Ahh, the joys of summer break. Nothing is sweeter to administrators’ ears than the silence of the school building in summer. Before you turn on your autoresponder, blend up a pitcher of pina coladas and head to the beach for the summer, now is an excellent time to review mandatory and recommended staff trainings and place them on the district’s calendar for when your staff returns this fall.
MANDATORY TRAININGS
Dating Violence. Schools must provide dating violence training to staff deemed appropriate by a school district's administration. The dating violence training must include, but is not limited to, basic awareness of dating violence, warning signs of dating violence, and the school district's dating violence policy. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 79-2,141. NDE’s website has good resources to use for this training.
Concussion Awareness. The school must make available training approved by the chief medical officer on how to recognize the symptoms of a concussion or brain injury and how to seek proper medical treatment for a concussion or brain injury to all coaches of school athletic teams. The NSAA used to require this training annually, but that has never been required by the statute. The NSAA issued an “approved ruling” which now allows the training every 3 years, with training in the first year for new sponsors.
Behavioral and Mental Health. LB 705 changes the suicide awareness training to Behavioral and Mental Health Training. It will require “all public school employees who interact with students and any other appropriate personnel” as determined by the superintendent to receive at least one hour of behavioral and mental health training with a focus on suicide awareness and prevention training each year. The change is not effective until September 10, 2023.
Evaluator Training (Evaluating Administrators Only). All evaluators must be “trained to use the evaluation system used in the district.” This would include all evaluators (superintendents, principals, etc.), but there is an exception for boards of education that evaluate the superintendent. NDE Rule 10 § 007.06(B).
Pupil Transportation Vehicle Drivers/Safe Pupil Transportation Plan. Districts must annually provide a 2-hour training for individuals who drive pupil transportation vehicles required by Rule 91. Additionally, Districts must provide one-time training to pupil transportation vehicle drivers of small vehicles on activity trips prior to driving.
Training for All School Resource Officers and All Administrators in Buildings with SROs. Section 79-2704 of the Nebraska statutes requires each school resource officer or security guard and at least one administrator in each building which has an SRO assigned to it to “attend a minimum of twenty hours of training focused on school-based law enforcement, including, but not limited to, coursework focused on school law, student rights, understanding special needs students and students with disabilities, conflict de-escalation techniques, ethics for school resource officers, teenage brain development, adolescent behavior, implicit bias training, diversity and cultural awareness, trauma-informed responses, and preventing violence in school settings.” If your SRO or building administrator have not received this state-mandated training, then this summer is the perfect time to get that completed. Here is a link to KSB’s SRO training.
Title IX. As of August 14, 2020, the members of your Title IX Team (i.e., Title IX Coordinator, Investigator, Decision-Maker, Appellate Decision-Maker, and Informal Resolution Facilitator) must all receive specific Title IX training. If that hasn’t been completed—or if you have a new member to your Title IX Team who has not received that training—that training must occur as soon as possible. As you have most likely heard us say before, we strongly recommend that all district employees and board members also receive basic Title IX training, with an emphasis on the legal definitions of sexual harassment and how to report it to the appropriate people. We anticipate the new federal regulations will require ALL staff to receive training. While you are enjoying your well-deserved summer break, the KSB attorneys will monitor the Title IX situation and will let everyone know what the final regulations require when they are published.
STUDENT ASSEMBLIES
Digital Citizenship Assembly (AKA “Digcit”). The calendars are already filling up for the fall. We recommend reaching out to book your student digcit assemblies now. As a quick overview, Digcit is an hour-long assembly focused on educating students about sexting, inappropriate pictures, cyberbullying and the related consequences, both school based and criminal. All assemblies are sprinkled with the usual KSB sass and humor. Typically, the sessions are separated into middle school or junior high and high school.
UPCOMING SUMMER SPECIAL EDUCATION TRAINING
If you just can’t get enough special education training, there is an excellent national conference close to home this summer. The Midwest Educational Leadership Conference will be held June 19-21 in beautiful Breckenridge, Colorado. The speakers include KSB School Law’s own Karen Haase. If you would like more information or to sign up, just click here.
If you have any questions about trainings or would like to schedule the KSB crew to conduct a staff in-service or Digcit, please feel free to contact Karen, Steve, Bobby, Coady, Jordan, Tyler or Sara at (402) 804-8000, or send everyone an email at ksb@ksbschoollaw.com.