The Arizona Department of Education seeks to help schools navigate a myriad of issues, including student physical and mental health, with their newly issued model school safety plan.
Since the launch in the fall of 2019, the School Safety Task Force developed a committee who tackled many issues that schools currently had. The issues were those of school climate, mental health and physical security in schools.
“Since COVID19 began making its way through the United States, hundreds of thousands of people got sick, millions of people were left filing for unemployment, and there were horrible thousands of deaths,” the report from the School Safety Task Force said.
All of this physical, emotional, and economic suffering affected students and their families. This has influenced the school task force to take action to help.
School safety needs to be exercised daily, not just during a crisis.
The School Safety Task Force encourages families and their children to strengthen current approaches to school safety by considering many ideas, implementing the recommendations provides the basis for Arizona to be a state where all students feel connected and safe in their schools.
“As an educator, I’ve consistently seen the value and importance of listening to students. Our actions and our policies as educators on campus directly impact students,” said Superintendent Kathy Hoffman.
“Student leaders throughout Arizona continually shared the impact of limited mental health resources within our schools and the need for a statewide model school safety plan to help schools learners make decisions, alongside students to create a safe school environment.”
There are many plans the School Safety Task Force is doing to make schools better. Their first plan is to have a School Safety Plan checklist, which includes the basic components of a comprehensive school safety plan. The checklist will evaluate the status of the plan.
A comprehensive plan will guide leaders in dealing with issues as they arise and help create a climate that will fall into many safety-related problems. Emergencies will also be responded to.
The principal will be responsible for creating, implementing and maintaining the plan, and all adults in the school community will have responsibility on a daily basis along with the times of crisis to make sure there is safety in all schools.
“By creating this School Safety manual, it is our hope that all school districts in Arizona will have more direction and equal access to resources that will equate to an emotionally safe campus for all students,” said Julie Kent-Patrige, a master of social work (MSW) at the Washington Elementary School District.
“Our students are the future leaders of America and keeping them emotionally safe while they are in public education so they can access academics was the ultimate goal of this task force. Our team worked hard and was amazing – I feel blessed to be part of this experience!”
The key plan includes four parts: infrastructure, prevention, intervention and response.
The infrastructure is to establish a school safety team, comprising a variety of measures that have key factors such as administrators, teachers, mental health professionals, safety/security personnel and plans to oversee climate activities.
The Infrastructure Threat Assessment Team focuses on whether a student who has threatened to harm others poses a threat of violence, and puts in place necessary measures to manage the situation.
The prevention plan focuses on school climate interventions. A positive climate provides a safe and protective environment for all members of the community, according to the plan. The actions aim to improve the school’s climate, in terms of lessening violence and increasing academic achievement.
The intervention plan focuses on-campus security, being security guards or school recourse officers. There are also mental health resources for students.
The last key plan was the response plan, there is the Emergency Operations Plan that effectively prepares a school community to respond to threatening or hazardous incidents through advanced planning.
Critical incident responses/coordination in any traumatic event that leads to strong emotional experiences, there will be support provided to the community to meet their mental health and well-being issues.
Once the crisis or threats is over, people must return quickly to normality as soon as possible and mental health will need to be supported.
The Arizona Model School Safety Plan is designed to provide a comprehensive guide to establishing a safe, supportive learning environment by encouraging school leaders to examine all three domains of safe schools: engagement, safety and environment.
The plan aims to ensure students will be safe from violence, bullying, harassment, and substance use. There will be the protection of exposure to weapons and threats, as well as theft. Emotional and physical safety in school are important, as many students are victims of physical or emotional harassment.
The plan will also assure students, staff, and parents that they are safe at school. It will ensure academic programs run smoothly, that a positive school climate for students and staff is achieved, and that schools are prepared in case of an emergency.
Contact the reporter at kasolori@asu.edu.
