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School Safety

Sharing school safety: Districts take a regional approach

Kentucky School Advocate
April 2018

By Madelynn Coldiron
Staff writer

School districts in the western part of the state are joining together to pursue the best in school safety practices for schools.

Warren County Superintendent Rob Clayton (standing at far left) addresses the large group gathered for the initial meeting

of a regional school safety task force. (Photo courtesy of Shea Rogers, Green River Regional Educational Cooperative)

The regional approach began almost organically as Warren County Schools Superintendent Rob Clayton and neighboring Simpson County Schools Superintendent Jim Flynn compared notes on their respective districts’ school safety forums, which were held back to back in early March. Both also wanted to follow up their efforts by forming a district school safety task force made up of experts in the field.

“We want our community to see that when we implement safety measures in our schools, we rely heavily on experts in the field and their understanding of it will bring some assurances on our end that we do take school safety very seriously,” Clayton said.

From there, the invitation to participate was extended to the school districts contiguous to Warren County, including Bowling Green Independent. Then, with the booking of the Green River Regional Educational Cooperative’s meeting room for the task force meeting, the invitation was soon extended to the 40-plus GRREC districts.

The task force is made up of seven school safety experts (see chart) who advise on best practices in school safety and hear questions and comments from representatives of the school districts. The first organization meeting was held March 13.

The experts will come up with a menu of what Clayton and Flynn call a list of “considerations” – essentially best practices that stop short of being recommendations.

“What that will be is some things for the boards to consider, but we’re not saying that you need to do this to ensure safety,” Clayton explained. “I don’t know what will come out of it. I just want to make sure it’s thoughtful, deliberate and it’s best practice, and then school boards can do whatever with that.”

Both Clayton and Flynn said the process, using safety experts, is designed to help school districts make thoughtful decisions.

“If we’re going to change any of our safety measures, if we’re going to implement something new, before we do that with a knee-jerk reaction because of everybody’s heightened sense of anxiety and so forth, let’s make sure that the process includes not only people who are experts in the field but also people who can weigh in and say, ‘This would make me feel better,’” Clayton explained.

Flynn also pointed to the efficiency of the process through pooling resources. “Instead of everybody trying to replicate and pulling these experts in for their individual districts, let’s share the resources and be more efficient with our time and get the best information in front of our decision-makers at the local level so we can make the best decisions based on our local context to move the safety agenda forward,” he said.

Each participating district has been asked to send both an administrator and a school board member to task force meetings, “because essentially, boards will be making the determination if there are any changes to their school district safety measures,” Clayton said.

He said he hopes the regional task force can wrap up its work in three meetings, perhaps coming up with its list of considerations within 30 days. Those considerations can then be taken back to local school boards – or local school safety task forces first – to decide which measures will be implemented in those districts.

The advantage of having a menu of best practices is that it allows for local differences, Flynn said. “That way, what they need to do in Edmonson County might be very different from what we need in Simpson County versus what Bowling Green city schools need,” he said. “We felt like local context is really important as opposed to them making broad-stroke recommendations without considering local context.”