Safety

Sacramento County District Takes School Safety Training Online

• By Michael Hart
• 04/20/16

The San Juan Unified School District in Sacramento (CA) County is taking all of its mandated school safety training online.

Previously, the state-mandated courses the 5,000 educators at 65 sites had to take were conducted in live sessions at each school site by third-party trainers. School administrators had to keep track of which employees had completed the training using paper-based training logs and spreadsheets.

"When it was time for our employees to complete their mandated training, we were challenged with being able to do so in an easy and concise way, and in a manner in which we could follow up and ensure accountability," said San Juan USD Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources Paul Oropallo.

That changed when the district implemented PublicSchoolWorks' EmployeeSafe suite of online products.

A sexual harassment course can now be deployed online and taken individually by staff members when convenient. A second mandated course on reporting incidents of child abuse can also be taken online.

Staff members are automatically e-mailed a link to the training course. In addition, the system routinely sends reminder e-mails to employees who have not yet taken the course and then automatically reports to administrators when the courses are completed. Eventually, a district-wide report goes to human resources representatives telling them which employees may still not have taken the course. At that point, principals and other supervisors are informed.

"We're still in our infancy with PublicSchoolWorks, but because of how successfully we deployed these two training courses, we have high hopes for the 2016-17 school year," Oropallo said.