Big Walnut’s Safe School Hotline active

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Dur­ing the Jan­u­ary 14 Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing, dis­trict assis­tant super­in­ten­dent Gary Bar­ber gave an update on the school district’s plans to con­tract with an out­side provider of an anony­mous report­ing sys­tem to con­form to the man­dates of HB 116, the Jes­sica Logan Act. HB 116 was named in mem­ory of Jes­sica Logan, a Cincin­nati teenager who com­mit­ted sui­cide after being harassed via cyber-bullying.

Under man­dates of the Jes­sica Logan Act, edu­ca­tors are respon­si­ble for inves­ti­gat­ing and pros­e­cut­ing com­plaints (includ­ing anony­mous reports) of cyber-bullying, even if the mate­r­ial was cre­ated on the student’s own time, away from school groups and apart from any school-sanctioned activ­ity. This would include emails, post­ings on Face­book and other social networks.

At that board meet­ing Bar­ber said the Big Wal­nut district’s con­tract with Safe School Helpline would be active within a week; and on Wednes­day, Jan­u­ary 23, a let­ter and explana­tory video were posted on the dis­trict web­site not­ing that the 24/7 helpline is now active.

“The imple­men­ta­tion of the The Safe School Hot­line … gives stu­dents, staff, par­ents and com­mu­nity mem­bers the oppor­tu­nity to anony­mously report any­thing that may put our stu­dents, staff or schools in dan­ger,” Bar­ber wrote. “This would include report­ing a crime, harass­ment, drug or alco­hol abuse, reck­less dri­ving or any other ille­gal activ­ity that could affect our district.”

Bar­ber said callers may make a report 24/7 and the schools will be notified.

“Licensed coun­selors will be on the phone and they will relay infor­ma­tion to des­ig­nated dis­trict per­son­nel,” Bar­ber wrote. “The Safe School Hot­line uti­lizes a unique, auto­mated tele­phone ser­vice which allows callers to report an alle­ga­tion or con­cern con­fi­den­tially and anonymously.”

Bar­ber said The Safe School Hot­line may be accessed in one of three ways – by call­ing 800–418-6423 exten­sion 359, through the web at < www.safeschoolhelpline.com >, or by tex­ting TIPS to 66746.

“In our vision, we state that we are striv­ing to be a warm, safe, wel­com­ing envi­ron­ment — this part of our vision is our foun­da­tion,” Bar­ber added. “We know that if student’s and family’s psy­cho­log­i­cal and safety needs are not met, we will never take our stu­dents to their max­i­mum poten­tial, which is our ulti­mate goal.”

Bar­ber said if any­one has ques­tions about The Safe School Hot­line feel free to con­tact any school dis­trict build­ing prin­ci­pal, Bar­ber, or any other mem­ber of the Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict admin­is­tra­tive team.

Posted by Gary Henery on Jan 30 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.