Student Safety

At the end of each school day I receive a report that lists student injuries that require medical attention.  This is the district’s way of tracking each time a student is in an accident or gets hurt during an activity. On a good day there are one or two entries and on a bad day a dozen.  The injuries range from two students butting heads during a game of tag to a broken bone suffered during a sporting event.  Yesterday’s bus accident with 43 students and 6 adults will make Monday’s report a long one.  

All school district employees are trained to ensure that the safety and welfare of students is their most important responsibility.  When you consider that 8,000 students are in action at our schools each day and only a couple of them need to see a nurse due to an accident, you can assume that we do a pretty good job of ensuring that this is the case.  But when a serious accident occurs, as it did yesterday, things move to a whole new dimension.  As we held our collective breath, waiting for the details of what took place, I experienced that sense of loss of control and found myself questioning whether we need stricter guidelines for travel.  We are fortunate that the students’ injuries are not life threatening and will for the most part, soon be well behind them. 

I offer thanks to the multitude of people who dropped everything following the accident to help with next steps.  While the accident serves to remind us that despite all our efforts to ensure safety, there will be accidents.  It also causes us to pause and reflect on how we can improve to ensure that our priority of student safety and welfare maintains its utmost level of importance.