Safe Schools Month Proclamation & Joint Resolution: Colorado is launching a national initiative to establish October as Safe Schools Month.Governor Hickenlooper, with support from Senate Joint Resolution 14-031, has proclaimedOctober as Colorado Safe Schools Month. You can read more about the joint resolution here. Schools are where many people spend their days as students, employees, and visitors. School safety is therefore a key component in overall community safety and preparedness. Safe Schools Monthhighlights this key point and invites everyone to join the national conversation on school safety. Join In and Engage During School Safety month we encourage you to join the conversation. Ask and answer questions like: • Do you know about the emergency operations plan at your child’s school? • Have you updated your contact information at your child’s school and know how they would contact you in the event of an emergency? After answering questions like these, take the next step and engage. Consider responding to one of these possible opportunities: • Do you have a business that could serve as an emergency evacuation site for a local school? • Does your business have personnel with expertise that could be “loaned” to your local school? Alternatively, you could join in your local Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) and learn about how to provide assistance to the school and community during an emergency. Commit to School Safety There are many ways you and your school can highlight your commitment to safety. Here are a few examples: • Commit to completing a school climate survey and using that data to create and enhance a positive school climate. • Commit to implementing a written information sharing agreement among agencies and schools in the community to share information about public safety concerns. • Create a threat assessment process to identify students who may be at risk of committing violence, assess concerns, and resolve situations with compassionate and effective approaches. • Promote anonymous reporting to provide a safe and anonymous way for students and community members to voice safety concerns. • Commit to creating, updating, and practicing a comprehensive emergency operations plan. A coordinated school crisis response plan, which incorporates the National Incident Management System (NIMS), is a key component to protecting our students and school staff when danger occurs. • Commit to implementing practices to prevent youth suicide and substance abuse. SafeSchoolsMonth.org SafeSchoolsMonth.org is the official national calendar of all SafeSchools Month activities. The online calendar isfreely accessible to the public and allows registered subscribers topost their upcoming school safety events planned for October and beyond. SafeSchoolsMonth.org covers conferences, trainings, book launches, therelease of new resources and lesson plans, scheduled drills andexercises, print and broadcast features, new technology presentations, funding opportunities, and more. Use this resource as a tool to log and track your activities while also checking out what other schools are doing throughout your community. Colorado School Safety Resource Center (CSSRC) This is a guest blog written by the Colorado School Safety Resource Center(CSSRC). CSSRC would love to hear about your Safe Schools Month pledges and activities! Please send your stories to 303-239-4435, or [email protected]. You can also join the online conversation on Twitter using hashtag: #SchoolSafety.
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 14:46:15 +0000
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