Guidelines for safe and effective interactions with students, parents and community members

Along with school supply lists and immunization notices, parents in many school districts are getting other important reminders in their children’s back-to-school packet about expectations and guidelines for interactions between staff, volunteers and students.

Parents in Oregon’s Salem-Keizer School District receive a Guide to Student Interaction, outlining expectations for maintaining appropriate boundaries with students and their families. It also encourages parents to call, email or send a letter to school administrators or the district’s human resources department with any concerns.

Oregon’s Hillsboro School District produced a similar handout for parents titled Maintaining

Appropriate Staff/Student Boundaries — Guidelines to Avoid the Appearance of Impropriety (http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/40239).

Many districts also send out volunteer handbooks with guidelines on how volunteers should interact with students and staff as they complete their volunteer tasks. Such guidebooks are important tools in communicating clear expectations about how employees and volunteers will interact with students. Written guidelines send a strong message that districts take student safety seriously, and they expect staff to do so as well. By sharing with parents, districts reinforce their commitment to providing a safe and healthy learning environment for students.

Appropriate boundaries protect staff and students

Districts around the country are increasingly warning teachers to be careful in their interactions with students, even if their intentions are good. Behaviors that might have been acceptable in the past, such as giving a student a ride home from school, are not allowed by most districts today. Districts want to prevent potential misbehavior as well as avoid the perception of possible misbehavior.

Social media creates an added challenge, because today’s students prefer to text or use Facebook and other social media to communicate, even with teachers.

However, schools increasingly are prohibiting staff from “friending” students on social media and often require all electronic communications to be via the school’s student information system.

At Hillsboro, staff are asked to avoid any interactions that could appear to be inappropriate. The definition of inappropriate relates to interactions that “cross boundaries by creating relationships that become equal rather than adult-to-child.”

Staff protocols

Protocols for staff vary from district to district, based on the district’s culture, history and expectations, but it’s important for districts to put them in writing and reinforce them with staff.

Some examples of staff protocols include:

• Staff should keep separate personal and professional social media accounts.
• Staff should not be friends with or accept “friend” requests from students on personal social media accounts. This does not mean the staff member does not like the student. Rather, it is a way to set very clear boundaries.
• Staff should not communicate through text, social media or other electronic methods with individual students. Instead, staff should communicate with students and parents through the district-sponsored student management system.
• Staff should not drive a student in a personal vehicle without authorization from a school administrator. In cases where authorization is provided, there should be at least two adults or two students in the vehicle at all times.
• Staff should maintain a clear separation between their personal and professional lives and maintain appropriate boundaries with students and their families.
• Staff should not let existing friendships with students or families that originated outside of the school setting, such as at church or in the neighborhood, supersede the district’s expectations. For example, a coach or teacher should remove his or her best friend’s child from his or her personal Facebook page. This helps ensure there’s no implied favoritism for students.
• Staff should not hold team or class celebrations at their home.
• Staff should not meet alone with one student in a private area.

Reporting inappropriate behavior

Guidelines also should include which staff member parents should talk to if they are concerned about an interaction between staff or volunteers and students. List the contact, such as the principal or human resources director, phone number and email address. Acknowledge that sometimes parents don’t want to repeat a rumor or question someone’s reputation, but it’s better to err on the side of safety and share those concerns.

Guidelines for volunteers

Most districts have protocols for how volunteers interact with students and staff. No. 1 on the list is usually student confidentiality. Federal law requires volunteers to keep confidential certain personally identifiable student information obtained while working as a district volunteer.

Other guidelines for volunteers:

• Do not meet with students behind closed doors or off campus.
• Refrain from initiating any conversations or correspondence of a private or personal nature with students.
• Refrain from giving students inappropriate signs of affection such as hugs; sitting on a staff member’s lap; touching or patting areas other than shoulders, upper back, arms or hands; or any other contact that causes a student to feel uncomfortable.

Bottom line: Clarify the district’s expectations to ensure a safe environment for students.

With clear, written protocols for interacting with students, districts help create a positive learning environment free of inappropriate behaviors that can undermine student learning and success.

Contributed by Connie Potter, communications consultant

Internal communications tips to reach staff through mobile devices

Do you notice that everyone seems to be looking down lately? You can guess the reason. Research shows that more than 85% of your employees have a smartphone.

The question then is not whether your staff members should be using mobile devices, but how can they use them productively and responsibly during the work day? Following tips can help you better communicate with staff:

• They all do it — Regardless of whether they’re teaching or driving a bus, your staff members communicate on the go and assume you should be, too. Leverage texting and other apps to reach them, including the ClassDojo app (www.classdojo.com) for parents that was featured in the September CommunicationPlus issue.
• Enhance trust — Communicating via a mobile device fosters transparency of leadership, which leads to more loyalty and trust. Staff members should learn things from their school district leaders first, not from someone else’s social media page or text. Getting a direct text from leadership can remove or reduce rumors and doubt. Triple that benefit by knowing staff members will share your news with others, probably as fast as they received it.
• Don’t dump everything in — The value of mobile devices is to send quick, need-to-know messages, like emergency meetings, “don’t forget today’s deadline,” and weather warnings or security alerts. Include a website link to more details for complex messages. Smaller, more frequent messages are better, because today’s communication habits and attention spans, especially among millennials, are shorter.
• Your top priority — You’ve heard this before, but employee engagement should be a top priority. With limited resources, capitalize on what employees already are using the most: their mobile devices. But don’t jump to conclusions just because we said so. Start with a discussion in a board or leadership meeting centered on the importance of reaching all staff members: How should we do it, why and when?
• From the ground up — Before you test any new communication strategy, ask your community relations staff to facilitate a board or leadership discussion and put technology staff at the table. Then move to focus groups or an online survey, which can be done through your community relations people, or contact the Ohio School Boards Association or National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) for assistance.
  Fall is the perfect time, as you head back to school, to ask principals or administrators to do a “pulse check” during huddles, staff meetings or internal newsletters. Ask staff members how they want to get important news and reminders from leadership. Any change in communication strategy should grow from the front line, or it will be seen as a top-down mandate.
• There’s no time, literally — With news moving at the speed of social media and word of mouth, don’t delay getting important news to the front line. But don’t abandon your hierarchy of sharing. Reaching principals first is still important, especially if you’re relying on them to backfill the message with more details. Just realize the timing will be shorter.
  For example, if you share important alerts with leadership, make sure you and your leadership follow up on the same day with front-line staff, providing as much detail as possible. Even if you don’t have all the details, a little information is better than none.
• Use your professionals — After doing your homework and research, rely on your technology and community relations staff to make any enhancements through new apps. Trust them to be your architects of short, engaging messages to reach everyone at the right time with the right message.
• The other shoe — Yes, another shoe will drop if you increase your communications to mobile devices. Be prepared to reply and engage with staff in real time. That’s where your community relations staff, the Ohio School Public Relations Association and NSPRA can help.

Don’t get overwhelmed with long replies or long strings of messages. That’s the beauty of your website and Facebook or other social media. Send staff members to those sites for details, and thank them for their interest. Show compassion. You’re connecting personally with staff members in real time, which goes a long way in building trust.

Contributed by Shannon Priem, APR, former public relations director for the Oregon School Boards Association

The rapidly changing role of the school principal

Schools are changing. The era of assessments dictating changes in the classroom has led to student- focused teaching. Experienced teachers will tell you instruction is changing. But there is another role that has gone through a transition, one that doesn’t get a lot of attention — the school principal.

Breadth of knowledge

J. Marie Riche, founder and principal consultant at Ideal Communications, works with dozens of principals every school year and observes that regulatory issues now are finding their way down to the school level.

“I see human resources and compliance issues they didn’t have to manage a generation ago,” Riche said. “Communications expectations are through the roof, and that has absolutely changed just in the last decade.”

It’s not just telling people about the canned food drive and when they need to turn in permission slips for the field trip. Parents have a higher expectation of understanding curriculum than ever before. A growing minority of parents today are calling up teachers to ask, “In what order are you going to teach history?” and “How are you organizing math?”

“Those are reasonable conversations a parent can expect to have,” Riche said. “But it’s a new development, and principals need to be prepared to have more of those talks and across more platforms.”

Standards make the school

“One of the mega changes for principals is that in education we have moved toward a set of expected standards, and for a generation ago of principals, that wasn’t really the case,” said Gary Kipp, executive director of the Association of Washington School Principals (AWSP).

“That move has caused a number of other things to fall into place that changes the work of the principal,” Kipp said. “Assessments led to a need for a set of standards that teachers were expected to be teaching toward.”

Now, a principal’s main focus is to help teachers align teaching to a set of standards, so the path of student learning is a smooth, upward trajectory.

“In the past, we would get standardized tests back, and we would look at them and figure out how we needed to align our curriculum and adjust what we were doing and we were done,” Kipp said. “Now when we get those results back, we look at the specific kid and see how we get that kid to meet the standard.”

According to Kipp, there are four basic questions:

• What do we want kids to know and be able to do?
• How will we get them to that spot?
• How do we know whether they are achieving or not?
• What do we do with kids that don’t make it?

“We used to stop at question No. 3, but not anymore,” Kipp said. “It’s just not acceptable anymore to have kids slip through the cracks or have kids graduate without the skills needed to succeed in the workforce.”

One of the pressures principals face is that these shifts take more time in the principal’s day. Doing the job of evaluating and helping teachers grow today is much more labor intensive than it was prior to this major shift. In addition, there is a new expectation that schools don’t suspend students as they used to, instead choosing to work with kids who have problems.

“We’re getting feedback from principals that they’ve never had such rich conversations with teachers about their own teaching,” Kipp said. “It’s all driven by how well the kids are doing, and that’s the big deal for principals now.”

A wider scope of students means wider challenges

The school today has much greater liability than even a decade ago.

“In Washington state, if you listen to school nurses talk about the requirements of their job, it’s not just doubled or tripled, it’s increased exponentially in the  last five to seven years, both in an increased number of children dealing with health issues and also with increased regulations around how schools manage and document those issues,” Riche said.

That increased medical need impacts principals directly. Riche points out that medically fragile children who are mainstreamed into our public schools each come with their own logistical impacts.

“Principals need to be educated in how to manage those logistics, and parents need to be kept in the loop on how they are managing their care as well as their education,” she said.

A principal now might be called upon to be a quasi-expert on not just education, but also the medical issues of the children under their consideration. It can be intimidating.

“School districts are responding to this and understanding that expectations of principals have increased, and we need more of them,” Kipp said. “The number of assistant principals in Washington state in the elementary schools has increased fourfold.”

The doorstep of the school

Schools have the distinction of being separate from the neighborhood in which they reside, but they are still a part of it. Whatever is happening out in the broader community comes to the schools’ doorsteps.

“The complications may have always been there, but we are dealing with them now more than we did before,” Riche said. “That requires a nimbleness and a sensitivity to a broader range of culture.”

A principal can be a community leader to the extent he or she is able to step into that role. The role requires the social skills to navigate bringing a divided community together, providing space and encouraging people to support one another.

When tragedy strikes, schools are called upon more often to help parents navigate those big challenging stories. Schools now are expected to have counselors available and a support center in the wake of a local event, particularly one that affects the kids at your school.

In general, today’s principal has a bigger role in the larger community as a convener. Schools are more often called on to host memorials when a student dies.

“We expect more social EQ (emotional intelligence) from our principals than ever before,” Riche said. “It’s always been nice to have, but now it’s mandatory.”

While the issues that show up at the principal’s door, like politics, are more complicated today, a principal needs to maintain a leadership ability and  the focus on education, especially in a community that might be divided. The school can and should be a safe place where people with opposing viewpoints can put those issues aside and focus on learning.

Broadening your skill base

Are you thinking of becoming a principal or assistant principal? It’s much more than just a promotion. One thing that can surprise people when they move from one level to the next is that the people who get promoted aren’t necessarily the ones who have those next-level qualities.

“While rock-solid teaching skills are good, they need to be focusing on the next-level-up skills,” Riche said. “Can you understand the school as a full system? Do you know how to deal with the management, human resources and logistical issues of managing a full staff, student population and an army of volunteers and part- time workers?”

If you see a future for yourself as a principal, it is important to be broadening your skill base, especially your social skills. Learn how to navigate a conflict and communicate complicated ideas in ways that are easy to understand.

Check out what resources are available in your state. More information about the Ohio Association of Secondary School Administrators can be found at www.oassa.org. AWSP has more than 150 online webinars developed specifically for educational leaders, which can be accessed for an annual fee at http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/90499.

“This is an issue that is so consistent, it will always be relevant,” Riche said.

Even though the work has become more complex and in some cases more difficult, Kipp wanted people to know that being a principal is a position without equal.

“Two years ago, USA Today did a poll of the  happiest jobs in America and being a principal was No. 1 in terms of happiness of the individual in it,” Kipp said. “Even though the work is more complicated, it is a job where you can see the evolution of kids and teachers come to fruition as the result of leadership, and that is hugely rewarding.”

Contributed by Megan J. Wilson, Los Angeles-based freelance writer and communications consultant

Why can’t schools be run like businesses?

Surprise! Schools already act like businesses in  a foundational way. Well-run schools follow the same leadership principles as well-run businesses.

I’ve reached that conclusion after writing about public education for several decades and taking an in-depth look at one of the nation’s most successful school-improvement programs: the Chalkboard Project in Portland, Ore.

Certainly, there are myriad differences between schools and businesses and good reasons why schools cannot be like businesses in some ways. But, this column will focus on their foundational similarities. When people speak the mantra of “schools should be run like businesses,” you can explain that schools already do and in ways that go deeper than financial spreadsheets.

There is little new in leadership theory, especially in business. As in education, business theories go through cycles, being popular for a time before being forgotten. Today’s wannabe bestsellers that proclaim the latest business fad generally are rooted in longstanding leadership concepts, many of which date to the early- and mid-20th century. For example, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which psychologist Abraham Maslow first proposed in the 1940s and 1950s remains a mainstay of contemporary education, business and community life.

The value-added proposition

The foundational purpose of a business is to  make money by adding value, whether to materials or services. Some businesses create a product, such as a farm growing corn. Others add value by transporting the corn to stores where corn is sold or to a production facility where corn is made into a new product. Others create and sell recipes for using that corn. Still others provide services ranging from agribusiness consulting to consumer marketing.

That same value-added proposition is at the root of a successful school, which is the ultimate service organization. Teachers and other educators add value to their students — the tremendous value of a well-rounded education — as well as to their community.

For anyone who wants to look up the data, economists have quantified the value of an education, although, I would argue that its value cannot be reduced to mere numbers.

A business-like case study

The business world is big on learning from case studies. For this column, let’s use Chalkboard’s CLASS Project as such a case study (http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/50605). In doing so, you can find comparisons that reflect your own school or district.

The case: CLASS is an initiative of the independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit Chalkboard Project, which is financed by a consortium of Oregon’s leading philanthropic foundations. CLASS stands for Creative Leadership Achieves Student Success. Forty-five percent of Oregon’s K-12 students have been involved in  CLASS, whose overarching principle is that an effective classroom teacher has the single-greatest effect on student achievement.

Teaching can be a solitary occupation, with little time to investigate best practices. To overcome that, CLASS includes collaboration, coaching and professional development among teachers and within the classroom. That is not revolutionary, but the complete emphasis on research-validated best practices might be.

CLASS also includes expanded career paths so good teachers can remain good teachers or coach their colleagues instead of having to go into administration to make more money. CLASS brings administrators and teachers together to create effective performance evaluations and trains everyone so those evaluations are conducted uniformly, fairly and consistently throughout each school district. Because trust and collaboration replace distrust, what is controversial elsewhere becomes the accepted way of doing business.

Independent research shows that students in CLASS districts significantly outperform their peers in non- CLASS districts. That is true across achievement groups. Furthermore, teachers are professionally happier and more engaged in CLASS districts because they have a greater say.

Chalkboard’s CLASS Project exemplifies several business principles:

• Effective, ongoing market research — The Chalkboard Project started in 2004 by meeting with thousands of Oregonians, including educators, to gather their thoughts about public schools. Chalkboard listened to its potential customers, imperative for any successful organization.
• A singular focus — Chalkboard honed its focus to where it could have the most impact. All of Chalkboard’s initiatives complement that classroom focus, instead of straying into ideas that sound great but are extraneous, such as mission creep.
  For example, one recent and complementary initiative trains and retrains building and central office administrators to become highly effective instructional leaders for classroom teachers. That includes reducing central office demands on building principals so they have time to coach the instructional process instead of only administering. Chalkboard’s Leading for Learning initiative has proved so worthwhile that it includes 44 school districts and one charter school, representing 64% of Oregon’s K-12 students.
• Research and development — Chalkboard uses research-tested and research-validated principles, and it employs independent, outside research of its programs. The data prove CLASS’s effectiveness. As a result, the state legislature and state department of education have adopted Chalkboard’s professional development approach into state law.
• Empowerment — One classic theory of business leadership is the path-goal theory. I won’t geek you with the details for this and other leadership theories you easily can look up online if you’re interested.
  Part of path-goal theory is that the leader’s role is to remove obstacles so the worker can achieve the desired work outcome while also fulfilling her or his personal goals.
  A related aspect is that the most successful corporations are those that achieve full-fledged employee buy-in. They value frontline workers as the cornerstone of the organization’s success and empower employees to make decisions. CLASS puts control in the classroom with the teacher and gives her or him the tools to succeed.
  Through CLASS, workers and management collaborate instead of the administration and employee unions being at odds. That collaborative process, with shared responsibility and joint creation of well-defined goals, fits both the classic path-goal theory of business leadership and the two-factor theory of job satisfaction and dissatisfaction.
  Mutual, group goal-setting can help overcome negative variables, such as inconsistent government mandates and funding levels. Furthermore, the mutual goal-setting, when coupled with realistic training, can reduce the danger that high goals will be considered a threat instead of a mutual aspiration.
• Paying heed to current developments — Businesses and nonprofits have lifecycles, as do schools and school districts. One difference is that school districts must continue operating even in down cycles, which in severe cases might involve state intervention.

In recognizing its lifecycle, the Chalkboard Project’s goal is to work itself out of existence. Chalkboard collaborates with school districts, education associations, universities, foundations, state government and others to ingrain its research-verified principles so Chalkboard no longer will be needed. That is opposite the bureaucratic trend of holding onto power by expanding one’s turf.

The bottom line

Too often, people focus on the dollars-and-cents aspects of “schools should be run like a business.” However, good financial decisions start from employing solid business-leadership principles, such as the ones outlined above.

As communicators, we can recognize, emulate and share the effective use of those leadership principles.

We can invest in citizen-advisory groups with the power to make meaningful suggestions instead of treating them as mere rubber stamps.

We can encourage tough questions from the public and from school budget committees instead of being annoyed with members who don’t follow our company line.

And, when people want us to hop on the latest leadership fad, we can do our research and then point out how it’s just a repackaged, sellable form of time- honored leadership principles that our schools already embrace.

Contributed by Dick Hughes, writing consultant. Contact Hughes at Facebook/Hughesisms, @DickHughes (Twitter) or thehughesisms@gmail.com.

You are not alone: Using communications networks for support, inspiration and professional growth

Generally, only the largest school districts have communications teams. Most districts are lucky if they have someone fully dedicated to communications and media relations. More often, communications is one of many hats worn by an individual with numerous responsibilities and limited time and resources.

It is very easy to feel alone. While communications is all about engaging with and connecting to others, it can sometimes feel isolated or disconnected. Luckily, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Professional organizations at the state and national level focus on supporting, connecting and inspiring the school communications professional. These organizations can support you in your daily work, provide practical resources and tools, and offer opportunities for professional growth and development.

The groups

The National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) is a wonderful resource connecting school communicators to professional development opportunities, communications tools and resources, national conferences and communications services such as communications audits.

However, people often find the greatest benefit at the state level. With so many one-person communications teams out there, making connections with colleagues in your state can be an invaluable resource for support and comradeship and learning and professional growth. Most states have school public relations chapters, including the Ohio School Public Relations Association (OHSPRA).

What NSPRA can offer

NSPRA has been in existence for over 75 years. Its mission is to “advance education through responsible communication.” NSPRA provides members with a range of communications tools, resources and professional development opportunities including:

• National seminar — an annual multiday conference held each July that offers presentations, panels and professional development on over 70 school communications-related topics. It is widely considered to be the most comprehensive communications workshop for educators anywhere.
• PR Power Hours — a one-hour monthly conference call on a range of school communications topics. Topics in 2017 have included Managing Social Media Firestorms, Creating a Positive School Board Culture of Leaders and Ambassadors, and Employee Engagement During Difficult Times.
• Publications — NSPRA’s monthly newsletter, Network, is designed for school leaders. Each issue tackles a major problem and explains how communications can play a vital role in solving it. PRincipal Communicator is NSPRA’s building-level public relations newsletter. It provides practical help for school principals and other building-level leaders, including tips to improve communications at the community level. NSPRA also offers members a number of electronic newsletters.
• Communications audits — School districts can hire NSPRA to conduct communications audits to identify areas of strength, opportunities for improvement and strategies to move your communications program to the next level.
• Resources and tools — NSPRA also provides educators access to public relations resources and tools. Resources and articles are available at www.nspra.org.

To learn more about NSPRA, visit its website. While membership in NSPRA offers a range of benefits, it is not necessary to become a member.

What state chapters can offer

State chapters like OHSPRA can connect you with professional development opportunities and your peers and colleagues. State chapters provide:

• State conferences — OHSPRA holds its annual conference in the spring. State conferences provide opportunities to learn from peers and industry experts through presentations, panels and keynote speakers. Conferences often have a central theme, such as communicating in times of crisis or building resiliency. Most conferences include presentations and sessions  as well as time to socialize and connect with peers and colleagues.
• Locally targeted resources and tools — State chapters have resources on their website. Some material is open to the general public. Other material is limited to registered members. These resources can help with common communications challenges, provide templates for district use and offer tools related to a wide range of communications needs.
• Peer connections — One of the best resources state chapters can provide is an opportunity to connect with, learn from and build relationships with peers across your state and region. Many school communicators deal with similar challenges with small budgets and smaller teams.
  Whether you are simply chatting with colleagues over a post-conference happy hour, calling a peer to get advice on a particularly challenging communications issue or getting a second pair of eyes on something you are producing, these relationships can be incredibly helpful.
  Immediately after the 2014 school shooting at Reynolds High School in Oregon, Oregon School Public Relations Association members showed up to offer help with crisis communications and provide a much-needed extra pair of hands. In good times and bad, these local networks provide peers who know what you are dealing with and can serve as a resource and support network.
• Opportunities for learning and growth — For those new to school communications, these networks, and the opportunities for both formal and informal learning, can be beneficial.
  Don’t know how to write a communications plan? Don’t have a crisis plan in place? Not sure how best to respond to the media, write quotes or prepare others for TV interviews? More likely than not, there is a communications colleague in your state who has expertise in that area and can walk you through how to get started or where to learn more. By learning from each other, we can work faster and more effectively.

Resources

• National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA)
  www.nspra.org
• Ohio School Public Relations Association (OHSPRA)
  www.ohspra.org

Contributed by Crystal Greene, communications consultant