One issue that arises in many school safety incidents is student supervision. Whether or not school officials were providing effective student supervision is often a key question in school safety litigation, media coverage and more importantly, in our efforts to find better ways to protect students and staff from harm for the future.
Hour per hour and dollar for dollar, few school safety strategies are as effective as simple yet proven concepts to improve student supervision like presence, positioning, pairing, pacing and spacing. These and other techniques can dramatically improve the ability of staff to supervise students more effectively and preventing as well as responding school crisis situations.
Another important aspect involves appropriate and reasonable efforts to document student supervision efforts. For example, documenting training provided to staff on student supervision, documenting staff assignments and taking the time to document that staff members have been provided policies relating to student supervision are all ways to improve student supervision while affording your legal counsel and any expert witnesses they retain a clearer picture of what has been done to improve student safety.
Taking the time not only to implement effective student supervision strategies but to document them can improve efficiency, reduce risk, build public trust, reduce risk exposure and most importantly, can save lives.