ESTF Roadmap: Building Leaders
A Roadmap For Building Leaders
There are critical roles, responsibilities and opportunities for all involved in the education system at each level to take actions that will improve educator safety. The following tables describe the role, responsibility or opportunity for building leaders identified by the ESTF along the continuum from pre-incident to post-incident. These range from awareness of systems and participation in training to advocacy for support, actions prior to, during or after incidents and the continuous fostering of conditions or connections within the school community.
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Pre-Incident: Incident Reduction & Preparation
The North Star for educator safety strategies is to prevent injury to any education staff member as a result of aggressive or violent behavior by a student. Building leaders should prioritize training, strategies and school community conditions that are likely to reduce the number or severity of these incidents and be prepared for those incidents to occur.
Roles in the pre-incident category identified by the ESTF are listed in the table below.
| Element | Roles & Responsibilities |
| Training | Building leaders should ensure appropriate training is available to all staff who interact with students. At a minimum, all staff should be provided comprehensive de-escalation training. For educators, building leaders should work with their preparation or teacher training partners to ensure de-escalation is incorporated into training for educators. For all staff, de-escalation training should be part of onboarding and regular professional development or continuing education. These trainings should include classroom and situation based components. Training should be refreshed regularly to keep up with development or learnings from the field and to keep skills current. In addition to de-escalation training, building leaders should work with district leaders to ensure training on all school specific or school system developed incident response procedures includes training components for all staff. |
| Classroom Incident Response Team (CIRT) | The ESTF Roadmap for Action recommends that all schools have a trained group of responders including security and mental or behavioral health experts. Building leaders should ensure all staff are familiar with the CIRT or other professionals who will respond to incidents in their classroom and should be clear on their role in contacting, communicating, working with and supporting these individuals. To ensure their preparedness to partner with these responders, building leaders should provide opportunities for all staff to participate in scenario-based training with the teams. Whenever possible, this should include annual full-scale training and micro-learning opportunities throughout the year. The ESTF also recommends the use of co-responder models that partner security professionals with mental or behavioral health experts as part of the CIRT or other response team. Building leaders should be familiar with co-responder models and work with district leaders to develop such structures that are tailored to their local context and resources. In developing their building level response protocols, building leaders should prepare for multiple incidents including how to prioritize or otherwise deploy limited resources in such situations and who responds if multiple incidents occur simultaneously. |
| Staffing | As is discussed in the Roadmap for Action, staffing is a complex issue and one that is directly connected to educator safety. Building leaders should look for opportunities to increase student access to mental and behavioral health services, to reduce adult to student ratios in classrooms and, where possible, to provide small learning environments. This does not always require only addressing class size but can include utilization of smaller group learning environments, differentiated supports within the space and prioritizing lower adult to student ratios for high-need or high-risk groups of students. In advocating for expanded staffing, resources or alternate resource use, building leaders should consider the behavioral trends or intensity of different students or student groups. Building leaders should also engage educators and school staff to gather input to inform their decisions, requests or recommendations. |
| Space to Recalibrate and Recharge | Building leaders should develop systems and spaces that provide both educators and students an opportunity to take a short break when needed to physically or emotionally step away from a situation, a “Tap-In/Tap-Out” system. For educators needing to avail themselves, building leaders should have established standards and expectations as well as the technical means for educators to call for support while they step away. For students, a system should be established and educators trained on that system that allows a student to request or an educator to offer (or require) a student to step away from a situation. When a student needs this opportunity, it should be provided in a place and manner that is physically safe and emotionally comfortable for the student. |
| Conditions | School leaders are responsible for both the physical conditions of a school and the school’s culture, climate and environment. Every school leader should insist on district support for their creation of a healthy and welcoming school climate. These leaders should also actively solicit the input and support of school staff to create a positive school climate and culture in which every student feels welcome, safe and has at least one adult with whom they feel comfortable engaging.
Building leaders should also expect and support their educators to be active contributors to the conditions in their building. These expectations should be reinforced through onboarding, annual orientations or professional development, inclusion in formal or informal feedback discussions and job descriptions when possible. Educator and staff roles that should be reinforced by building leaders include:
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Incident Response: Managing Incidents
Even with the best training, preparation and healthy school cultures, not every aggressive or violent behavior by a student toward an educator can be prevented. When such incidents do occur, building leaders need to ensure they and all staff are prepared to take appropriate, decisive and swift action to operationalize their training, communicate about the situation and contain or minimize the disruption, all with the goal of ensuring their own safety and that of the students.
Roles for managing incident response are listed in the table below.
| Element | Roles & Responsibilities |
| Technical & Communications | Building leaders must ensure there are immediate means for educators to call for help including back-up systems. Staff should be trained on these systems and should know what back-up systems are available. These may include phones, radios, call-buttons or other always-on communication systems. Building leaders should have in place a system for regular training on and testing of all communication systems. Emergency response systems such as RedBag, Raptor and others should be studied as options or examples of possible components for communications. |
| Classroom Incident Response Team (CIRT) | As is described in the Roadmap for Action, every school should have a trained group of responders who are available for rapid response to an incident of escalating behavior that could or does lead to violence toward an educator or staff member. The building leader must ensure these teams have clarity within their team and among all staff on the role of each in responding to an incident. Building leaders should schedule training regularly in table-top and situational exercises that periodically involve school staff to familiarize all with the response protocols. |
| Physical Space | Building leaders should work with their educators and CIRT members to create and maintain physical space that maximizes the ability of the educators and incident responders to de-escalate, separate and provide safety to all involved or in direct proximity of an incident. Educators and staff should be instructed on ways to use the physical environment to de-escalate tensions, provide safe environments for other students and minimize the threat of the physical space. |
| School Community Management | Building leaders should have systems, procedures and protocols in place for managing the school community during an incident with a priority on maintaining safety and minimizing the spread of any disruptions beyond the classroom or space where the incident occurred. This may include things like holding students and staff in place while an incident is resolved, having dedicated corridors or spaces to create buffer zones and clear expectations for students and staff during an incident. |
Post Incident: Recovery & Return
Following an incident of violent behavior by a student toward an educator or staff member, the return to comfort and learning for all affected will be different depending on the nature of the incident. There will be immediate, short-term and longer-term effects and steps to be taken to advance that cycle of recovery. All of the adults in a school will often be torn between the needs of their students, including the offending student, and those of the involved or affected adults. Building leaders should be sure to give attention to the needs of all involved.
Roles for supporting the needs of all involved as part of the post-incident recovery are listed in the table below.
| Element | Roles & Responsibilities |
| Educator Supports | Building leaders must fully consider the emotional trauma that results from an adult being in a violent situation with a student. Even if the educator or staff member’s physical injuries are minimal, the incident may still be traumatic. The attempted assault or student intent to cause physical harm can have a real, psychological effect that requires thoughtful actions and time for recovery. Building leaders should first ensure the immediate physical or medical needs of the educator or staff member are addressed and, depending on the situation, their mental wellness. Once these are addressed, building leaders should provide them with the space they need to recover and make sure they are fully aware of all of their rights and any available resources including medical care, mental health supports, time off, if needed and where appropriate, and access to workers compensation benefits. |
| Processes to Support All Affected | Building leaders should work with their cross-system colleagues and system leaders to ensure they have in place clear processes to support all involved with or affected by an incident. They should also insist that:
Building leaders must ensure they have in place the systems and resources for intentionally structured debriefs with the students affected by the incident. These conversations may be led by a member of the CIRT or another professional to provide a neutral facilitator for the discussion, allowing the involved educator to either participate as an affected individual or to separate from the discussion. |
| Reporting System & Standards | The ESTF has recommended the creation of a standardized reporting process and set of facts about each incident. The Roadmap for Action recommends that these be created at the school system level with support from the state and that the state require a minimal set of facts about each incident. Building leaders must foster an environment that instills comfort among any affected educators or staff members to participate in the reporting process and confidence both that the incident will be accurately documented and that there will not be repercussions for the educator reporting the incident. |
| Communications | Acting in partnership with district leaders, building leaders should oversee a clear process for determining the scope and means for dissemination of information about any incident within the school, school system or to the school community. |
