JACKSON – School District administrators and board members heard a report on the district’s violence, vandalism and bullying incidents of the last six months and reviewed its status concerning accomplished district goals.
Asst. Superintendent Daniel Baginski provided the board its twice a year report on violence, vandalism and substance abuse in the district. This was for the reporting period between January and June.
“In this report we report on all incidents of violence vandalism and investigations if confirmed, weapons offenses and substance abuse incidents,” Baginski said. “We had only two and half months before we were shut down for closure so the actual numbers are significantly lower than they were in the past.”
He said in general the district’s substance abuse numbers were down proportionally and that figures were generally where they were in the past. The report was done in conjunction with the district’s director of security.
“We are constantly looking at how we can make our schools safer. We will continue to do that into the new school year with whatever we have waiting for us in terms of new parameters coming off of the school closure,” Baginski said.
He noted the second part of the report was about the same period’s Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying (HIB) report of HIBs that take place both investigated and confirmed. “We gather this information through our schools’ anti-bullying specialists and like the vandalism and violence report we only had about two months in school time but we did have some HIBs during the closure.”
Baginski added, “we’ve done the best we could in investigating them and they are also part of the report and for the most part our director of security and our anti-bullying specialists have been keeping active to make sure that even while at home and remote learning our students felt that they were safe and could report things and they (district staff) could thoroughly investigate it.”
As part of the district’s report to the state the district generates self-assessment scores which is submitted every June. Each school using a standard of the state, performed a self-evaluation in addressing their handling of HIBs. They assign themselves scores and an average score is developed.
Last year Baginski said the district’s score had score was 72 out of 78 and this year it was 71 out of 78.
“There were some things insofar as training that we could not fulfill this year due to due to the closure and things that had been planned between March and June,” Baginski said.
He added overall, the district had a great year in regards to the district’s response to HIB. All of the district’s anti-bullying specialists have received the state’s HIB training.
“In September the district anticipates a very active season insofar as our anti-bullying specialists conducting trainings and making sure our students are in a place that they are ready to come back to and treating each other the way we should be treating each other,” Baginski said.
The Board approved all three of the reports which are now available for reading by the public on the district’s website.
In other news, Genco reported on the board and district goals saying that in monitoring the status of the new satellite transportation facility, “we are there at this point. The last thing we were waiting for was the carbon dioxide test and I’m not sure if that has been done but that building has been turned over to us at this point.”
District Business Administrator Michelle Richardson said that this test had not been completed yet but was expected to be done by next week.
Genco said the district’s long-term facility plan had been updated and that an energy saving program would be producing close to $20 million in projects.
He said a third goal was research feasibility of courtesy busing routes. “That is a work in progress. It is not completed but it is something you did start to look at. It will be something you have to look at in the future.”
That was the board goals as far as district goals the long-range facilities plan remained the same “but we added the irrigation over at Jackson Liberty High School.”
Genco said along with that project which is now complete, the district’s energy saving program and its transportation satellite facility were among the district’s goals.
