With programs like Safe2TellÆ gaining momentum, Falcon School District 49 has taken advantage of the opportunity to increase safety and anti-bullying awareness at every level.Dave Watson, safety and emergency coordinator, has been with the district since 2007. ìWe bring in a program every school year and one school, if not more, participates,î Watson said. ìThis year, I wanted to enhance it a little bit, to open things up to the entire D 49 community. Every year, I try to do something safety related.ìTo have a safe school and safe community, everyone has to be involved, from the top administration to the teachers to the student body to visitors at the school and parents. Everyone has a stake in this.îWatson has introduced programs like Safe2Tell, Rachelís Challenge and others that are open to the community, he said.Rachelís Challenge was developed in the memory of the first victim in the 1999 Columbine High School shooting ñ Rachel Scott. According to the website, http://rachelschallenge.org., ìRachelís Challenge is a series of student empowering programs and strategies that equip students and adults to combat bullying and allay feelings of isolation and despair by creating a culture of kindness and compassion.îSafe2Tellís website, http://safe2tell.org, describes the programs as ìa statewide anonymous reporting tool available 24 hours a day to accept calls whenever a Colorado youth or concerned adult perceives a threat to their safety or the safety of others.î Safe2Tell was ìcreated to implement a critical recommendation ñ to provide an anonymous venue for parents, students, teachers, schools administrators and law enforcement to share information.îSafe2Tell founder Susan Payne said, ìI have seen unspeakable things involving children and not one of them couldnít be stopped. There is a lot of fear in speaking up. We want to intervene at the lowest level before the occurrence of a tragedy.îPayne, who spent 17 years with the Colorado Springs Police Department as a hostage negotiator and also worked as a special agent with the Colorado Department of Public Safety, Homeland Security (she now works in the same role for the Colorado Attorney Generalís Office), founded the 501 (c) 3 organization in 2004. ìThe earlier we intervene, the better chance we have of preventing it,î she said.Ensuring the anonymity and safety of the caller is a top priority. ìWe focused on the research done and found that 81 percent of the time, when there was an act of school violence, someone knew about it but didnít speak up,î Payne said. ìWe have to encourage them (youths) to trust the adults in their lives and not fear retaliation.îThe Safe2Tell program is well-known throughout the district, Watson said. ìItís on the back of all of our student ID cards, and weíve had presentations at a lot of the secondary schools,î he said.Having ongoing conversations about school safety issues is also part of the Safe2Tell program. ìThe conversation jumpstart is a Safe2Tell pilot program, the first ever in the state,î Watson said. ìIím a certified instructor of it, and I can go give lessons on bullying, cyber bullying, violence, that kind of thing.”Under Payne, student mentors are trained in the same way as teachers and administrators. Students, too, have the ability to go into the classroom to teach their peers the conversation jumpstart Safe2TellÆ curriculum, Watson said.Watson said he posted a school climate survey online from Sept. 24 to Oct. 7 for all middle and high school students who wanted to participate. The surveyís purpose was to gather data about how each student views his or her school environment, he said. Students answered 19 questions (anonymously) pertaining to safety and their school community.At the Dec. 13 board of education meeting, Watson presented information about the survey, as well as the results. Watsonís findings indicated the following: Under each of the categories for types of bullying (physical, verbal, social, cyber); the percentage of students who answered ìI have seen bullyingî was nearly twice as high as those who answered either ìI have bulliedî or ìI have been bullied.îThe survey also showed that, of the students who responded, 46.2 percent feel safe at school ìmost of the timeî and 31.6 percent feel safe ìalways.îAccording to his presentation, 26 percent of the students in the district participated in the survey. More than a third of the respondents were from Falcon High School so the information is slightly skewed in that it reflects the environment at FHS more accurately than other schools.ìAt Falcon D 49, we take instances and reports of bullying very seriously,î Watson said. ìAll reports of bullying or harassing behavior are investigated by the administration at the school. We really care about the safety and welfare and well-being of the students in our district.îWatson said he plans to conduct a school climate survey every April and October that will include all grade levels, as well as parents.
