Customer Highlight: Streamlining Bullying and Student Violence Incident Reporting and Investigation with Cleveland ISD

Cleveland Independent School District in Cleveland, TX, was experiencing severe bullying and student violence incidents in the district. Prior to implementing PublicSchoolWORKS’ EmployeeSafe Suite and Student Bullying and Violence Prevention Program (SBVPP), it, like most districts, received handwritten bullying reports submitted to an administrator. This paper process left room for mistakes and oftentimes led to long and sometimes inconclusive investigations.

In addition to its inefficient reporting process, Cleveland ISD did not offer training for staff or students regarding bullying or student violence incidents. Educating staff and students on the proper way to handle these situations is vital to ensuring the safety of students.

At the beginning of the 2012-2013 school year, Cleveland ISD implemented PublicSchoolWORKS’ EmployeeSafe Suite and Student Bullying and Violence Prevention Program (SBVPP) and saw its processes and response to incidents improve dramatically.

“Implementing the PublicSchoolWORKS system allows us to easily report and gather the data we need when making decisions about student safety,” said Karin Miller, Assistant Superintendent of Special Programs at Cleveland ISD. “Staff members are now trained on key student safety topics such as bullying prevention, suicide prevention and depression in students. The program also gives students and parents the ability to report incidents electronically and auto-notifies appropriate administrators of a report based their security level, thus ensuring that issues are being addressed as quickly as possible.”

Instead of chasing down paper incident reports and potentially misplacing them, administrators get an alert via email when a report is filed. All actions regarding an incident are documented and maintained within the system, giving administrators easy access to data and the ability to pull trend reports. 

Both staff and students now have access to an abundance of information about bullying and student violence prevention. Anonymous reporting mechanisms, hotlines and parent portals are new and very beneficial tools that are now available to the Cleveland ISD community. Even the district’s police department is involved with the student safety program. Each police officer receives training on various issues to ensure they understand some of the situations Cleveland ISD’s students face.

“The administrative processes surrounding student safety concerns are much easier to track now that PublicSchoolWORKS is managing it,” said Miller. “We are confident that our staff and students know the appropriate actions to take should they encounter a bullying or student violence incident. PublicSchoolWORKS has allowed us to shift our focus from damage control to education.”

To learn more about how your district can use EmployeeSafe Suite and the SBVPP to streamline student safety, email sales@publicschoolworks.com.

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Industry News: District Administrations’ Readers’ Choice Top 100 Products Awards Program

District Administration has opened their nomination period for the 2013 Readers’ Choice Top 100 Products Awards! PublicSchoolWORKS has achieved this distinction five years in a row and is aiming for a sixth! With your help, we will achieve it!

To nominate either or both of our suites, go to www.districtadministration.com/top100 to fill out and submit the nomination form by September 1, 2013.

We appreciate your nomination of PublicSchoolWORKS’ award-winning suites to be among the top ed-tech products!

Customer Highlight: Intervening Before Issues Escalate: Student Behavior Management with Dublin Schools

For Dublin City Schools, Ohio’s 12^th largest school district with 19 schools and 14,400 enrolled students, traditional paper processes for recording and tracking student behavior issues was cumbersome. Dublin needed a more reliable and timely system.

PublicSchoolWORKS’ Student Behavior Management System was the solution for Dublin City Schools. The system automates and streamlines the administrative process related to student behavior concerns, thus improving and speeding up the communication between teachers and administrators and assuring schools are in compliance with reporting issues.

The Student Behavior Management System allows administrators to easily track referrals, documentation, and positive behavior reports, as well as pull behavior trend reports. The system helps schools stay in compliance with state and federal mandates by automating the exportation of behavior records to state and federal agencies. It also eliminates school duplicate entries and recordkeeping.

Dublin City Schools was able to easily streamline processes in order to effectively address both negative and positive behavior, while increasing effectiveness and recordkeeping.

“The Student Behavior Management system creates a better environment for students by eliminating bullying, promoting better attendance and rewarding positive behavior,” said Santa-Emma. “It solves problems before they start.”

To learn more about how your district can use the StudentWatch Suite to streamline student behavior management, email sales@publicschoolworks.com

Customer Highlight: Using Student Behavior Management to Achieve with Kings Local School District

In 2011, Kings Local School’s Kings Junior High School (KJHS) applied for the Ohio Department of Education’s Ohio School to Watch (OSTW) program. The OSTW program recognizes exemplary middle schools that achieve academically, are socially equitable and developmentally responsive and have an organizational structure in place to support these goals. The program also required that students know and meet behavioral expectations of the staff, parents, district and community. 

Using PublicSchoolWORKS’ Student Behavior Management System, Kings Local was able to develop a student behavior program that was easy to implement and enforce.

Automating the recordkeeping and reporting of student behavior incidents, the Student Behavior Management System streamlines communication between teachers and administrators. It also ensures that schools are in compliance with reporting mandates.

KJHS was named an Ohio School to Watch for the 2011-2012 school year and was one of only three schools in the state to receive this prestigious designation. PublicSchoolWORKS was deemed to have been a key piece in achieving this recognition as the Student Behavior Management System helped addressed key metrics.

To learn more about how your district can use the StudentWatch Suite to streamline student behavior management, email sales@publicschoolworks.com.

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Customer Highlight: Achieving a Certificate of Recognition with Chinook’s Edge

Earning a Certificate of Recognition (COR) for workplace safety was a major goal for Chinook’s Edge School Division 73 in Alberta, Canada. Meeting the safety standards required for certification would not only significantly reduce injury rates; it would also earn the division premium rebates through the Workers Compensation Board’s (WCB) Partnerships in Injury Reduction (PIR) program.

As the sole Safety Officer for the rural division’s 38 campuses, Linden Lonsberry is tasked with conducting investigations, training or re-training workers, managing safety tasks, making safety recommendations and addressing hazard and near-miss reports. Because of his already full workload, he needed help developing a health and safety program that met the rigorous standards put forth by the WCB.

To accomplish this, Lonsberry used the EmployeeSafe Suite to schedule, manage and sustain his safety program, which includes staff training, incident management, safety tasks (inspections, drills and other tasks) and more. With the help of EmployeeSafe Suite, Lonsberry knew the required training, safety tasks, and responses to accident and near-miss reports had been completed and he was able to easily provide the division’s inspection documents for the auditors’ review.

In order to be eligible for a COR audit, a health and safety program has to consist of the following eight elements:

·         Management, leadership and organizational commitment

·         Hazard identification and assessment

·         Hazard control

·         Ongoing inspections

·         Emergency response

·         Qualification, orientation and training

·         Accident and incident investigation

·         Program administration

“PublicSchoolWORKS helped us meet the COR requirements, with four out of the eight elements being completely automated—making them hands-off for administration,” said Lonsberry.

Receiving the COR has earned the division a 20 percent reduction in WCB premiums – a savings of approximately $43,000 per year. Using the EmployeeSafe Suite, Chinook’s Edge also saw fewer injuries and a reduction in injury-related costs. The division’s WCB claims totaled nearly $250,000 in 2003; they are now approximately $20,000, putting Chinook’s Edge 51.69 percent below the industry average for WCB claims.

To learn more about how Chinooks Edge uses PublicSchoolWORKS, click here.