February 12, 2025 • 23 mins
In this special episode of Elevate Education, we discuss school safety with two of Jeffco Public Schools’ top leaders: Chief Human Resources Officer Amanda Pierorazio and Executive Director of School Safety Jeff Pierson.
Join Superintendent Tracy Dorland and her guests as they share the district’s multi-layered approach to keeping students and staff safe, from proactive security measures to emergency preparedness and community partnerships. Learn about the role of Jeffco’s 145-member safety and security team, the importance of fostering a culture of psychological safety, and how rigorous hiring and training practices ensure that only the best educators and staff work with students.
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Unknown (00:54):
In Jeffco we take safety seriously and we are committed to the resources we have in our schools and community to support school safety every day. Today, I'm fortunate to be joined by two incredible leaders in our district who help ensure the safety and well-being of staff and students. Chief Human Resources Officer Amanda Perazio and Executive Director of School Safety Jeff Pearson. Jeff and Amanda, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having us. It's good to be here. Yeah, it's great to see you both. I love working with each of you every day. And I want to give you a minute each to start by introducing yourselves. What you do for Jeffco and why you do what you do. So, Amanda, let's start with you. I am the chief human resources officer here in Jefferson County Public Schools. I have been in Jeffco for 19 years. This is year 20 for me. And I started as a teacher at Chatfield. To all of our listeners down in the south area Go Chargers, I became an assistant principal and then a principal in Jeffco. I've been a leader now in Jeffco for 13 years and then of course in my time as a teacher I was able to also be a teacher leader. And so Jeffco has given me opportunities to arrive in this place where I get to have such a large impact right alongside you and alongside leaders like Jeff, across our organization, on our staff, our students, our community each and every day. So I feel very fortunate to be here and be part of this community. Mr. Pierson, how about. Yes, well, my approach is a little bit more unique getting to where I'm at today as the executive director for the Department of School Safety. I, too, am so honored to be here This is my 17th year in Jeffco. I grew up in a law enforcement family. My father is a retired chief of police and so there definitely was an inkling for me to potentially go down a law enforcement route. However, my coaches, I was able to play college basketball and the coaches that have influenced me through my life really led me to want to go into education. I will say that two years into education I wasn't sure I want to stay in it. And my mom challenged me and said, Do it one more year because I almost went the law enforcement route. And here I am in my 30th year total in education and serving in a role that I never thought I would be in. It's unique because seven years ago as a principal, Stanley Lake High School, I was there for ten years. My predecessor wanted to bring a different lens to school safety. He wanted to bring a principal could bring a a different perspective how we treat school safety. And he wanted to bring a principal board to understand what first responder looks like to train as a first responder, but then also have that unique lens to help our first responders understand the language and I think the culture of how schools operate. And therefore, I've been in this department for seven years now and it's been amazing. As I said, it's an honor and it's just great to have a partnership and really have some amazing bridges to our schools in the world of school safety. Yeah, I'm so grateful for both of you in the roles that you're in, the opportunity for you to bring the expertize of a principal viewpoint and experience into the world of H.R. and into the world of safety and security, I think has been a true benefit for Jeff Coe. And Jeff, I love that your family has a history in law enforcement. I have a family that also has tight connections and experience and history in law enforcement. And it's something that I'm really proud of for the family members of mine who've served and here in Jeffco, I think it's surprising. A lot of people don't know that we have a safety and security team of over 145 employees and it's one of the best gifts I have in this role as superintendent, knowing that we have that many trained individuals who are ready to serve and support and keep our kids safe every day. Can you talk a little bit more about what makes up that 145 plus employee team that you lead and what they do on a daily basis to keep our schools safe? Yeah. And once again, it's so amazing to know that Jeffco is the gold standard. I think in this practice we are the gold standard across the nation. I think we're one of the only that have the robust opportunity to to employ so many individuals to do the work they do. I will talk about it's a dual prong approach. And I think in the last five years we've really begun to really dig in to more of the prevention, the culture and climate around safety. we've begun to really understand and take a different approach on the psychological safety of kids, which is that culture and climate work, which is what we talk about when knowing kids by name, strength, the need and getting to know our kids and having them feel welcome in their environment. That is as much safety as it is anything else. And so we're really proud of that work. As you said, 145 plus employees. And we take it from a four prong approach. It's prevention, preparedness, response and recovery. When I think about the prevention lens, I think about our campus security teams. You know, they serve in all of our high schools and in a number of our middle schools, and they're there for all the visitor management they do. Door check. De-escalation. They're there to connect with kids. And it's interesting that campus supervisor division often hear some of the most egregious things from kids because they're the trusted individuals that you know, they have to bear on their shoulders and then decide what they do with that information and and be that support and mentor for kids. The other piece of that is our judicial services team. That team works directly with our schools to mitigate and navigate the world of threats and assessments and then safety plans and provide supports for kids so that they can navigate through school and still be on the way towards graduation. Preparedness piece is our emergency management team who does audits. They're there to really navigate that world of drills. And I know we hear all the time around, you know, the age appropriate drills and is there trauma informed practicing? We do an amazing job of truly giving the drills and giving an understanding of what it means to be prepared without traumatizing kids. Right. Very age appropriate. They do audits on our buildings around best practice life safety mechanisms and everything inclusive of that so that we can come back and make sure our schools have a physically safe environment. The response pieces are one patrol and they look like a law enforcement unit right there. A first responder preparedness team. 75% of them have either served in law enforcement or in the military. So a great background and history of what they've done prior to coming to be part of the one force. They monitor our school district 24 seven. We have a group of five of them that are assigned to activities in athletics. So they're able to go out and really support, you know, our bigger, larger events across the district, which there are many here, and they serve a big capacity in really supporting that work. When I think about the recovery phase, I think about dispatch. It's a 24 seven operation. They are really the glue that keeps us all together and I think an important part. there's interoperability, which I think we may be the only district that I know of to where the 911 dispatch system and our system have interoperability, which means whenever there's a CAD system that goes out through 911 Jeff Comm or through our team, we see each other's nodes. And therefore, if we're listening in or seeing notes, there's an incident going on in a community near a school. We can immediately respond to that with our team and vice versa. Law enforcement can respond with theirs. So, you know, that took a lot to get there, that trust factor with our agencies. And we're just so thankful for the work that each of our groups do to support us and and the work around, keeping our kids safe every single day. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, as a mom, I once my students were at my students are in high school now. But when they were in middle school, they knew the names of their campus supervisors and they still do. They know the names of the SROs who support the schools. And I'm just so grateful that we have an amazing example, I believe, of a true community policing type of experience where our law enforcement partners are active members of school communities and creating relationships and helping everyone in the building feel safe. And so big shout out to our law enforcement partners who provide our SROs and partner with us and with our one to keep people safe, both in calm times and in times where we have other things going on in our communities And thank you for leading that amazing team that we have. And then I want to just ask Amanda the same question. So, Amanda, you lead an H.R. division that supports 14,000 employees. I don't know that our community realizes how many employees we actually have in Jeffco public schools. We are the largest employer in the county and the 14,000 employees that serve our students, our amazing Jeffco teammates. And so can you talk a little bit about, you know, through the hiring process, through the management of 14,000 employees, how do we make sure that we keep our staff safe and how do we make sure that we hire safe staff? Let's talk a little bit about that in Jefferson County and really any school district, as you know, we have two primary groups of employees. We have our licensed employees who are our teachers, our educators in the classroom, our principals, our administrators, those who have to have a license through the state of Colorado in order to educate our students, in order to supervise students. We also have another group of employees who are unlicensed employees serving in our really essential and critical role to support students. Some of those are in just division. They don't have to necessarily have a license, but they do have to have that skillset in order to work with students in the capacity that they're hired to do. every licensed educator in the state of Colorado, whether they have an administrators license, a principals license, a teaching license, regardless of what it is that they teach, whether they're a special service provider, such as our mental health providers in our classrooms and buildings or our special educators learning specialist, they are screened through a rigorous background check process. Through the Colorado Department of Education in order to get their license. So before they even come to us as applicants and prospective employees, they have a license that is that is through the state of Colorado. And fingerprints required for that background check then go through the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to do a comprehensive background check on that individual. And they're looking for things like felonies, misdemeanors, any type of charge that an individual has had over the course of a lifetime. So our unlicensed employees are fingerprinted through Jeffco. So we use a third party and we send all employees who have been offered a position to this Colorado fingerprinting, And they go they get their fingerprints done and they go through the exact same process as CBI does through the CBI background check and the FBI background check. Another layer onto that is our process through which our hiring managers, are all trained that they need to be doing reference checks upon hire. And we ask a very specific question. One of the most important questions I think we ask is Do you have any reason to believe this person is not safe to work with children? And if there is any hesitation, if there's any question, we would not proceed with hiring. So those are just some of the layers of our process. Excellent. Thank you for sharing all that. It's a complicated but important process and partnership with law enforcement agencies, as well as the Colorado Department of Education that we have. And I appreciate you being able to share that with our listeners today. So in addition to these rigorous hiring practices, I want to take some time for us to review some additional safety measures that we have in place. Oftentimes, people will ask me, you know, what are your hiring practices? How do you check to make sure people are safe that work with our students? The next question I usually get it is what type of training do you give people once they're hired related to safety? So I know that all 14,000 Jeffco staff members are required to take annual training on identifying and reporting child abuse and recognizing indicators of grooming behavior. And we make it very clear to all 14,000 employees that as an employee of Jeffco Public Schools, you are a mandatory reporter. And we make sure that on an annual basis, all employees have that training and have on hand where to report and the hotline for reporting any suspicion of child abuse. And so that's important for our listeners to hear. In addition to that, I know that we have also started training on sexual misconduct with the Colorado Schools Resource Safety Center, and we've trained all principals. Jeff and Amanda, can you share a little bit more about that training and how it went with our principals and what our plans are for expansion? Sure. So I too had the opportunity to take this training and it was really eye opening to be able to understand like what are the behaviors that we might be looking for that to a typical person who isn't necessarily in a position of trust over seeing students each and every day? It might seem like typical behavior, friendly behavior, if you will. And yet we know that there are behaviors that adults engage in that should never. You engaged in with a child. And so when we as administrators are able to identify those, to see those, then we have opportunities to lean in and say, this is not appropriate. This is a boundary that we don't cross as adults and report it investigate it and ensure that all of our adults working with our students are making those appropriate boundaries. So the training around child abuse reporting, recognizing grooming behavior as well as Title nine type training. Our staff listen to a webinar, for example, around the expectations for a mandatory reporter. Here's how you report. Here's the forms that you use. Here's the phone number you call. Here's why you would report when you would report to whom you must report. All of those things are reiterated through that training annually for our staff. Yeah, just thank you. And I would add this. I think the toughest part is the fine balance of the connections we make with kids for the feel welcome and to be part of something, but yet not going across that professional boundary that I've been Amanda spoke about. And I think what we've learned through the training and I think what we're learning is we've got to take a bigger black and white approach to protocols and expectations we have across our system. Here's the things we can do, here's the threshold that we don't cross, and here's the things that are going to keep you safe and our students safe as we went forward. Yeah, I so appreciate that lens, and I want to also highlight that the first part of system coherence is really setting clear expectations. One of the things that we have done over the last two years is rewrite district policy on appropriate staff interaction, engagement and boundaries with students. And for our listening public, if you are interested in reading that policy, I think it is one of the best policies that I've seen. It's both a policy and a regulation, and so you can find that on the Jeffco Board Docs system and District Policy section, and it's the G series. JB IB is the policy and BBR is the regulation. The regulation goes into more detail and honestly, I believe is the document that sets the clear expectation. And so, you know, it sets this level standard of expectation. And then when we see people not meeting that standard, we then have opportunity to hold people accountable. And so I just think it's important that our community understands that we take this incredibly seriously. But honestly, our staff and Jeff Co care deeply about students and have all been trained on what that standard is. And we do expect a high level of professionalism in Jeffco. The district does also have systems for reporting. Like, safe to tell, we have an online Title nine reporting system to provide those coherent, systemic avenues for staff, students and families to share concerns with appropriate authorities. And those reporting tools are monitored on a regular basis. And our Internet network firewalls keep our online activity safe and appropriate for students and staff who are using both our Wi-Fi as well as our devices. And so something I'm hearing us all really talk about throughout our conversation today is that safety in our schools and across our district takes partnership and collaboration with law enforcement, staff, students and families. It also takes precedence. It is the most important thing we do on a daily basis is to be proactive and reactive when necessary and keeping our students safe. So if families might be interested in becoming more involved in safety efforts. What are some ways they can do that? Jeff If we have a family member out there who's like, I want to be more involved, what could they do? The first thing I think I will talk about is the modeling, the expectations we have for visitors and for our kids to follow safety protocols. I think when our parents come into our school and check in through our visitor management process and go through our vestibule and monitor it and go through the right doors are not supposed to be in and not come through any of our back doors. That modeling of good behavior, I think, is the first way to make sure that we are following protocols and expectations around the school district from a principals lens. I love that our parents get involved in their accountability teams or their PTA. I get a chance in this work to go out and speak with many, many schools. The PTA is the accountability teams because they have a lot of questions around school safety and they want to know more. And I will tell you, the majority of the teams I meet with really have no idea of how robust school safety is in Jeffco. And we're able to really dig in and give them an understanding of, you know, the work that we do and how protected kids are and what we provide for both physical and psychological safety from the Department of School Safety. So please get involved in your accountabilities, be a part of the PTA, but most importantly, adhere to the policy protocol that we have in place for everybody, including our officers, which is inclusive of our parents. And, you know, when you talk about reporting tools, it's important our parents report things as well. But it's not just kids. If parents see something that's out of place, whether at an event or within their kids or they're checking their kid's social media, they can report that. Just like anybody else I think is important to understand. These protocols are not just for kids. These are for adults, visitors, anybody that see something, they need to say something so we can navigate that world and mitigate any potential issues. Yeah. I want to reiterate what you just said. If you see something, say something. We want to hear about it. Safe to tell is the number one reporting tool to report things that they're seeing And I just want to thank the state of Colorado for the safe to tell tool. We use it and we are grateful for it here in Jeffco. And for me, that's not just about in our schools, but it's in our community no matter where a child is. Anybody who works for Jeffco Public Schools has that responsibility. And I would say anybody who cares about children in this community has that responsibility. And I know for some of our listeners, they might be wondering, what do you do if you get safe to tell that highlights concerning behavior from a parent, a community member or a staff member. What do we do? How do we respond? Jeff and Amanda, can can you jump in and talk about that? Yeah. I would say that safe to tell, as you said, is the number one reporting tool. And in Jeffco, I think we're the number one users across the state when it comes, they go because we promote it very well. And so when we talk about see something, say something. When that report comes in, Every single entity that needs to at least look into or investigate that tip has the initial information so that we can better understand what our next steps. We connect directly with H.R. if it's an employee issue, we connect with the school. If it's related to a school issue, our community superintendents take the load off when it's a staff member. The most egregious issues that come up law enforcement will get and they'll go out and investigate immediately and they'll stay in contact and partner with our team, along with H.R. and our district leadership to understand, hey, we're looking into this. And that's where that great partnership that we have with them steps in, and then we begin to navigate that world together. Similarly, when we receive a report in human resources, we have options. So first, we take a look at the evidence, the information that we've collected and we determine, is this an interpersonal conflict? Or is it a policy violation potentially? And if it's a policy violation and we look at who might need to investigate this particular situation, or is it a violation of federal law or state law? And so we determine which of those this particular situation might be part of, and then we take action. Thank you for that. And I encourage our families to use that tool if they see something that they have concerns about. Send it our way. We will follow up and we will look into it. I also want to just say, as you talked about pizzas and school accountability teams, I want to give a shout out to our watchdogs. If you're out there and you want to be a dad that spent some time in a school, check out the watchdog's program online and or check in with your principal. You might likely have a watchdog program in your school. My husband, Ben, was a watchdog. I have family friends who've been a watchdog in schools. And I think it's just an amazing way for our parents to get involved, not only with the safety in our buildings in a very casual way, but also a strong presence. It's just also a great way for dads to be able to show up and say, I care about my kid's education and I'm going to build some relationships in the school today. So I just want to also shout out that cool program that made me happy as an elementary parent when my husband participated. And so for members of our community who are interested in learning more about our current safety practices and our ongoing safety enhancement work, I encourage you to tune in to our February 13th regular board meeting where members of my staff will present a comprehensive update, including many of the items we discussed on today's podcast. You can stream that board meeting live on our website And we encourage anybody in our community interested in this topic to join Following this board meeting, we will launch a new section on our Safety and security webpage where our community can also follow our progress on the efforts that we plan to outline. On February 13th and this spring, we will be hosting a Safe Student Summit to learn together with experts in our community about how we can keep students safe in all environments in our community, including our schools. Jeff and Amanda, thank you for this conversation today.
(23:20):
This topic is deeply important and personal to me, both as superintendent and also as a mom of two students in our schools. Thank you for joining us for this special episode of Elevate Education. Until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and keep elevating education. Thanks, Jeff.
In Jeffco we take safety seriously and we are committed to the resources we have in our schools and community to support school safety every day. Today, I'm fortunate to be joined by two incredible leaders in our district who help ensure the safety and well-being of staff and students. Chief Human Resources Officer Amanda Perazio and Executive Director of School Safety Jeff Pearson. Jeff and Amanda, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having us. It's good to be here. Yeah, it's great to see you both. I love working with each of you every day. And I want to give you a minute each to start by introducing yourselves. What you do for Jeffco and why you do what you do. So, Amanda, let's start with you. I am the chief human resources officer here in Jefferson County Public Schools. I have been in Jeffco for 19 years. This is year 20 for me. And I started as a teacher at Chatfield. To all of our listeners down in the south area Go Chargers, I became an assistant principal and then a principal in Jeffco. I've been a leader now in Jeffco for 13 years and then of course in my time as a teacher I was able to also be a teacher leader. And so Jeffco has given me opportunities to arrive in this place where I get to have such a large impact right alongside you and alongside leaders like Jeff, across our organization, on our staff, our students, our community each and every day. So I feel very fortunate to be here and be part of this community. Mr. Pierson, how about. Yes, well, my approach is a little bit more unique getting to where I'm at today as the executive director for the Department of School Safety. I, too, am so honored to be here This is my 17th year in Jeffco. I grew up in a law enforcement family. My father is a retired chief of police and so there definitely was an inkling for me to potentially go down a law enforcement route. However, my coaches, I was able to play college basketball and the coaches that have influenced me through my life really led me to want to go into education. I will say that two years into education I wasn't sure I want to stay in it. And my mom challenged me and said, Do it one more year because I almost went the law enforcement route. And here I am in my 30th year total in education and serving in a role that I never thought I would be in. It's unique because seven years ago as a principal, Stanley Lake High School, I was there for ten years. My predecessor wanted to bring a different lens to school safety. He wanted to bring a principal could bring a a different perspective how we treat school safety. And he wanted to bring a principal board to understand what first responder looks like to train as a first responder, but then also have that unique lens to help our first responders understand the language and I think the culture of how schools operate. And therefore, I've been in this department for seven years now and it's been amazing. As I said, it's an honor and it's just great to have a partnership and really have some amazing bridges to our schools in the world of school safety. Yeah, I'm so grateful for both of you in the roles that you're in, the opportunity for you to bring the expertize of a principal viewpoint and experience into the world of H.R. and into the world of safety and security, I think has been a true benefit for Jeff Coe. And Jeff, I love that your family has a history in law enforcement. I have a family that also has tight connections and experience and history in law enforcement. And it's something that I'm really proud of for the family members of mine who've served and here in Jeffco, I think it's surprising. A lot of people don't know that we have a safety and security team of over 145 employees and it's one of the best gifts I have in this role as superintendent, knowing that we have that many trained individuals who are ready to serve and support and keep our kids safe every day. Can you talk a little bit more about what makes up that 145 plus employee team that you lead and what they do on a daily basis to keep our schools safe? Yeah. And once again, it's so amazing to know that Jeffco is the gold standard. I think in this practice we are the gold standard across the nation. I think we're one of the only that have the robust opportunity to to employ so many individuals to do the work they do. I will talk about it's a dual prong approach. And I think in the last five years we've really begun to really dig in to more of the prevention, the culture and climate around safety. we've begun to really understand and take a different approach on the psychological safety of kids, which is that culture and climate work, which is what we talk about when knowing kids by name, strength, the need and getting to know our kids and having them feel welcome in their environment. That is as much safety as it is anything else. And so we're really proud of that work. As you said, 145 plus employees. And we take it from a four prong approach. It's prevention, preparedness, response and recovery. When I think about the prevention lens, I think about our campus security teams. You know, they serve in all of our high schools and in a number of our middle schools, and they're there for all the visitor management they do. Door check. De-escalation. They're there to connect with kids. And it's interesting that campus supervisor division often hear some of the most egregious things from kids because they're the trusted individuals that you know, they have to bear on their shoulders and then decide what they do with that information and and be that support and mentor for kids. The other piece of that is our judicial services team. That team works directly with our schools to mitigate and navigate the world of threats and assessments and then safety plans and provide supports for kids so that they can navigate through school and still be on the way towards graduation. Preparedness piece is our emergency management team who does audits. They're there to really navigate that world of drills. And I know we hear all the time around, you know, the age appropriate drills and is there trauma informed practicing? We do an amazing job of truly giving the drills and giving an understanding of what it means to be prepared without traumatizing kids. Right. Very age appropriate. They do audits on our buildings around best practice life safety mechanisms and everything inclusive of that so that we can come back and make sure our schools have a physically safe environment. The response pieces are one patrol and they look like a law enforcement unit right there. A first responder preparedness team. 75% of them have either served in law enforcement or in the military. So a great background and history of what they've done prior to coming to be part of the one force. They monitor our school district 24 seven. We have a group of five of them that are assigned to activities in athletics. So they're able to go out and really support, you know, our bigger, larger events across the district, which there are many here, and they serve a big capacity in really supporting that work. When I think about the recovery phase, I think about dispatch. It's a 24 seven operation. They are really the glue that keeps us all together and I think an important part. there's interoperability, which I think we may be the only district that I know of to where the 911 dispatch system and our system have interoperability, which means whenever there's a CAD system that goes out through 911 Jeff Comm or through our team, we see each other's nodes. And therefore, if we're listening in or seeing notes, there's an incident going on in a community near a school. We can immediately respond to that with our team and vice versa. Law enforcement can respond with theirs. So, you know, that took a lot to get there, that trust factor with our agencies. And we're just so thankful for the work that each of our groups do to support us and and the work around, keeping our kids safe every single day. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, as a mom, I once my students were at my students are in high school now. But when they were in middle school, they knew the names of their campus supervisors and they still do. They know the names of the SROs who support the schools. And I'm just so grateful that we have an amazing example, I believe, of a true community policing type of experience where our law enforcement partners are active members of school communities and creating relationships and helping everyone in the building feel safe. And so big shout out to our law enforcement partners who provide our SROs and partner with us and with our one to keep people safe, both in calm times and in times where we have other things going on in our communities And thank you for leading that amazing team that we have. And then I want to just ask Amanda the same question. So, Amanda, you lead an H.R. division that supports 14,000 employees. I don't know that our community realizes how many employees we actually have in Jeffco public schools. We are the largest employer in the county and the 14,000 employees that serve our students, our amazing Jeffco teammates. And so can you talk a little bit about, you know, through the hiring process, through the management of 14,000 employees, how do we make sure that we keep our staff safe and how do we make sure that we hire safe staff? Let's talk a little bit about that in Jefferson County and really any school district, as you know, we have two primary groups of employees. We have our licensed employees who are our teachers, our educators in the classroom, our principals, our administrators, those who have to have a license through the state of Colorado in order to educate our students, in order to supervise students. We also have another group of employees who are unlicensed employees serving in our really essential and critical role to support students. Some of those are in just division. They don't have to necessarily have a license, but they do have to have that skillset in order to work with students in the capacity that they're hired to do. every licensed educator in the state of Colorado, whether they have an administrators license, a principals license, a teaching license, regardless of what it is that they teach, whether they're a special service provider, such as our mental health providers in our classrooms and buildings or our special educators learning specialist, they are screened through a rigorous background check process. Through the Colorado Department of Education in order to get their license. So before they even come to us as applicants and prospective employees, they have a license that is that is through the state of Colorado. And fingerprints required for that background check then go through the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to do a comprehensive background check on that individual. And they're looking for things like felonies, misdemeanors, any type of charge that an individual has had over the course of a lifetime. So our unlicensed employees are fingerprinted through Jeffco. So we use a third party and we send all employees who have been offered a position to this Colorado fingerprinting, And they go they get their fingerprints done and they go through the exact same process as CBI does through the CBI background check and the FBI background check. Another layer onto that is our process through which our hiring managers, are all trained that they need to be doing reference checks upon hire. And we ask a very specific question. One of the most important questions I think we ask is Do you have any reason to believe this person is not safe to work with children? And if there is any hesitation, if there's any question, we would not proceed with hiring. So those are just some of the layers of our process. Excellent. Thank you for sharing all that. It's a complicated but important process and partnership with law enforcement agencies, as well as the Colorado Department of Education that we have. And I appreciate you being able to share that with our listeners today. So in addition to these rigorous hiring practices, I want to take some time for us to review some additional safety measures that we have in place. Oftentimes, people will ask me, you know, what are your hiring practices? How do you check to make sure people are safe that work with our students? The next question I usually get it is what type of training do you give people once they're hired related to safety? So I know that all 14,000 Jeffco staff members are required to take annual training on identifying and reporting child abuse and recognizing indicators of grooming behavior. And we make it very clear to all 14,000 employees that as an employee of Jeffco Public Schools, you are a mandatory reporter. And we make sure that on an annual basis, all employees have that training and have on hand where to report and the hotline for reporting any suspicion of child abuse. And so that's important for our listeners to hear. In addition to that, I know that we have also started training on sexual misconduct with the Colorado Schools Resource Safety Center, and we've trained all principals. Jeff and Amanda, can you share a little bit more about that training and how it went with our principals and what our plans are for expansion? Sure. So I too had the opportunity to take this training and it was really eye opening to be able to understand like what are the behaviors that we might be looking for that to a typical person who isn't necessarily in a position of trust over seeing students each and every day? It might seem like typical behavior, friendly behavior, if you will. And yet we know that there are behaviors that adults engage in that should never. You engaged in with a child. And so when we as administrators are able to identify those, to see those, then we have opportunities to lean in and say, this is not appropriate. This is a boundary that we don't cross as adults and report it investigate it and ensure that all of our adults working with our students are making those appropriate boundaries. So the training around child abuse reporting, recognizing grooming behavior as well as Title nine type training. Our staff listen to a webinar, for example, around the expectations for a mandatory reporter. Here's how you report. Here's the forms that you use. Here's the phone number you call. Here's why you would report when you would report to whom you must report. All of those things are reiterated through that training annually for our staff. Yeah, just thank you. And I would add this. I think the toughest part is the fine balance of the connections we make with kids for the feel welcome and to be part of something, but yet not going across that professional boundary that I've been Amanda spoke about. And I think what we've learned through the training and I think what we're learning is we've got to take a bigger black and white approach to protocols and expectations we have across our system. Here's the things we can do, here's the threshold that we don't cross, and here's the things that are going to keep you safe and our students safe as we went forward. Yeah, I so appreciate that lens, and I want to also highlight that the first part of system coherence is really setting clear expectations. One of the things that we have done over the last two years is rewrite district policy on appropriate staff interaction, engagement and boundaries with students. And for our listening public, if you are interested in reading that policy, I think it is one of the best policies that I've seen. It's both a policy and a regulation, and so you can find that on the Jeffco Board Docs system and District Policy section, and it's the G series. JB IB is the policy and BBR is the regulation. The regulation goes into more detail and honestly, I believe is the document that sets the clear expectation. And so, you know, it sets this level standard of expectation. And then when we see people not meeting that standard, we then have opportunity to hold people accountable. And so I just think it's important that our community understands that we take this incredibly seriously. But honestly, our staff and Jeff Co care deeply about students and have all been trained on what that standard is. And we do expect a high level of professionalism in Jeffco. The district does also have systems for reporting. Like, safe to tell, we have an online Title nine reporting system to provide those coherent, systemic avenues for staff, students and families to share concerns with appropriate authorities. And those reporting tools are monitored on a regular basis. And our Internet network firewalls keep our online activity safe and appropriate for students and staff who are using both our Wi-Fi as well as our devices. And so something I'm hearing us all really talk about throughout our conversation today is that safety in our schools and across our district takes partnership and collaboration with law enforcement, staff, students and families. It also takes precedence. It is the most important thing we do on a daily basis is to be proactive and reactive when necessary and keeping our students safe. So if families might be interested in becoming more involved in safety efforts. What are some ways they can do that? Jeff If we have a family member out there who's like, I want to be more involved, what could they do? The first thing I think I will talk about is the modeling, the expectations we have for visitors and for our kids to follow safety protocols. I think when our parents come into our school and check in through our visitor management process and go through our vestibule and monitor it and go through the right doors are not supposed to be in and not come through any of our back doors. That modeling of good behavior, I think, is the first way to make sure that we are following protocols and expectations around the school district from a principals lens. I love that our parents get involved in their accountability teams or their PTA. I get a chance in this work to go out and speak with many, many schools. The PTA is the accountability teams because they have a lot of questions around school safety and they want to know more. And I will tell you, the majority of the teams I meet with really have no idea of how robust school safety is in Jeffco. And we're able to really dig in and give them an understanding of, you know, the work that we do and how protected kids are and what we provide for both physical and psychological safety from the Department of School Safety. So please get involved in your accountabilities, be a part of the PTA, but most importantly, adhere to the policy protocol that we have in place for everybody, including our officers, which is inclusive of our parents. And, you know, when you talk about reporting tools, it's important our parents report things as well. But it's not just kids. If parents see something that's out of place, whether at an event or within their kids or they're checking their kid's social media, they can report that. Just like anybody else I think is important to understand. These protocols are not just for kids. These are for adults, visitors, anybody that see something, they need to say something so we can navigate that world and mitigate any potential issues. Yeah. I want to reiterate what you just said. If you see something, say something. We want to hear about it. Safe to tell is the number one reporting tool to report things that they're seeing And I just want to thank the state of Colorado for the safe to tell tool. We use it and we are grateful for it here in Jeffco. And for me, that's not just about in our schools, but it's in our community no matter where a child is. Anybody who works for Jeffco Public Schools has that responsibility. And I would say anybody who cares about children in this community has that responsibility. And I know for some of our listeners, they might be wondering, what do you do if you get safe to tell that highlights concerning behavior from a parent, a community member or a staff member. What do we do? How do we respond? Jeff and Amanda, can can you jump in and talk about that? Yeah. I would say that safe to tell, as you said, is the number one reporting tool. And in Jeffco, I think we're the number one users across the state when it comes, they go because we promote it very well. And so when we talk about see something, say something. When that report comes in, Every single entity that needs to at least look into or investigate that tip has the initial information so that we can better understand what our next steps. We connect directly with H.R. if it's an employee issue, we connect with the school. If it's related to a school issue, our community superintendents take the load off when it's a staff member. The most egregious issues that come up law enforcement will get and they'll go out and investigate immediately and they'll stay in contact and partner with our team, along with H.R. and our district leadership to understand, hey, we're looking into this. And that's where that great partnership that we have with them steps in, and then we begin to navigate that world together. Similarly, when we receive a report in human resources, we have options. So first, we take a look at the evidence, the information that we've collected and we determine, is this an interpersonal conflict? Or is it a policy violation potentially? And if it's a policy violation and we look at who might need to investigate this particular situation, or is it a violation of federal law or state law? And so we determine which of those this particular situation might be part of, and then we take action. Thank you for that. And I encourage our families to use that tool if they see something that they have concerns about. Send it our way. We will follow up and we will look into it. I also want to just say, as you talked about pizzas and school accountability teams, I want to give a shout out to our watchdogs. If you're out there and you want to be a dad that spent some time in a school, check out the watchdog's program online and or check in with your principal. You might likely have a watchdog program in your school. My husband, Ben, was a watchdog. I have family friends who've been a watchdog in schools. And I think it's just an amazing way for our parents to get involved, not only with the safety in our buildings in a very casual way, but also a strong presence. It's just also a great way for dads to be able to show up and say, I care about my kid's education and I'm going to build some relationships in the school today. So I just want to also shout out that cool program that made me happy as an elementary parent when my husband participated. And so for members of our community who are interested in learning more about our current safety practices and our ongoing safety enhancement work, I encourage you to tune in to our February 13th regular board meeting where members of my staff will present a comprehensive update, including many of the items we discussed on today's podcast. You can stream that board meeting live on our website And we encourage anybody in our community interested in this topic to join Following this board meeting, we will launch a new section on our Safety and security webpage where our community can also follow our progress on the efforts that we plan to outline. On February 13th and this spring, we will be hosting a Safe Student Summit to learn together with experts in our community about how we can keep students safe in all environments in our community, including our schools. Jeff and Amanda, thank you for this conversation today.
(23:20):
This topic is deeply important and personal to me, both as superintendent and also as a mom of two students in our schools. Thank you for joining us for this special episode of Elevate Education. Until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and keep elevating education. Thanks, Jeff.
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