New Training Alert: Active Shooter Response Training (Video for Students)

PublicSchoolWORKS has added a new safety video to its training catalog. The video, Active Shooter Response Training (Video for Students), covers the new active shooter training model ALICE: Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate. This new training encourages students and teachers to think strategically and be proactive should a shooting occur. Traditionally, training for active shooter situations had consisted of finding shelter and waiting for authorities to arrive. However, studies have shown that solely using this response may actually increase the number of causalities. 

To learn more about PSW’s Active shooter training or any other courses in PSW’s Staff Training system, email sales@publicschoolworks.com...

One of the major benefits of the PSW Safety Training System is that it will alert staff when training must be completed. Rockwood School District’s Director of Human Resources, Katie Reboulet, uses the system to ensure that her staff members complete their assigned training courses on time and the system automatically notifies her who has not completed training.

“Within one week of the compliance due date, all of our staff had completed their training,” said Reboulet. “The best thing is that we can now easily ensure that our employees have completed the training. The difference between this automated system and our former paper-based one is night and day.”

When former Miramonte Elementary School teacher Martin Springer bailed out of jail -- accused of lewd conduct with a child -- he was ordered to wear a GPS monitoring unit around his ankle. NBC4's Toni Guinyard takes a look at the technology.

Spotlight: School Management for Fire Safety

Last month, Hanover Park High School in East Hanover, NJ experienced an electrical fire. According to the East Hanover- Florham Park Patch, the fire was caused by a faulty heater in the school guidance counselor’s office. The East Hanover Fire Department responded to the activated fire alarm to find that the fire was already put out by a school custodian with a fire extinguisher. Because of this swift action, there was no fire or smoke damage. To read more about the incident, click here.

Ensuring that both staff and students are prepared to act in the event of a fire can save lives. PSW’s Safety Task Management System features an entire library of compliance tasks dedicated to fire & life safety including the inspection of fire extinguishers, exit signs, emergency lights and required drills. The Safety Task Management System automatically alerts the appropriate administrator when safety tasks need to be completed so schools can stay in compliance with federal, state and district mandates. The automatic reminders guarantee that compliance tasks are addressed with little effort.

To find out more about how your district can use the Safety Task Management System for fire safety and other compliance tasks, email sales@publicschoolworks.com.

Safer Schools with Steve Waldmann: “PublicSchoolWORKS delivers everything.”

Managing a school district requires more than just getting students to class. The district is in charge of transporting children to and from school on district school buses. They eat meals prepared and served by district cafeteria staff. Schools are cleaned and maintained by a district janitorial and maintenance team. All of these non-educational services fall under the supervision of managers of School Business Affairs  like Steve Waldmann. As Manager of School Business Affairs at Kings Local School District in Kings Mills, Ohio, Waldmann is responsible for the operation and maintenance of 700,000 square feet of property.

“It can be very easy to have emergencies pop up in a district,” said Waldmann. “One of the headaches I have with Ancillary Services is recognizing, with the number of things there are to do, what should be prioritized so I do not miss anything. It can begin to interfere with some of those compliance tasks that I have to make sure get done, as well.”

With a vast range of responsibilities and tasks on his plate, Waldmann turned to PublicSchoolWORKS for a solution. Kings Local implemented the EmployeeSafe Suite to not only help track and manage ancillary staff tasks and training, but also staff accident reporting and other compliance tasks.

With the EmployeeSafe Suite, faculty and staff can report staff accidents and near-miss incidents. The system then auto-emails administration when a report is submitted, guaranteeing that the incident or claim gets addressed quickly and properly to reduce risk.   

If similar incidents keep occurring, Waldmann can use the EmployeeSafe Suite to look for trends. If Waldmann finds that accidents keep occurring at similar times of day or in the same locations, he quickly sees it and the system is used to implement and manage prevention initiatives whether training, or audits or other programs.

EmployeeSafe also keeps track of and manages the completion of federal, state and district safety tasks and staff training requirements. When a safety task needs to be completed or training courses need to be assigned to employees, the system automates the process so administrators are hands-off until notified to take action.

To learn more about how your district can use EmployeeSafe for facilities management and other safety tasks, email sales@publicschoolworks.com.

Safer Schools with Beverly Broestl: Eliminating the Knot in Your Stomach

When it comes to worrying about the safety of schools, administrators often fear potential lurking hazards.  To alleviate this fear and the knot in the stomach that comes with worrying about being in compliance,  district administrators nationwide are turning to PublicSchoolWORKS’ EmployeeSafe Suite.

The online Hazard Reporting System and the Staff Accident Reporting System are online, automated systems for faculty and staff to report potential hazards and staff accidents as they occur. Once a report is submitted, the system automatically alerts the appropriate staff to take action and tracks the issue to completion. Districts are also using the EmployeeSafe Safety Task Management System to manage district, state and federally mandated safety tasks. The system automatically alerts key administrators when a safety task needs to be completed and tracks those individuals to sign-off on the completion of tasks.

The “set-it and forget-it” system ensures that administrators like Beverly Broestl,  director of HR at Montgomery County Educational Services in Dayton, Ohio , are running a safe school environment, without the worry of having to remember every task that needs to get done. “It eliminates the knot in my stomach,’ said Broestl. “It takes away the worry, day and night, that I’m forgetting something.”

To learn more about how your district can use EmployeeSafe for facility management, sales@publicschoolworks.com.

Customer Spotlight: Vandalia-Butler City Schools

Vandalia-Butler City Schools in Vandalia, OH, was tracking all of their student accidents using a standard paper and pen process. This task fell on former Business Manager Chuck Stewart, who was also responsible for evaluating this data to prevent similar accidents from reoccurring. As the business manager, Stewart had the responsibility of managing student accidents which previously required that he chase down faculty and staff in the six buildings in order to get vital information and initiate preventative measures. The process was time-consuming and inefficient.

To remedy the situation, Vandalia-Butler implemented PublicSchoolWORKS’ StudentWatch Suite for their student accident reporting. With the StudentWatch Suite, student accidents are dealt with immediately through the automated web-based system. When an incident occurs, a staff or faculty member goes online and files a student accident report, detailing the extent of the accident, as well as the student’s information and any witness details. Once the report is submitted, StudentWatch automatically notifies the designated site-level and/or district-level administrators prompting them with steps to take to manage the accident from beginning reporting to resolution. This guarantees that incidents are handled appropriately and timely.

 The StudentWatch Suite also allows administrators to easily pull accident reports for review and appropriate action. By using the accident reporting module, Stewart evaluated the nature of the incidents and where they occured in order to make the appropriate prevention plans to avert reoccurring accidents.

To find out more about how Vandalia Butler City Schools uses PublicSchoolWORKS for student safety, click here. To learn more about how your district can use the StudentWatch Suite, email sales@publicschoolworks.com.

Spotlight: Student Injuries

A recent article on an Austin-area news website reported that two elementary schools had issues in their school cafeterias when glass panels commonly referred to as “sneeze guards” shattered. In one instance a student was allegedly injured by glass shards from the breaking glass.

The school district, in a news release, stated that no students were harmed by the accident, but the student’s father said his son came home with lacerations. He also claimed that his son pulled a piece of glass out of his mouth while eating his lunch, and showed a cafeteria worker, but it was not stated whether the incident was reported. To read more about the cafeteria incident, click here.

In this situation, if the district had PublicSchoolWORKS’ Student Accident Reporting System, the cafeteria worker could have filed  a comprehensive, online accident report recording exactly what happened, including which students were involved and the extent of their injuries (regardless of how minor they were), the time of the incident, as well as if there were any witnesses. The system would then immediately notify the designated site-level and/or district-level administrators prompting them with steps to take to ensure that the incident is handled properly mandates.

The Student Accident Reporting System ensures that all student accidents are handled correctly and promptly, allowing for quicker and more effective solutions to be enacted. Without the Student Accident Reporting System, there may be discrepancies about the nature of the incident or the students’ injuries, resulting in ineffective investigations or potential legal concerns.

To learn more about how your district can use the Student Accident Reporting System, email sales@publicschoolworks.com... 

When former Miramonte Elementary School teacher Martin Springer bailed out of jail -- accused of lewd conduct with a child -- he was ordered to wear a GPS monitoring unit around his ankle. NBC4's Toni Guinyard takes a look at the technology.