Amy Rock (00:00): Hi everyone, and thank you for joining me for today's podcast where we'll discuss proactive case management for students. My name is Amy Rock Campus's executive editor, excuse me. And joining us for today's discussion is Rohan Galloway Dawkins, the Chief Product Officer at Versa Term Public Safety Solutions provider. And I just want to say thank you for joining me today, Rohan.

Rohan Galloway-Dawkins (00:21): Well, thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.

Amy Rock (00:24): Now, this is obviously a very timely discussion. As last week, there was another devastating shooting at Apalachee High School where two students and two teachers were killed. And as more information comes out, we're hearing there was likely a significant lack of communication between law enforcement and the suspect’s prior school district regarding an investigation in online threats. And so while they did the right thing by responding to warning signs, the crucial piece of communication was not thorough enough.

So I just wanted to start today's discussion with identifying warning signs. As we've heard time and time again, schools often miss some of the most obvious signs. And I just wanted to note that obviously this does not just apply to significant incidents, it applies to more minor incidents as well as self-harm. So now I just wanted to ask, what do you feel are some of the benefits of digitizing and centralizing knowledge to kind of help authorize staff identify warning signs among students?

Rohan Galloway-Dawkins (01:22): Yeah, I mean, obviously we don't want to speculate too much on events as they're still evolving there. And our thoughts definitely go out to the families and the survivors there. But what I will say when you talk about these digital platforms and what we can do now, some of there are kind of four key problems that we're looking to solve that are looking at the data from, whether it's Department of Education, department of Homeland Security, secret Service, that's done a lot of research into school threats and things of that nature. Some of the four things that kind of resonate through when in past events where there have been some of these failures that now our platforms try to address are, first off just data and accuracy of data. There are a lot of different databases, especially when it comes to the families of some of these students, where you can start to look at some of these correlative triggering factors of things just going on in the home and having access to that data, access to accurate data, timely access to that data, not having it be overwhelming.

So bringing that content together in a way that these teams of care can understand and quickly correlate themselves. That's one piece. Another would be solutions that help these care teams, these support teams follow all the steps. Like I said, there's been a lot of research, there's been a lot of structures that have been defined for how to identify emergent threats before they happen, how to support students after that threat has been identified. None of them work though if the program isn't followed. So having some of these tool sets, making sure that things don't slip through the cracks is another one of those pieces.

Having teams that are multidisciplinary, right? You don't want to have 50 people in a team that are supposed to support these students, but you do need people that are familiar with the student, people that are familiar with their work, familiar with their family, and also your public safety officers. Your school resource officers need to be part of that multidisciplinary team. And one of the jobs that we have as a technology provider is providing platforms that make it easy for these teams to collaborate, stay informed and stay informed, but also to have access to the pieces and parts of that data that they should have access to so that you're not exposing health data to a public safety officer that may not be something that they need to have purview to. And the last piece, there are interviews with families. So again, from a technology standpoint, we can help to structure the workflow for those care providers, for those support teams, to remind them of things, to escalate pieces, not to get people into trouble, but to escalate pieces where, hey, we may have forgotten to follow a step we might not have followed through. Make sure that someone has eyes on that that's going to make sure that that entire course and that entire plan is cared for.

Amy Rock (04:36): Now, I know all districts differ, obviously in size and also type of staff and number of staff, but do you have recommendations for who within a school district should actually be monitoring that data?

Rohan Galloway-Dawkins (04:49): Yes. So I'll say one of the best models that I've seen is actually one eye in the state of Florida where we're working with the state there, and they've identified layers from down at the individual school level up through the district and onto the state level. So it's identifying different personas, different people at each of those different levels that are responsible for managing at the highest level. You're not managing students at that point, but you are managing the teams that manage the students and all of that to say oversight, to make sure that students don't fall through the cracks. So down at that lowest level, you do want to have at least, like I said, that molten, again, it's not so much what we say, it's more of what we see our partners enacting that seems to be effective. The research that's coming back, having that multidisciplinary team of probably three to four, you need someone who knows the student in the school environment on a daily basis, a homeroom teacher, someone like that. You need a guidance counselor. You need that school resource officer. Someone needs to know the family. That may be dual roles being played there. It may be a separate role. And then you're also going to need someone who has some type of experience or training on that health and wellness side, on that mental health and wellness side that can bring that type of knowledge, that type of experience to the team.

Amy Rock (06:25): And you had mentioned this, but communicating who needs to be overseeing all of this is so important. We saw, I think it was in Oxford, administrators were confused as, or kind of uninformed, or it wasn't communicated to them, but who needed to be spearheading handling concerns about that particular student? So communication, you can't communicate enough about it.
Rohan Galloway-Dawkins (06:46): Can't communicate enough, but also clear roles when you talk about that team, the roles of who is supposed to do what, who has the primary course of care. And it's not just that everything falls onto them, but there does need to be those clear roles set out to make sure that we're driving the process and making sure that we're supporting that student and that things don't fall through the cracks.

Amy Rock (07:10): Right. You don't want someone to feel like the weight of the world is only on them. It's not really fair to leave it up to one person. So that's why, like you said, the multidisciplinary side of it is so important. And people who see these students who might be exhibiting considering behavior like different times of the day and have different relationships with them.

Rohan Galloway-Dawkins (07:32): Exactly.

Amy Rock (07:33): Now, we know that gathering this knowledge is critical to identifying warning signs, but once a warning sign is identified, then what are some strategies for developing action plans to intervene in a student's wellbeing?

Rohan Galloway-Dawkins (07:48): Well, first and foremost, remember when you're identifying what could be a threat is that it's not intended. It should not be a stigma. The entire portion, the entire reason of doing this exercise is to ensure that the student is not a threat to themselves first, or other people as well. So this can't become a stigma. It can't become punitive. So that's the first thing to keep in mind when we're talking about threat can be a scary word, but threat is only a risk that hasn't happened. So we have to keep in mind that these are students. These are not full fledged adults that we're talking about here. So as we talk about that course of care, it is a course of care and support. We're not trying to, when we talk about intervention, when we talk about stopping a threat, those words a lot, especially in public safety, come with that connotation of action. We're talking about disrupting a pattern of behavior or a student in a way that is supportive and helpful for them. So that's the first thing to keep in mind that we're here to support. We're not here to be punitive or to cast a stigma. So after that, it really comes down to the student themselves and the situations that we're talking about, and this is the response plans can be as varied as human nature. And really then you start to look at some of the correlative factors and things that go into it.

A lot of these school violence, the school violence incidents that have happened have been predicated by bullying. So you can imagine in that type of case where some of the threat indicator may not even be something that someone said at that point. It may be that, Hey, this student is being bullied, and we've had repeated incidents, repeated reports of bullying of a student or a student bullying someone else. It may be addressing the root cause. It may be a course of counseling to talk to that student growing up this hard on all of us. And before you've really gone through that maturation process, learning how to regulate yourself, learning how to regulate your experiences, just having an outside vent to be able to speak to someone about those feelings in a more healthy manner can be part of that course of care. But really from there, it can cover anything from athletics to counseling, to all of the different types of support that we can give a student and their home life.

Amy Rock (10:45): Absolutely. Now, I'm sure there are a lot of school districts that are interested in a technology that helps them digitize these threats because then they can also see patterns that a human might not see. What if the school district wants to implement this type of technology, but a lot of schools are dealing with budget cuts. What are some options that there are out there for schools that are having issues with obtaining this type of technology?

Rohan Galloway-Dawkins (11:10): Well, one thing to keep in mind, there's a lot of funding out there for school safety and these types of solutions that help to support the schools, the school districts, and the state to support their students to identify potential threats early and to support those students through a course of care do fall under that public safety moniker. So when you look at that, there are a lot of different grants, whether that's at the state level or at the federal level, that schools, districts and states can apply to help fund some of these tools and some of these capabilities. As an example, the state of Ohio has a grant program going on that's a first come first serve. So it's really incumbent upon the school or the school district to identify the needs that they have to support their students and to go procure those solutions and to get that funding directly from the state. So the funding is out. There are a lot of, even at the federal level, right, at the both Department of Homeland, department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service, besides the research that they do, are doing a lot of lobbying and trying to bring these pieces together, both from a funding and a programmatic level as well.

Amy Rock (12:22): Yeah. One thing that I wanted to mention is the importance of information sharing. And there's obviously limitations regarding student privacy, but a lot of, if the school district doesn't have these big resources, there are surrounding municipalities that are almost always willing to help out with just if they receive information on a student, they can help you follow up with -- an example is not coming in my mind -- but I know that there are times where a school has told local law enforcement that they're concerned about the home life, and they'll go in and check on the family of their students. So it is important to share information with other municipalities or school districts.

Rohan Galloway-Dawkins (13:04): And that is one of the things, especially that I commend Florida on, and is something that we're working with several other states as well. The program that the state of Florida has implemented is a statewide threat assessment and support program but also solution. What we find and what our partners find is just that – it’s not just the sharing information in a single school or in a single area. It's what happens now when that child moves from one school to another, when they get in trouble and their parent moves them, or their parent has to move for a job again, life happens, right? And now this student has gone from one school where they maybe had a support team, had a course of care that they were being supported through. Now they move to another district, another school, their academic records will eventually show up. But none of this other, this other content today, regularly is made available to that new school, to that new environment. And again, not being a stigma, this is support. These are things that this student needs to be successful to get to that point of graduation successfully. That same information should be part of that student's record should be shared amongst schools so that they can maintain that course of care and support.

Amy Rock (14:30): Yep. Absolutely. Well said. Thank you. That's all I had for questions. I don't know if there was anything that you wanted to share that we didn't speak to or anything. I know you said you're working with the state of Florida. If there's anything helpful that you would want to share that's come out of that work or anything that you can share? No pressure whatsoever really, though.

Rohan Galloway-Dawkins (14:51): No worries. No worries at all. I would say what I would point to is, and as we've talked through this, and we've talked about sharing, right? We've talked about workflows, about making sure that students don't slip through the cracks. For us from a technology provider, these are the things that we can help with. And that we, as a technology provider, a vendor, we really focus on, it's getting out of the way of the processes and the outcomes that need to happen. And instead of sitting here and saying, well, this is my little silo, this is the thing that I do, stepping back from that initial kind of very technology driven solution to start with, and really understanding the underlying problem and the users. And when we address things with technology, really coming in from a purposeful, a purpose-driven type of ecosystem or purpose-driven type of response or solution.

So looking at the users, looking at the outcomes. What are we intending to support? Or what is a positive outcome in this realm? And how do we best support that? And more often than not, it's by tearing down some of these silos, some of these walls, whether they are programmatic within technology providers today, or whether they are within the workflows and the processes that are leveraging them. So we really look really deeply at how can we make these workflows easier to engage with? How can we make it less onerous to try and at the end of the day, support these students and to make sure that things don't fall through the gaps? So where can we tear down those walls? Where can we integrate with other sources of data? How can we make it easier for a person at the end of the day, this is a person on the other end. How can we make their role easier to understand data that they may not look at every day data that they may not, this isn't something that is their daily job. How can we help them bring that together, rationalize it, correlate different data sources, not in a way that is onerous or is tracking or punitive or any of these other big scary words, but in ways that we can support the student and help them get to a positive outcome.