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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*, Education, School Safety

  After a very cold and very early start on Sunday morning with a 3 hour delay due to frozen airplane systems and frozen lines (meaning no hot coffee on a very cold plane!), I finally made it to the 25th annual National Youth At-Risk (NYAR) Conference in Savannah, GA. http://coe.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar/ The NYAR conference started with a very motivating and uplifting keynote from Keith Brown – Mr. I’m Possible.   http://www.keithlbrown.com/ Mr. Brown reminded everyone that we can make a difference – a huge difference for all youth if we do that little bit extra and if we do not let negativity discourage us from doingRead More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*, School Safety

  Article originally posted on Corrections.com http://www.corrections.com/news/article/35182-a-walk-in-the-shoes-of-an-sro   What does a School Resource Officer (SRO) do all day? Do they just stand in the hallway at school waiting for violence to occur? Should schools be spending their limited funding on SROs? These are questions, Safety and Security Coordinator for Bradley County Schools, Scotty Hernandez often receives. And NO, the SROs are not twiddling their thumbs. To the contrary, these officers are heavily involved in student activities, classroom lectures, after school events, discipline and more. Bradley County is one of the school districts fortunate enough to have an SRO in each of their school buildings. But,Read More →

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In: Media

What does a School Resource Officer (SRO) do all day? Do they just stand in the hallway at school waiting for violence to occur? Should schools be spending their limited funding on SROs? For full article: http://www.corrections.com/news/article/35182-a-walk-in-the-shoes-of-an-sroRead More →

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In: Success

St. Peter’s Lutheran School in Columbus, Indiana, has implemented a web‐based anonymous incident reporting and prevention platform called TIPS to help maintain a safe environment for the members of their congregation and surrounding community. St. Peter’s Lutheran is committed to providing a safe and secure school for all students and staff. Awareity’s TIPS is an award‐winning online tool for incident reporting, incident tracking, investigations, training, documentation and more. TIPS empowers students, parents, employees, administrators, staff and community members to be heard and to anonymously report warning signs and concerning behaviors. The goal of TIPS is PREVENTION and to help identify red flags before an incidentRead More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*, Information Privacy, Information Security, Risk Management

  In my 30+ years of performing risk, vulnerability and threat assessments, I have always advised my clients to be really careful with whom they hire to for “maintenance and cleaning crews”.  This news about the Target data breach validates my advice.   According to news reports, the hackers that pulled off one of the largest and most expensive data breaches ever, did so by stealing/hacking credentials from Target’s HVAC subcontractor.  Once the hackers had the HVAC subcontractor credentials, they had access to Target’s network and were able to place their sophisticated malware…and you know the rest of the story.   This ‘Connecting the Dots’Read More →

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In: Uncategorized

Homer Community School is preparing to make a difference for their students and community This small Nebraska school district is leading the way for rural schools by launching TIPS, a web‐based incident management and prevention platform from Awareity, Inc. No matter how big or how small, all schools face the same challenges (student safety, bullying, student achievement, legal, compliance, accreditations, etc.), mounting obligations and budget limitations. The key to effectively and proactively handling the constantly changing needs of students is to equip everyone with the right tools to do the right things. Awareity’s TIPS is a secure and central risk management/prevention platform equipping all individualsRead More →

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In: Research

To take advantage of the free student survey at your school, click here. How are you assessing the well-being of your students? Did you know over 80% of bystanders know about bullying, but only 10% report it. Are your students witnessing threatening behaviors within your walls? Do they feel comfortable talking to teachers or your administration? What if even a small percentage of those 80% could become empowered and start helping the at-risk students at your school? As parents and community members continue to express concerns about school safety, Awareity is helping our clients provide free school climate surveys to gather feedback from students, parents,Read More →

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In: Success

As tragic stories of bullying, suicide and violence continue to circulate throughout our nation’s school systems, Logan‐ Rogersville Public Schools in Missouri is taking action. Officer Mark Hall, Director of Safety & Security with the Logan‐Rogersville School Police, worked diligently over the last year to research incident reporting and risk management systems. He applied for and won grant funding to implement the award-winning TIPS platform in the Logan‐Rogersville School District. Students are often hesitant to talk to their parents or the school SRO because they don’t want to get someone in trouble or involve themselves in a situation. TIPS allows these students to come forwardRead More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*, Uncategorized

  A friend of mine recently shared this link to an anonymous note with me: I wonder how many other teachers feel like this?   I wonder how many teachers go home at the end of the day drained from dealing with bullying directed at them?   I wonder how many students go home drained at the end of the day drained from dealing with bullying?   In talking to my friends who are teachers, they are getting tired of dealing with bullying related problems in their classroom because it takes time from their teaching and because it has a negative effect on every student’sRead More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*, Education, School Safety, Uncategorized

  Bullying has been going on since people set foot on this planet and people have been writing about bullying all the way back to Cain and Abel.  So why does bullying still exist and continue to escalate? Why has bullying escalated to a level that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] declared bullying a “significant health problem”? Bullying exists and bullies exist in nearly every school, nearly every college and nearly every organization.  Evidence is overwhelming and it is time to accept the facts and admit status quo bullying approaches are not working, are not solving and are not preventing bullying. WhyRead More →