ESTF Roadmap: District Leaders
A Roadmap For District 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 information describes the role, responsibility, or opportunity for district 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. The two highest priority categories of actions by district leaders are those that support educators and building leaders with the training, knowledge and conditions 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 | District leaders should work with and empower building leaders to ensure appropriate training is available to all staff who interact with students. At a minimum, all staff should be provided comprehensive de-escalation training. District leaders should work with their preparation or teacher training partners to ensure it is incorporated into training for educators. For all staff, de-escalation training should be part of onboarding and regular professional development or continuing education. In addition to de-escalation training, district leaders should ensure training on all school specific, or school system developed incident response procedures include 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. 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. District leaders should be familiar with co-responder models and work with their internal security and mental or behavioral health providers and with their local providers or partners to develop such structures that are tailored to their local context and resources. Some school and system leaders have been successful utilizing Medicaid and other state or federal funding streams to support aspects of their co-responder models. District leaders should explore all available response partnership structures and funding sources. |
| Staffing | District 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. As part of their efforts, district leaders should undertake all possible efforts to increase the number and ratio of mental health professionals to the ratios recommended by professional associations. The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) recommends a 1:500 student-to-school psychologist ratio, while the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommends 1:250 student-to-counselor. The School Social Work Association of America also recommends a 1 to 250 ratio. |
| Space to Recalibrate and Recharge | District leaders should establish system-wide policies or expectations to empower building leaders to 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. More guidance on the use of these systems is provided in the Roadmap for Building Leaders and the Roadmap for Educators. |
| Conditions | School leaders are responsible for both the physical conditions of a school and the school’s culture, climate, and environment. District leaders should include this expectation in their consideration of building leader placement, promotion, hiring and job descriptions. District leaders should expect every building leader to create and foster a healthy and welcoming school climate and to ensure all staff are trained in trauma-informed practices. 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. |
Incident Response: Managing Incidents
Even with the best training, preparation, and healthy school culture, not every aggressive or violent behavior by a student toward an educator can be prevented. When such incidents do occur, district leaders should have clear expectations of their building leaders, system-wide standards, protocols or systems and competent, empowered building level leaders and teams who can quickly respond to the incident. Much of the role of district leaders is ensuring appropriate training and resources are provided to the building leader and that those local leaders have building-specific plans and protocols in place.
Roles for managing incident response are listed in the table below.
| Element | Roles & Responsibilities |
| Technical & Communications | District leaders are ultimately responsible for ensuring there are immediate and operational means for educators to call for help, including back-up systems. These may include phones, radios, call-buttons or other always-on 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) | District leaders must ensure that every school has 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. District leaders should expect their building leaders to schedule training regularly in table-top and situational exercises that periodically involve school staff to familiarize all with the response protocols. District leaders should consider system-wide training benefits and opportunities. |
| Physical Space | Managing the physical space during an incident is primarily the role of the CIRT, building leader and involved educator or staff member. District leaders should consider system-wide expectations, training or standards. |
| School Community Management | Managing the school community, including staff and students, is the responsibility of the building leader. District leaders should ensure and expect the establishment of appropriate policies by the building leader and may consider the district role in setting policies or supporting the building leader. |
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 | District leaders should develop policies, systems, and procedures at the system level to ensure all affected and involved educators or staff have access to an appropriate and full range of supports following an incident. In addition to immediate resources for medical or mental health needs, a dedicated point of contact should be established to advise educators and staff of all available resources and their rights. Services such as the CU Anchutz Colorado Educator Support should be actively promoted. District leaders should support building leaders to provide affected educators or staff 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 | District leaders should establish and ensure implementation at the building level of clear processes to support all involved with or affected by an incident. They should also insist that:
District leaders should identify opportunities for continuous learning at the system level from incidents in all schools to improve supports. |
| 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. District leaders should work with the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) to provide this information and with their building leaders to ensure the timely and accurate collection of information. District leaders must also foster an environment that instills comfort among building leaders and 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 or building leader reporting the incident. |
| Communications | District leaders should establish clear guidance for their system level communications teams and for building leaders relating to communication of information about any incident within the school, school system or to the school community and general public. |
