Learning: ESP on the Team
ESP Take the Lead on School Safety

School staff focuses on being prepared for all emergencies.

To Rene Medcalf, school safety is a feeling. "When I was a kid, school always felt like the safest place I could be outside of my home. But it wasn't feeling that way anymore. I just wanted kids today to feel as safe in school as I did when I was their age."

This simple desire has led Medcalf, a secretary at Centennial Elementary School in Mt. Vernon, Washington, in some unexpected directions. Four years ago, she and paraeducator Rutheia Wyckoff began meeting with staff from other Mt. Vernon schools, on their own time, to discuss how the schools could be better prepared to deal with emergencies.

Their efforts grew. As staff members began understanding the value of their work, they started getting representatives from each of Mt. Vernon's nine schools. After two years, the school district administration joined in. Medcalf's and Wyckoff's meetings became DEPT, the District Emergency Planning Team.

Still an all-volunteer group, DEPT has had an impact inside and outside of the schools. Every school now has clear procedures for dealing with all kinds of emergencies, from injuries to natural disasters. (Mt. Vernon, in northwestern Washington, is in a seismically-active area, and has rail lines carrying hazardous chemicals.) The procedures are listed in each classroom, so itinerant staff can immediately find out what they need to do in an emergency.

Many school buildings have started using photo ID badges for staff, so kids can easily identify "safe" adults. And DEPT coordinates three emergency drills each year throughout the school district. DEPT members regularly attend emergency management training sessions in their county and in Seattle.

Beyond school, DEPT has become an integral part of the county's emergency planning system, along with police and fire departments, the Red Cross, and other public and private agencies.

Every school has a person trained to be a CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) member, prepared to do search and rescue, administer first aid, and set up an emergency command center in the school in disaster.

Mt. Vernon schools are also Red Cross emergency shelters. As Medcalf points out, "We already have the most people in one place who need to be taken care of" in the event of an emergency. One of her goals is to find corporate sponsors so they can station a trailer containing 72 hours of emergency supplies at each school.

Medcalf's activ-ism is not confined to safety issues. This 15-year employee is co-president, along with fellow secretary Teresa Litke, of the new, 40-member Mt. Vernon Educational Support Association (MESA), which represents the district's clerical employees.

"The secretaries talked about organizing for 20 years, and we finally decided it was time to do it," she says. MESA just finished negotiating its first contract. Medcalf has high praise for the support the clerical employees received from the Mt. Vernon teachers and from Washington Education Association UniServ Director Phil Becker: "They were always helpful, and they never made us feel dumb."

Medcalf and the other DEPT team members are now exchanging information with people from other schools around Washington.

They are learning from some districts, and teaching others. "We're not here by ourselves, we're here together," she says.

Team Player
Getting To Know Us

Name: Sue Caron

Job Title: education technician

Background: Last March, Caron wrote a full-page article for an issue of the Maine Educator, the publication of the Maine Education Association.

In the article, Caron told about her workday and week. We think she expresses the sentiments of many ESP, so we've reprinted a portion of her commentary here.

What I do: I spend 175 days teaching, caring, counseling, mentoring, and parenting.

On average, I work 40 hours a week, but I only get paid for 35. Some days, I may teach 75 percent of the time.

I get paid to attend one day-long workshop. There is no holiday time and no storm day pay. There are no summer wages. Some techs need two jobs to make ends meet.

Other Duties: I'm a moderator for the student council.

My lunch times and recesses are re-served for coordinating student council projects. I've forgotten what a 25-minute lunch break is. I take five to 10 minutes, maybe. I'm with the students from the time the school day begins up until I do my daily bus duty at dismissal time.

Impact: In the hearts and minds of my students, I've left some gentle footprints and so have they. I'm here, involved, loving the moments with my students. Fortunately, I work with a teacher who treats me as an equal. I've never heard her say, "You're just an ed tech."

Going the Extra Mile

NEA was offering ESP Technology Grants--ranging from $250 to $3,500--to help ESP members apply technology in projects that could benefit their locals, schools, or communities.

But there was a problem: They only had two weeks before the application deadline.

"We'd never written a grant application before," says Chamberlain. But inexperience didn't get in the way of a great idea!

They made the deadline. A few weeks ago, they learned they had been awarded a grant of $3,400.

The money will buy a computer and digital camcorder for documenting and promoting events around Vergennes Union High School.

Washington state bus driver Jamie Rhoten has won seven regional school bus safety and driving competitions in recent years.

To win, you've got to negotiate an obstacle course with 10 different driving challenges, complete a written test on state laws and regulations, and identify the defects on a rigged school bus in only 10 minutes, explains Rhoten.

In one obstacle course event, he says, drivers must drive along a 100-foot line of tennis balls with only a two-inch clearance.

Try that in your minivan.

NEA ESP members joined NEA retired and student members--185 volunteers in all--to help spruce up Calumet School outside Chicago just before the opening of the NEA's year 2000 Representative Assembly last July.

NEA also chipped in $25,000 to pay for new blinds, bulletin board materials, and landscaping for the school.

Resources

Making Our Schools Safer
Increasingly, school districts are looking outside for information about making schools safer.

Here's a source. Classroom Killers? Hallway Hostages? How Schools Can Prevent and Manage School Crises is a new book by Kenneth S. Trump, president of the National School Safety and Security Services, a consulting firm specializing in school security and crisis preparedness.

The book, which should be of value to anybody involved in school security planning, lays out practical steps for preventing school crises, and for dealing with them if they happen.

It is available in paperback ($23.95) or cloth ($49.95) from Corwin press at 805/499-9774 or www.corwinpress.com.

Web Sites for Work
If you've ever tried to locate specific information from a United States government agency, you know how frustrating that can be. The Internet is a great source, but where do you start? Well, here's a breakthrough.

The people in Washington have consolidated things so that now you can one-stop-shop at a new portal on the Internet. Go there and find links to more than 20,000 government sites. Have a look at www.firstgov.gov.

Another site to tap for all-purpose information on education topics from kindergarten through 12th grade is www.eduhound.com.

The site (in Spanish and English) includes an offer for a free newsletter, along with the site's pick for the top Web site of the week.

Off the Shelf
A new manual just out from NEA's Teaching and Learning unit focuses on results-oriented job descriptions, evaluation, and professional development for education support personnel. The manual analyzes what a person accomplishes in the end instead of simply listing the check-list steps that are taken to achieve that goal.

A companion brochure, Results-Oriented Job Descriptions for ESP, is available online at www.nea.org/esp/resource/rojobdes.htm.

To order a free copy of the brochure or the manual, go to www.nea.org/esp/resource/esppubl.htm or write to ESP Program, NEA Affiliate Capacity Building, 1201 16th St., N.W., Washington, DC 20036.