What are we missing? What can parents and educators do to provide extra support? Perhaps the most critical thing we can do is ask children, rather than guessing or telling them. As an educator, when you see a dramatic change in a child, there’s usually a traumatic event that has occurred. Knowing how to spot warning signs and respond in a supportive way is essential to helping students understand how to reduce anxiety, stress and other issues.

What are the warning signs of anxiety or depression?

Weight gains or loss: One of the common reasons that young people gain weight is actually abuse, so weight certainly is something educators should be paying attention to. The idea is not to call students out but rather to find an indirect way of supporting students’ mental health.

So, for example, a district in Naperville, Illinois, had students do some exercise around a track before school. They found that if students could get their resting heart rate up to one-and-a-half times their resting rate, they actually did better on standardized tests

Severe mood swings/lashing out: As with weight gain, something has triggered these behaviors. Whether students are modeling something that they’ve seen at home or having a shame-based response, people who feel exposed are more likely to act out in rage.

Teachers’ first response here should be to understand how much information they can get from the child about what they are experiencing. Next would be an invitation to the parents, saying, “These are some of the things that are going on at school. Could you help me understand what’s happening at home?” It’s also informative to ask, “What are they saying about school at home? Are they talking about frustrations?”

The goal is not to make the parents feel like they’re doing something wrong.The goal is to create an alliance with parents so that you can all understand the root of the issue. Is the student being bullied at school? Is something happening on a bus or on the way to school? When you see extreme mood swings, there’s almost always a story behind it.

Disengagement/sleeping in class: Sleeping in class is a clear warning sign, but teachers should also be on the lookout for students who have their heads down every day. They’re disengaged, they’re not making eye contact, and usually a lack of eye contact is shame-based, right? They don’t want to be seen. These individuals who don’t feel part of the class are more likely to start skipping class. Kids can fall through the cracks, and post-COVID a lot of kids are having a hard time going back to school because they were actually comfortable doing everything online.

Excessive screen time: Based on research, the No. 1 thing that is triggering adolescent anxiety today is screen time. Educators (and certainly parents) should do everything they can to be aware of how much a child is using a device. I know some schools have made the choice to not have phones in the classroom. This may help students focus during course time but it doesn’t address the cause of excessive screen time, which is often an emotional issue they’re struggling with.

It’s important to note here that there’s a difference between being an adolescent and being depressed. To some degree, mood swings and anxiety are a normal part of adolescence. The warning sign is when a student is anxious or depressed to the point where they say, “I just can’t get up.” If they’re coming up on finals or other key events, they need time to work through the stress but if concerning behaviors continue for a month or more, they need to be addressed.

How districts can support students’ mental health

Build a support team: Schools have the opportunity to influence the children’s minds in many ways, but it has to be a team effort. Teachers and the school counselor should be a part of the team. Districts can also help by setting up peer support networks. My children have been a part of a national peer-to-peer suicide prevention group called the Hope Squad. Giving students the opportunity to connect with someone their age may be the most powerful way districts can support their students’ mental health. The more support students have, the more connected they feel and the better off they are.

More from DA: This is how many teachers would carry a gun to make their school safer

Create ways for struggling students to succeed: When students who are struggling with mental health are in school, teachers can really help by creating moments for these individuals to succeed. It may be as straightforward as saying, “You know what? You came to school today and I know what was hard.” Having somebody pay attention to the fact that they stepped through those doors matters because when students are suffering, having somebody paying attention can make an enormous difference.

Hold community-building events: When it comes to fostering social connection, districts have a unique capacity to hold activities and events that bring students, teachers and families together. I think what we did here in Utah during the pandemic was actually quite incredible. Even throughout the year when everyone was out of classrooms, our schools continued to host sporting events and as many other activities as possible. I believe our state held something like 95% of scheduled activities, which really helped maintain some sense of normalcy and community.

Meet students and families where they are: Of course not all students attend events, so the next challenge is identifying those students who are struggling and reaching out to their family members so they can get the support they need. Working parents may have a hard time connecting with school or district leaders in person, but tools like ParentGuidance.org can be an enormous help. It’s a free resource for parents created by licensed therapists (including me) and districts across the country use it to provide families with information about mental health and practical steps they can take to talk their child through tough issues such as bullying, self-harm or when to report something suspicious to a trusted adult.

ParentGuidance.org also offers informative courses for parents. For example, we recently finished up a course to help parents understand ADHD and share some things they can do to help children with ADHD. Sharing resources is not enough, though. It takes more time and more energy. Why not periodically do Zoom meetings with parents, not only the ones whose children are struggling, but the ones who are thriving?

Creating these opportunities to connect over time shows families that you value their feedback. I believe that if schools, families, students and mental health professionals work with each other harmoniously, we’ll see much more effective learning for every student.

The post 4 warning signs that students are struggling with mental health. And 4 solutions. appeared first on District Administration.

Still, bullying ranks above active shooters as teachers’ No. 1 safety concern, RAND’s researchers found.

Meanwhile, a growing number of Americans are worried that schools are not safe from gun violence. Some 57% of Americans now say they think the schools in their community are safe from gun violence, a drop from the 65% who said the same in 2019, an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist University national poll found.

More than 330 people were injured or killed in approximately 300 school shootings in 2022; there were 250 shooting incidents in 2021, the RAND Corporation reports. “These two most recent years have seen well more than double the number of shooting incidents at schools each year throughout the 2000s,” the authors of the study said. “All told, more than 330,000 students have been exposed to gun violence in a school setting in the past two decades.”

Teachers remain divided on the issue of letting educators carry firearms. While 54% said it would make schools less safe, 20% said arming teachers would improve security. The rest landed in the middle, saying guns would make schools neither more nor less safe. More white teachers than Black teachers said they believe arming teachers would improve safety while male teachers in rural schools were most likely to say they would carry a firearm at school if allowed.

More from DA: Kentucky superintendent suspended as two other leaders call it quits 

Several past surveys by other researchers have found lower levels of support among teachers for arming themselves, RAND’s researchers add. Meanwhile, about half of teachers think more common safety measures—such as locks, ID badges, cameras, and security staff—improve their school’s climate.

Arming teachers: What’s next?

Administrators and policymakers are encouraged to take a look at school districts that have more expansive teacher-carry programs to understand if the policy has made schools safer or if there have been unintended consequences, such as accidental discharges of firearms. How parents, students and staff have responded to the policy in those districts should also be considered.

Here are other steps that RAND recommends K12 administrators take before arming teachers:

1. Assess their outcomes potential outcomes by conducting a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of teacher-carry programs.
2. Develop risk analysis approaches that focus on both frequent, lower-level forms of school violence (such as bullying) and less likely, extreme forms of school violence—such as shootings.
3. Develop a deeper understanding of the sources of teachers’ safety concerns.
4. Identify how fears of victimization and other safety concerns contribute to teacher and principal turnover and to student enrollment, attendance and academic performance.
5. Take the pulse of parents, teachers, administrators, and students about school safety measures. Disaggregate feedback by type of community to zero in on the perceptions of school safety.

The post This is how many teachers would carry a gun to make their school safer appeared first on District Administration.

The food truck will, of course, be a big part of Lincoln Public Schools’ culinary CTE program. But getting the truck going will require the skills and participation of students studying graphic design, automotive repair, business and law, among other subjects. “This food truck is a mobile classroom that is cross-curricular,” says Filippelli, Rhode Island’s 2023 Superintendent of the Year.

Lincoln Public Schools bought the five-year-old food truck from a restaurant with $125,000 worth of help from the Rhode Island Department of Education. Three graphic design students, including one who is special needs, have designed the wrap to cover the exterior of the truck, now dubbed the “Lion’s Mane” after the district’s mascot. Business and law students will review state regulations to ensure the truck has all the appropriate licenses.

The CTE focus jibes with the “vision of a graduate” framework Filippelli and his team are now finalizing after three years of work. “That’s the curriculum driver for everything we want our little Lions to be when they come to preschool and what we want our seniors to exit as when they graduate,” he says.

That vision, however, goes nowhere without the facilities to support i. Lincoln Public Schools, a suburban district of about 3,200 students, recently completed a $60 million renovation of its high school and is now building a $9 million physical education center. In the fall, voters will be asked to approve a $25 million bond to fund new gymnasiums, makerspaces, STEM spaces and reimagined cafeterias at the district’s elementary schools, where the media centers are also being renovated and updated.

“We’ve got a lot of infrastructure to support the curriculum,” Filippelli explains. “By the time we’re done, we’re probably going to spend close to $100M in renovations. That is really exciting.”

Why you need a second therapy dog

Meeting the social-emotional needs of students and adults presents one of the biggest issues that Filippelli says he and his team are facing as the school year winds down. “Last school year, we were coming out of COVID and we came out pretty strong but this year, getting back into those routines and putting COVID in the rear-view mirror, that really has been a challenge,” he says. “There have been some behaviors that we’ve had to address that just leave you scratching your head.”

The district has used ESSER funds to hire extra social workers and psychologists and ramped up professional development on trauma-informed practices. The district is also now home to a therapy dog, a Labradoodle named Willow. “She has made an incredible difference when it comes time for state testing and finals exams,” Filippelli says. “We’re considering getting a second one because it has made a huge impact to have a therapy dog here.”

Lincoln has not struggled to hire teachers as much as it has in filling administrative vacancies. The district has received about half the applications that it normally gets for an open position.

More from DA: This low-profile staff position can save districts millions each year 

Filippelli is seeing both lower enrollments in college administrative training programs and fewer teachers excited about moving to central office. The pay for a beginning administrator—such as an assistant principal—is not that much higher than for an experienced teacher who also earns a stipend for additional instructional duties. Some educators may not consider the pay increase worth the tilt in work-life balance for an administrator who is obligated to attend school events multiple nights a week, among other duties.

Can schools provide everything?

Filippelli is deeply involved in state and regional school safety efforts, including with SENTRY, a Northeastern University-based think tank that is backed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and is looking into the role artificial intelligence can play in K12 security, among other research. The organization has also analyzed Lincoln’s lockdown drills.

He is also an adjuct instructor in the principal development program at Providence College and often works with state legislators on laws that will impact education, both positively and negatively. He is concerned about a bill that, at a cost of $15 million, would provide universal free meals to all students and the financial strain that could place on the state’s education system.

“Ever since we became mobile hospitals during COVID, parents have this expectation that schools just need to provide everything,” he concludes. “As you provide more, responsibility gets pulled away from parents, and when people have responsibilities pulled away from them, you get used to that really quickly.”

The post How this superintendent is fueling multidisciplinary learning with a food truck appeared first on District Administration.

The path forward is fraught and full of challenges, as the problem’s scope, scale and impact are unparalleled and unprecedented. The most recent State of Mental Health in Today’s Schools survey collected insights from more than 350 school social workers, teachers, counselors, administrators, and district leaders, finding that 85% of respondents agree or strongly agree that students are more stressed and anxious than in previous school years.

The consequences cascade beyond just emotional well-being. Nearly 90% of survey respondents indicated that stress and anxiety negatively impact academic outcomes. With math and reading scores falling across the board, it’s clear that helping students learn requires more than just excellent academic opportunities.

As school administrators give their best to help their staff and students meet the moment, here are three ways they can lead through the student mental health crisis.

1. Prioritize self-care and personal well-being

Administrators are both sounding boards and problem solvers, encountering and encapsulating the trauma and challenges of their staff, students, and communities. If you’re feeling burned out and overwhelmed by these acute challenges, you’re not alone. One education report found that 85% of principals are experiencing “job-related stress,” and nearly half are managing systems of burnout.

To effectively support their students and staff, administrators must first affix their own proverbial oxygen masks first. In other words, they must prioritize self-care and personal well-being. Prioritize self-care by making time for habits and activities that are essential to maintaining physical and mental well-being. At the same time, establish clear boundaries, lean on your administrative team and celebrate successes.

Most importantly, seek support early and often. This might include building a support network among colleagues, friends and family. It can also include help from mental health professionals who can help you prioritize your own mental health, ensuring you are best positioned to support the people around you.

Leading through a crisis is especially difficult, and the most effective leaders will take care of themselves first.

2. Team up to multiply impact

Students are struggling, but they don’t want to struggle alone. In fact, the State of Mental Health in Today’s Schools survey found that 70% of survey respondents agree or strongly agree that students are willing to communicate their needs and ask for help from a trusted adult at school.

However, 85% of respondents agree or strongly agree that they wish they had more tools or resources to help students address their mental health challenges. Specifically, the survey revealed that just 35% of respondents believe their school or local community has a tool for reporting, supporting and maintaining student mental health challenges and outcomes.

More from DA: This low-profile staff position can save districts millions each year https://districtadministration.com/this-low-profile-staff-position-can-save-districts-millions-each-year/

Teachers or mentors often resort to casual chats in corridors, exchanging documents or sending emails to convey student requirements to counselors, administrators and auxiliary staff.

Collaborative case management platforms equip schools with the necessary resources to address urgent concerns. By transcending rudimentary or makeshift communication techniques, cutting-edge digital record-keeping and integrated case management systems enable staff members to effortlessly link students to indispensable support services. This enables school personnel, community resources and families to work together to help students thrive.

Some schools are even forming strategic partnerships with local healthcare facilities, making it easier to offer immediate mental healthcare services to students. Regardless of the methodology, administrators affect the most change when they team up with internal and external resources to multiply impact.

3. Monitor progress and continuously adapt

When it comes to improving students’ mental health outcomes, success is a journey, not a destination. Administrators best navigate this course by identifying, measuring and analyzing key indicators of improvement.

This might include improved attendance, elevated academic performance, more active engagement in school functions, or other anecdotal evidence. It might also require surveying or assessing students to acquire data-based insights into evolving needs, required interventions and support efficacy. School administrators can measure outcomes related to student mental health by implementing comprehensive assessment strategies.

Equipped with these insights, continue to adapt your offerings to meet shifting needs, allocating time and resources appropriately. In this way, administrators can ensure that their efforts are directed at the interventions making the most impact.

Empowering the next generation to thrive

Schools are working tirelessly to support their students, and yet it doesn’t seem like it’s quite enough. By prioritizing self-care, fostering collaboration, leveraging resources and continuously measuring and adapting to meet the needs of students, administrators can lead their schools through this difficult period.

It is crucial to remain persistent and dedicated in the face of adversity, as the well-being and success of students depend on the collective efforts of educators, administrators and the community. By embracing innovation and fostering an environment of support, schools can effectively address the student mental health crisis and empower the next generation to thrive.

The post 3 keys to leading through the student mental health crisis appeared first on District Administration.

“I want our two principals to understand they have the freedom to try something new and just because one attempt didn’t work, that doesn’t in any way hamper my support for them trying something else that’s different,” Perry explains. “We’re going to try something new again.”

The 450-student Arlee Joint School District, which is part of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes is 65% Native American and operates on a four-day school week. The schedule has helped the district attract and retain teachers who are willing to travel to the district from Missoula, which is about 20 miles away and home to the University of Montana.

Trying new things also means replacing outdated facilities with modernized schools. Arlee is now building a new space for grades 3-6 to replace a facility that is nearly more than 90 years old. The $14 million project, which is an extension of the K-2 building, is being financed with ESSER funds and bonds approved by local voters.

More from DA: How this superintendent is amping up the power of his small N.J. district

To get those bonds passed, Perry invited community members on some eye-opening tours of the old building. “A lot of community members went to school here,” he notes. “Their memories of what the school looked like 30 or 40 years ago is not what the school looks like now. In their mind, it’s the same school they went to and it was fine.”

The project will feature a larger media center with a maker space and room for Salish language and Indian studies programs. There will also be formal—and creative—outdoor learning spaces right outside elementary classrooms. “We have mountains all around and it’s absolutely gorgeous,” Perry says. “We want our kids outside.”

‘The good that can come from school’

A Montana native, Perry says there is a misconception that education is not highly valued on Indian reservations. Still, a challenge the superintendent and his team face is a side effect of the large number of Arlee students who are being raised by their grandparents.

“Our guardians have a tendency to skip a generation,” Perry says. “Some of the guardians of our current students don’t understand what the landscape of education looks like, that it’s no longer a teacher standing in front of the room and just lecturing and trying to get kids to understand the instruction.”

Staff also sometimes have trouble connecting with guardians who had bad experiences in school. “We get a good amount of pushback from some grandparents when we contact them about issues we may be having with a student,” he says. “Some of those grandparents attended boarding schools and were unbelievably mistreated so they don’t have in their minds the good that can come from school.”

Arlee is also dealing with a severe shortage of classified staff. Recruiting bus drivers, custodians and paraprofessionals has been “10 times harder” than hiring teachers. He has received zero applications this year for vacant bus driver and custodian positions. “With the change in what people can make in other professions, to get someone to be a special education paraprofessional for what we can afford to pay them is almost impossible,” he points out. “We can’t afford to increase pay like a private business can.”

‘We care about them everywhere’

Arlee’s educators are now devoting much of their focus to literacy, particularly reading comprehension, across the K12 curriculum. “We will do all we can to bring in parents, guardians to get them involved, to show how important reading is,” he says. “If we make a concerted effort in that area, I think we’re going to see growth everywhere else.”

Perry also prioritizes staying involved in the day-to-day life of his schools, a task he says is easier in a smaller district. He helps coach high school volleyball, is licensed to cover bus routes, fills in as a substitute teacher and often drives several hours to Arlee’s away games, among other activities. He believes he’s also the first superintendent in decades who has lived in the Arlee community.

“I make sure students know that I’m interested in them 24/7—it’s not just when they’re on their campus. We care about how they’re doing everywhere,” he concludes.

The post How this superintendent is giving his educators the freedom to change K12 education appeared first on District Administration.

Two South Carolina school districts—Fort Mill Schools and the Clover School District—are among the latest to take aim at social media companies for their negative impact on students. The lawsuit targets Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), TikTok, Snapchat and Google, which owns YouTube.

“We’re hopeful that this will maybe help some of these companies put in some extra safeguards for kids,” Chief Communication Officer of Fort Mill Schools Joe Burke told WCNC. “We heard last night that a lot of kids on this platform are in the 8 to 12 range which shouldn’t even be on those platforms.”

Also this week, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a new mental health advisory addressing social media use and its effects on youth mental health.

“We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis—one that we must urgently address,” Murthy said in a statement.

While social media poses a clear and immediate threat to students, as the headlines suggest, do school districts stand a chance in their fight to reduce the risk?

Dr. Aaron Saiger, professor of law at Fordham University, says their chances may be slim.

“I am not optimistic about the success of these lawsuits,” he says. “Many, many products have adverse effects on children that create costs for schools. These costs include, but are not limited to, mental health problems for students. Without making any claims about relative magnitude, products that come immediately to mind include television shows, phones, sugary foods, sneakers and music. All of these products arguably harm children but also bring value—which includes enjoyment—to their users.”

He adds that we’ve seen these heightened states of fear and “moral panic” before surrounding new behaviors and technologies that young children take a liking to.

“TV shows, rock music and video games have all been viewed by adults as a scourge that needed to be stopped lest they destroy children and childhood,” he says. “In earlier periods, these conflicts played out over genres like films and even novels. This is not to deny that new kinds of entertainment often do create new problems. They do. But they also create value that hidebound adults cannot—or do not want—to see.”

That being said, he doesn’t think the lawsuits are “preposterous.” If a company produces a potentially harmful product and doesn’t take measures to mitigate the negative effects it has on its audience, they’re responsible for it.

“A company is liable for placing a dangerous product on the market if it failed to take reasonable steps to mitigate the danger its products pose, or if its product is so ‘inherently’ dangerous that the dangers vastly outweigh whatever compensating value it offers,” he explains. “My lay understanding of social media is that it is not the latter; social media provides an enormous value to many people, including children.”

“I do not know whether there are ways to mitigate the bad effects of social media on children that would be realistically achievable and reasonably effective,” he adds. “For example, could companies actually enforce minimum age requirements, and would that help mental health? If there are such steps, social media companies would be wise to take them. But such steps, to be reasonably effective in this context, cannot destroy the value of the product.”

More from DA: By the numbers: The pandemic and its ‘complicated’ toll on K12 education

Another complex element is the idea that students are seemingly addicted to social media, something that Murthy points out in his advisory.

“Small studies have shown that people with frequent and problematic use can experience changes in brain structure similar to changes seen in individuals with substance use or gambling addictions,” the advisory reads.

Another national survey revealed that one-third of girls ages 11-15 reported feeling “addicted” to a social media platform. But according to Saiger, it’s a loaded term in this context.

“It comes from medicine and implies a physical dependency,” he says. “Courts might well hold that it is per se unreasonable to try purposely to ‘addict’ children. But companies are entitled to design products that consumers enjoy using and therefore want to use more of.”

But the lawsuits clearly put pressure on social media companies, he notes. As with the general surgeon’s advisory, they stir public conversation and potential regulatory intervention, regardless of whether the lawsuits are dropped or resolved in favor of the company.

“They might also motivate state and federal regulators to look into the issue,” he says. “The companies might reasonably look for proactive measures that would satisfy some of the districts’ complaints in order to head off adverse regulatory action. This could look like a win to the districts.”

The post Do school districts stand a chance suing social media giants? appeared first on District Administration.

A federal study released Wednesday titled, “Report on the Condition of Education 2023,” compiled multiple studies that point to Covid’s impact on schools, students and teachers in 2021-22.

The report, which was published by the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), indicates that, overall, public school enrollment took a hit in 2021 with 39.4 million students, a decline of 3% compared to 2019 figures. On the other hand, data on America’s public charter schools tell a different story. For more than a decade, public charter school enrollment has been on the rise as enrollment has more than doubled to 3.7 million students since the fall of 2010, an overall increase of 1.9 million students.

In addition, there were signs of rebounding for pre-K and kindergarten students. For instance, the number of 3- and 4-year-olds in school grew by 10 percent to 50% in 2021 compared to 2020.

“The condition of education, as one might expect, is a complicated picture for the United States,” NCES Commissioner Peggy G. Carr said in a media briefing with reporters. “And things have been complicated more, I think, by the past two or three years, as we have struggled with a pandemic impact across our nation.”

Student achievement, particularly in math and reading, also took a hit. According to student performance from the National Assessment of Education Progress, fewer 4th-grade students were “NAEP Proficient” (33%) in reading in 2022 than in 2019 (35%). Math scores fell even more as only 36% of students achieved “NAEP Proficient” in 2022 compared to 41% in 2019.

More from DA: Most teachers will return next year, but they want these 2 challenges resolved

Also among the rather dim conclusions drawn from the report is the pandemic’s widespread impact on teacher shortages in 2020-21, particularly in subjects like foreign languages, special education, physical sciences, bilingual education, mathematics and computer science. Also contributing to these openings is a shrinking teacher pipeline, the research adds. In the span of 30 years, enrollment in traditional teacher prep programs has fallen 30%. Completion rates have also dipped by 28%.

Added to this exodus of teachers are districts’ difficulties in hiring mental health support staff. As of April 2022, nearly 70% of public schools reported an increase in the number of students seeking mental health services in their schools since the start of the pandemic. However, only 12% of schools “strongly agreed” that they were able to effectively provide the mental health services students needed.

“These challenges include declines in math and reading scores during the pandemic and greater numbers of students seeking mental health services,” Carr said in a statement. “This is happening against the backdrop of difficulties hiring teachers and changes in enrollment patterns; for example, a drop and partial rebound for public pre-K and kindergarten enrollment. Our understanding of these issues will grow as NCES continues to collect and report data in the coming months and years.”

The post By the numbers: The pandemic and its ‘complicated’ toll on K12 education appeared first on District Administration.

“We try to offer a very wide breadth of programming—extracurricular and academic—that outmatches our size,” says Smith, who after seven years leading the Point Pleasant Beach School District was named New Jersey’s 2023 Superintendent of the Year.

What Smith is most excited about right now is the expansion of what his district calls “Gull Flight School”—which is not an aeronautics program. Rather, it gives students a chance to soar academically with more than 40 dual-enrollment courses in conjunction with nearby Ocean County College, Smith explains.

“We’re seeing more and more students get so many credits in high school, they’re entering college with a full year under their belts,” he continues. “And our parents and community members are now understanding how much of a tuition savings that is.”

More from DA: Teacher morale has not totally tanked. And here are 5 ways to rebuild it. 

The expansion of Gull Flight School is a natural outgrowth of one of the district’s most distinctive achievements. Point Pleasant Beach schools often have among the highest percentage of students taking AP classes in New Jersey. “Sometimes it’s hard for little schools to stand out because we can’t do as much,” Smith explains. “Our conversations are about access, and equity through access and how do you get all students to work at the level they’re capable of—and we believe in that work and we’ve made great strides.”

The other big initiative that has Smith fired up is Point Pleasant Beach schools’ “gamified” staff wellness program. The district offers free yoga and gym workouts and dozens of other events and activities in which teachers and other staff can win rewards. “Our tagline is ‘A healthy staff room is a healthy classroom,'” Smith says. “We believe that by attending to the social-emotional needs of our staff members, we get better performance out of everybody.”

How Point Pleasant Beach schools tackle challenges

Keeping Smith up at night is enrollment in his district. The community sustained heavy damage in Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and many older houses have been demolished and replaced by more expensive homes. This has made it harder for young families to settle in Point Pleasant Beach. The district has about 100 tuition-paying students, and its wide range of projects is a key selling point.

For instance, Smith and the school board found a way to maintain AP language programs even though only a handful of students were enrolled in the courses. Computer science and engineering classes were added when the district converted the high school media center into an “innovation collaboratory.” And when students asked for business classes for two years, the district launched a business program.

“We build what needs to be built,” Smith says. “We try to be responsive to what the needs are and we try to read the tea leaves for what’s going to position our students best for their post-secondary outcomes and dreams.”

One key to all these efforts is maintaining a strong working relationship with the school board and its president, in particular. That means Smith and his team try to be transparent when explaining the rationale behind their decisions to board members. It’s also important to remain flexible in adapting to the styles of communication and leadership of each school board member. Finally, establishing boundaries between the roles of district staff and elected officials also fosters productive working relationships.

“It’s not always rainbows and unicorns, but it’s an open line of communication,” Smith concludes. “If you continually remind everyone we have to be doing what’s in the best interest of kids—that’s what’s going to drive our programming, that’s where our budget’s going to go, that’s what every move is about—it helps you keep some of the ancillary challenges at bay.”

The post How this superintendent is amping up the power of his small N.J. district appeared first on District Administration.

The department’s Office for Civil Rights stepped in when participants at school board meeting complained that the district’s library book screening process was discriminatory based on sex, race, color, and national origin. Investigators found that Forsyth County Schools’ response was not sufficient to “ameliorate any resultant racially and sexually hostile environment,” the department said in announcing a resolution of the complaint.

“Communications at board meetings conveyed the impression that books were being screened to exclude diverse authors and characters, including people who are LGBTQI+ and authors who are not white, leading to increased fears and possibly harassment,” the Office for Civil Rights found. “Indeed, one student commented at a district school board meeting about the school environment becoming more harsh in the aftermath of the book removals and his fear about going to school.”
students expressing similar views.

In January 2022, Forsyth County Schools removed eight books from its media centers due to “sexually explicit content.” The titles included The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, Looking for Alaska by John Green, Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez and Me Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews, the Forsyth County News reported.

That removal process began when a parent complained about content in the books, according to the Forsyth County News.

The Office for Civil Rights acknowledged that the district’s review committee “rejected suggestions to handle challenged books in ways that it believed would target certain groups of students.” The district also posted statements on its media center websites that the resources provided in its libraries should reflect the students in each school community.

More from DA: A surprise firing and 2 suspensions mark ongoing shuffle of K12 leadership

The committee also asked families to talk to their children about not checking out books that do not match their values or beliefs.

The resolution of the civil rights complaint now requires Forsyth County Schools to issue a statement to students explaining the library book removal process and to offer support to students who have been impacted. This includes explaining that the removal of the eight books in January 2022 was based solely on “sexually explicit content” and that future screenings will consider whether books “promote diversity by including materials about and by authors and illustrators of all cultures.”

Each Forsyth County middle and high school will also conduct a climate to determine whether additional steps need to be taken to ensure students do not feel discriminated against when books are challenged and reviewed.

The post Removal of 8 books may have created fear and harassment in Georgia district, feds say appeared first on District Administration.

Dr. Kenneth Trump, president of the National School Safety and Security Services, says this school year is, “unfortunately,” exactly what he anticipated. Even further, he says there are no signs of these threats slowing down anytime soon.

“The school year lived up to the expectation with heightened verbal and physical aggression, endless bomb and shooting swatting threats, school shootings and other challenges,” he says. “Regrettably, there are no indications of it letting up as school leaders and their teams head into the summer in preparation for opening the next school year in just a few months.”

These threats were a reality for many school districts across the country, including Portsmouth City Schools in Ohio. Josh Morris, the district’s assistant superintendent, says his district faced some of the exact same issues outlined by Trump.

“Overall, this year has been a challenging year,” Morris says. “We have faced many challenges that districts across the country have faced from increased student misbehavior, virtual, social media threats, increased staff absenteeism and a shortage of substitute teachers.”

But among all of these pressures, he says swatting hoaxes, a troubling trend that continues to make headlines, was the most egregious threat to his district.

“The most prominent safety threats we had to address were direct and indirect threats via social media,” he says. “Predominantly, the threats surface through the app Snapchat. We had approximately three threats of this manner this school year.”

As a result, there was widespread fear and uncertainty among Portsmouth students, staff and families, according to Morris. He says that the threats usually came as students arrived for school that day—”a very challenging time to occur,” he adds—which led to substantial losses in instructional time, which sometimes carried over into the next day.

“During the initial time of the threat, our building administration, law enforcement and district administrators worked to assess the threat, make important educational and safety decisions based on the information at hand, and communicate to our stakeholders as law enforcement works to find the source of the threat.”

The district also worked closely with its students during the first and second threat events in an effort to understand if these concerns were known ahead of time. To Morris’ surprise, some students knew the threats were coming but were afraid to report them to staff members for fear of getting others in trouble.

“With the lack of students willing to report safety concerns and not fully understanding the risks of not reporting threats, the district safety team had a brainstorming session and decided to immediately use resources from the ‘Sandy Hook Promise’ and started a district-wide ‘see something, say something’ campaign for an entire week,” he says, which they plan to incorporate next school year and beyond.

“This was highly successful as students came forward, after the campaign, reporting potential safety risks,” he says. “Those reported situations were able to be proactively assessed and addressed accordingly.”

He also says the district has been allocating federal, state and local dollars toward security, a necessary component of school safety that Trump cautions leaders to find balance with.

“We are concerned that many schools are using federal pandemic relief money and state grants on weapons detection systems, metal detectors, panic buttons and other security products to help them solve a political problem—a school community relations problem—as much as, if not more so than, an actual school safety problem,” Trump says.

Districts must carefully design their security budgets to avoid what Trump calls “security theater,” the process of investing too heavily into physical security to make a school environment seem safer than it really is.

“I predict many of these expenditures will end up in school districts dropping leases and refusing to incorporate dollars from their district operating budgets to sustain, repair and replace these items once the grant funding goes dry,” he says.

More from DA: 5 strategies for encouraging students to report safety threats

Among Portsmouth leadership, Morris says the district has placed an increased focus on school safety as they’ve “spent much time and money to put in place many processes, procedures, strategies and physical safety measures,” he explains. As for the 2023-24 school year, they’ve already begun preparations to ensure the safety of their students and staff, including establishing threat assessment teams and protocols in each school building, training every staff member on the threat assessment process, practicing safety protocol to identify strengths and weaknesses and strengthening partnerships with their local agencies that can support their district, among other steps.

These preparations are prime examples of what Trump expects to see happening in school districts around the nation this summer. But for those unsure where to begin, he advises leaders to develop strategies focused on people, rather than simply targeting school “hardening” tactics.

“As a civil litigation expert witness on some of the nation’s highest-profile school shootings, while the facts and merits of each case vary, a common thread is that they involve allegations of failures of human factors—people, policies, procedures, plans and communications—not alleged failures of security products and technology,” he explains.

“When security works, it is because of the people. When security fails, it is because of the people. School leaders must spend more time on the people side of school safety starting with dedicating more time to training their staff—and that means all staff—including support personnel such as those working in the front office, cafeterias, custodial and maintenance staff and bus drivers.”

However, he says we’ll see district leadership teams return to administrative retreats and professional development days carving little time for safety training and emergency preparedness. But, he notes an uptick in inquiries from school boards, superintendents and independent school heads “seeking independent professional evaluations of their security and emergency preparedness.”

“School leaders need to incorporate periodic evaluations of their school security and emergency preparedness into their operating budgets in the same way they do external curriculum audits and other facility audits.”

The post How this year’s plague of safety threats is exactly what this expert predicted appeared first on District Administration.