Cherokee County School District (CCSD) is a high performing school system in Metro Atlanta, with 42 schools, 4,800 employees, and 42,200+ students. The district’s top safety priorities this year include a Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) initiative focused on student and staff mental health, staff training on key topics like workplace safety and identifying and reporting child abuse, and vaping. CCSD uses both the SafeSchools Training System for staff safety and compliance training and the SafeSchools Alert Anonymous Tip Reporting System to support the district’s safety and security initiatives.
Preventing Serious Incidents with Anonymous Tip Reporting
As texting has grown in popularity, CCSD saw tips to its safety phone line decline. The SafeSchools Alert Tip Reporting System expanded CCSD’s reporting options to meet the needs of today’s digital natives by offering reporting via text, email, phone, web, and a new mobile app. The district has seen the number of safety tips increase dramatically as a result of adopting SafeSchools Alert, and CCSD has been able to address serious incidents, including disciplinary issues, vaping, bullying, student emotional or mental health crises, and even students considering suicide.
According to Julie Little, Executive Director, Risk Management and Benefits, “SafeSchools Alert has improved communications between students, parents, the community, and CCSD, and has empowered students to ‘see something, say something’ with greater ease and anonymity.”
Buster Cushing, the Chief of the Cherokee County School District Police Department recently released a video outlining the district’s use of SafeSchools Alert, reminding their school community to, “see something, say something!”
The video does a great job of giving real-life examples, with real students, of the types of tips students, staff, and parents are encouraged to submit through SafeSchools Alert.
We’re sharing this best practice with other districts and applaud CCSD’s effort to effectively communicate and promote the use of SafeSchools Alert to encourage everyone to submit tips that will help keep their school community safe!
As reported on FetchYourNews.com, January 12, 2020
Blue Ridge, Ga. – School safety continues to be a top priority for the Fannin County School System. Assistant Superintendent and District Emergency Planning Coordinator Darren Danner wants to remind the citizens of Fannin County of a very important tool the district utilizes to keep the children in our area safe.
SafeSchools Alert is Fannin County School District’s tip reporting service. This online service can allow students, teachers, and parents to report incidents of bullying, intimidation, harassment, weapons, drugs or other threats, and remain anonymous.
“The best information we can get, is what we hear from the kids,” Danner spoke of SafeSchools Alert’s importance and the role the students themselves can play in keeping their schools safe for all. “They’re (students) are on the frontline, so to speak. They see what’s happening. They know what’s going on.”
SafeSchools Alert can be accessed on Fannin County School System’s website by scrolling to the bottom and clicking the SafeSchools Alert icon located at the bottom left of the page. SafeSchools Alert also offers an app that can be downloaded onto mobile devices, and it is this app that students generally choose to use.
According to Danner 95 to 98 percent of tips from the student body come from the use of the downloadable app.
Once a tip has been submitted, SafeSchools Alert will send out numerous emails to faculty within the district. Danner acknowledged that not all tips are reliable, but that some have proven to be very accurate and that all tips are taken seriously and looked into.
“The district has used this going on two years now,” Danner continued. “We’ve had some things that have been put to rest very quickly because of this.”
The Fannin County School System urges everyone that has information about a threat to report it.
Preventing school violence is at the forefront of concerns for educators, administrators, parents, and students. Schools are faced with a range of threats of violence and other incidents that have the potential to impact the safety of staff and students. Incidents can include:
- Violent or disruptive incidents (with or without a weapon)
- Bullying
- Cyberbullying
- Harassment
- Discrimination
- Bomb threats or suspicious devices
- Plots to harm others
- Suspicious persons
- Other safety threats
According to the Educator’s School Safety Network 2018-2019 Violence in Schools Report, there was a 113% increase in incidents of violence and a 62% increase in threats of violence reported by American K-12 schools between the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 school years. And the 2017-18 School Survey on Crime and Safety conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported that during the 2017–18 school year, an estimated 962,300 violent incidents and 476,100 nonviolent incidents occurred in public schools nationwide. And while only 6% of tracked incidents involved a shooting, according to the Educator’s School Safety Network research, 24% of all violent incidents related to the presence or use of guns in a school, and bomb threats accounted for 32% of all specified threats. The NCES data indicates that during the 2017–18 school year, there were an estimated 3,600 incidents nationwide involving the possession of a firearm or explosive device at school.
Schools Investing in Preventing School Violence
Nationwide, schools are making significant investments in time and resources to increase their preparedness to prevent or respond to threats of violence or other incidents. While initiatives and policies vary across states and districts, many districts are focused on:
- Improving the quality of training for staff and students
- Increasing the presence of school resource officers or other law enforcement
- Increasing physical safety measures
- Improving mental health services
- Expanding social emotional learning efforts
Making “See Something, Say Something” a Reality with Anonymous Tip Reporting
Another measure many districts are taking to prevent school violence is to implement an incident or tip reporting system to support the “see something, say something” mentality and to empower their school communities to anonymously report safety concerns, threats of violence, weapons, mental health concerns, or other incidents. An online tip reporting system lets administrators stay connected to students, staff, and parents, and enables them to receive information abbot potential incidents, so that they can investigate and respond before a serious safety incident occurs.
How SafeSchools Alert Can Help
With the SafeSchools Alert Online Tip Reporting System, students, staff, and parents can choose from five convenient options to submit tips: mobile app, phone, text, email, or website. Staff are immediately notified of every tip, and can easily track and manage incidents in our web-based system. Built-in communication tools enable administrators to easily gather additional details from anonymous tipsters to facilitate follow-up and resolution. Mason City Schools, a district of 10,500 students in our hometown of Cincinnati, recently shared their outdoor signs encouraging their school community to use their SafeSchools Alert system to “see something, say something.” And Lincoln Middle and High School in West Virginia, was recently able to quickly involve law enforcement to investigate a threat received through SafeSchools Alert.
To learn more about how our SafeSchools Alert System can help your school or district support your school community in preventing and managing safety threats and concerns, please contact us at [email protected] or 800-434-0154, or request a free trial today!
As Seen on WLWT: Students increasingly using school tip lines to report potential threats of self-harm, violence
At Mason City Schools, signs are posted that encourage students who are worried about threats of violence or the mental health of a classmate to share those concerns, even anonymously, if need be.
“If it’s late at night and you saw something on (an Instagram) story or, you know, somebody’s text, you don’t have to hold that weight all night long. They can go on the tip line, and we’ve got folks who are monitoring that who can get them help,” said district spokeswoman Tracey Carson.
As a school resource officer at Edgewood Middle School, Patrick Carr knows a lot about social media threats students make in the middle of the night.
“It never goes away,” Carr said.
But Carr is grateful for tips that alert him to potential trouble, because the earlier he knows about a threat, the faster he and other officers can investigate.
“We wake up. We log on to provide them the assistance they need to be able to find whoever it is to have a conversation with them, to ask them about what they just posted,” Carr said.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine fully supports students who take their own safety seriously.
After a mass shooting earlier this year in Dayton, DeWine created a school safety center to help districts better handle threats of violence.
He also wants students to call or text a statewide hot line if they feel something’s not quite right.
“If they see some threats, they can refer it to our center and we can do a search on social media,” DeWine said. “In other words, we can try to fill the rest of the picture out. We have to do as much as we can to give our schools more tools, more ability to keep our kids safe.”
Carson said empowering young people is making a big difference for students in Mason.
“It does save lives, and we are grateful for them for stepping up,” she said.
Mason has its own tip line. So far this school year, Carson said the district has received 92 Safe School tips, up from 55 all of last year.
About Mason City Schools’ Anonymous Tip Line
Mason City Schools has been using the SafeSchools Alert Anonymous Tip Reporting System since 2013 to stay connected to their students, staff, and parents and to prevent crises before they occur. To help safeguard its school community, the district is using SafeSchools Alert, which allows students, staff, and parents to submit safety concerns to administration in multiple ways, including: mobile app, website, phone, text, or email.
The district encourages its community members to “see something, say something” and report tips on bullying, harassment, drugs, vandalism or any safety issues they’re concerned about through SafeSchools Alert. Every tip submitted through SafeSchools Alert is immediately logged in the system and administration is notified so that they can investigate and take appropriate action. And, tips may also be submitted anonymously if you prefer.
Contact us at [email protected] or request a free trial to learn more about SafeSchools Alert for your school district!
Students often know what’s happening in your district before you do. The SafeSchools Alert Mobile App makes it easy to stay connected to your school community so you can prevent serious safety incidents before they occur.
Using the app, free to download on iOS and Android with a SafeSchools Alert System subscription, students and adults can submit safety tips 24/7 to alert school officials about bullying, harassment, mental health concerns, and threats of violence. The convenient app makes it easy to keep track of all tips submitted, and push notifications let tipsters know when a reply has been sent to their tip and tracks all communication.
The SafeSchools Alert System automates many of the steps involved in tip resolution and allows administrators to easily delegate tips to colleagues who can investigate and manage tips to resolution. Administrative reports make it simple to monitor safety trends by victim, offender, building, and incident type.
Complimentary promotional materials such as fliers, posters, parent letters, and student handbook copy make it easy to communicate this potentially life-saving tool to your entire school community.
Watch an Overview of the SafeSchools Alert System
Together, using SafeSchools Alert, we can help to make your school community an even safer place to work and learn. For more information or a free trial of SafeSchools Alert, please contact us at 1-800-434-0154, [email protected], or www.SafeSchools.com.
Bullies in the North Hills School District who rely on the silence of their victims to keep up their scare tactics will soon be a telephone call, email or text message away from being busted for their behavior.
Board members voted unanimously recently to purchase the SafeSchools Alert confidential tip reporting system that students, staff and parents can use to report bullies and instances of violence.
“This is a great addition to our district’s safety and security measures,” school Director Allison Mathis said.
The Safeschools Alert system will allow incidents to be reported around the clock.
The system, created by Vector Solutions in Cincinnati, OH was developed to help school districts combat the alarming number of bullying and safety incidents in U.S. schools and the consequences they cause.
Developers note that:
• One in three teens report being bullied and one in two students say they have been cyber bullied.
• 160,000 children miss school each day due to fears of being intimidated or attacked.
• 19,000 bullied children attempt suicide every year.
• 57 percent of students say they would not report an incident if it cannot be done anonymously.
Safeschools Alert will include flyers, posters and other material that can be customized to promote its use as well as interactive tutorials and electronic presentations to help district leadership communicate key features of the system to principals, department heads and other supervisors, according to the company.
The system allows administrators to track and manage the tips that are received so the appropriate personnel can resolve the problems.
RICHLAND, Wash. – Following tragic school shootings and acts of violence like we saw Wednesday in Florida, school safety is at the forefront in our society and our community.
Now the Richland School District is rolling out a new safety alert system for its students, staff and parents that aims to prevent crises before they happen.
Because of the violence we’ve seen on school campuses across the nation and in our state.
Lawmakers in Washington are requiring schools to have an outlet to report any incidents or threats to the district – anonymously.
“I think everybody’s kind of still in shock because you’re like is this really the world we live in today, it’s frightening,”
Richland school teacher and mother of three, Sarah McGrath said she’s still replaying the images from Florida’s school shooting.
“Those are somebody’s kids, that’s somebody’s faculty, that’s somebody’s grandkids,” McGrath said. “It’s catastrophic, and it’s a catastrophic ripple effect because you think that could have been us last week.”
As a response to threats on their school campuses, like Enterprise Middle School, Richland School District is implementing SafeSchools Alert system, allowing students staff parents and the community to submit anonymous tips online.
This gives the administration the knowledge and information to hopefully prevent these tragedies.
“This is just one more tool, it’s not going to solve the problem of all the things that can happen in society, but if students feel more comfortable contacting us anonymously about something they heard then so much the better,” said Steve Aagaard, RSD spokesperson.
Information or tips can be submitted by text, email, phone or on their website.
“So flood our community with this information, so kids can know they’re not going to be in trouble, they’re not going to be ostracized, that it’s a safe place to call,” McGrath said.
To make schools safer, she said thinks the anonymous tip line is a great place to start.
“But you still must have the conversation with your kids, we have to as a country figure out where do we go from here, why is this happening, and what can we do?” McGrath said.
Teachers, parents and administrators hope the anonymous alert system is at least a step in the right direction.
Richland School District is rolling out the safe school’s alert system.
MASON, OH (FOX19) – Several Mason parents are on alert after receiving a school notice saying, “MHS students have shown signs of suicide, and have access to a firearm.”
A few parents say that something seemed a little off when they dropped off their children at the high school Monday morning.
“This morning I actually drove my daughter to school and I noticed the police presence,” said Susan Taylor, a parent in the district.
The Public Information officer for Mason City Schools, Tracey Carson, says they have increased security since the recent Florida school shooting. However, the extra officers were also at the high school following up on two reportedly disturbed students, one of whom had access to a gun.
“We had been getting tips about a student who was at risk for self-harm and who we’d had reports also has access to a firearm. Because the rumors were starting to flow we wanted to share with parents what we could,” said Carson.
That prompted a safety alert, which was sent out to the high school parents saying:
Today we are investigating situations where M-H-S students have shown signs of suicide, and have a firearm.
Carson says there wasn’t a specific threat against the students or the school. The alert still caused a brief panic for some parents.
“I was hoping that nothing would happen at Mason High School. It’s a little scary with everything going on. I just want to make sure that the kids are safe and that nothing happens,” said Amanda Schramm, whose daughter goes to the high school.
The school district has had five suicides since 2008. Carson says they are working to be more proactive to help with prevention.
“In today’s day and age we’re going to look carefully when we see students who are at-risk of depression, or at-risk for suicidal behavior and also take extra steps to make sure our schools are safe,” said Carson.
Carson says that the district’s SafeSchools Alert tip line has been helpful. So far this year it’s helped to resolve 55 incidents, half of which were suicide related, she says.
