School safety has been a focus this summer from Regional Office of Education #33 Regional Superintendent Kathryn Jennings as part of the Stronger Connections Grant:
“We were able to not just pull in our administrators, but also law enforcement, our fire departments, teachers, our support staff, as well as our building custodians, maintenance directors, bus drivers, we were able to pull in all those folks so that we could talk about school safety and what it looks like from all of those different lenses; be able to bring in trainers that could provide information to them to best serve students and meet those need so that kids feel safe. You can’t learn if you don’t feel safe,” states Jennings.
“We were able to do that thanks to Stacey Day, West Central Superintendent, she wrote the Stronger Connections Grant and included us in that work. So, we were able to bring on Dave Greenlief, who is our Regional School Safety Coordinator. He has been able to go out to districts and do site assessments, determine is there are gaps in the safety plans, if there are gaps in the safety of the buildings, and the security of the buildings. Then he can provide feedback directly to the districts and work with them to figure out what it is that they need to fill those gaps,” Jennings adds.
