Community Collaboration: The Key to Enhancing School Safety

Jared Taylor: Welcome to the American Classroom podcast where we explore education in building a civil society. I'm Jared Taylor and here I'm here with my host Lindsey Crosland. We are excited to have our special guest Vanessa Whitener here with us to talk about the subject of school safety. So let's begin.

Vanessa, thanks. You and I have known each other for a little while. You're a mom, former and current school board member, but why don't you start by just telling us a little bit about yourself and then we'll frame up the discussion that we want to have here today.

Venessa Whitener: Great. I am an educator. I was a high school biology teacher in Philadelphia and in Mesa, Arizona, and then I returned to my alma mater, Arizona State and got my master's in education administration.

And in that time period, I had decided to run to to be on my local school board as a community engager. Having young children go through me as I was a school board member had a great impact knowing that every decision I made immediately affected my children. So I finished my master's and then ran for school board and I served on our local school board for 10 years, growing district in Arizona, and I stepped away as my children got older and busier, and then I work in some education projects, some marketing and media, and some special projects with some consultation here and there and currently serve on another school board that is greatly involved with CTE, Career and Tech Education, and serving students that are I have some disadvantages in classroom and in life and serving those students currently.

Jared Taylor: That's great. Thanks for dedicating your time and much of your energy to education. It's a big deal.

So we're talking about school safety and we want to know some of your thoughts on a few things, but it's always nice to rewind the tape a little bit and before we even do that, it's funny when we survey parents and ask them really what's the number one reason they choose this school or that school.

Safety is always at the very top of why they choose or not choose, not just physical safety, but also the the safety of like the bullying incident, relative to other people coming in, is it safe, between peer groups, things like that. Yeah. So it's a top of mind of parents all the time. And so we thought that would be a fun thing to explore a little bit.

And I don't remember when I was growing up that physical safety actually was a huge concern. I think I told you the story one time that in fourth grade. I got a ride to school from one of the original Black Panther members.

I don't know if I ever told you that story. We'll have to go on that. He was speaking with my father in a conference one time. He had been reformed, right? He was out of Oakland. He had plans to take down the city of Chicago. That's a podcast from another time. Anyways, I rode to school with this man. His name is Eldridge Cleaver.

You can look him up. I got out and my fourth grade teacher was right there and he goes, Is that Eldridge Cleaver that you just rode with? I assume we're talking about school safety, right? Some of these groups were leading the violence in the 60s. But anyways, he's a great man. But, the School safety, this has changed over time, right?

There used to not be very many fences around schools. There's not a lot of safety things. How have you guys seen it change over time when you were growing up?

Venessa Whitener: Most definitely, even just in transportation, school buses growing up in Arizona, we didn't have air conditioning in, in that aspect.

But as far as fencing and how just my time on the school board in those 10 years, so much had changed in regards to rearranging buildings into access points. Moving doors and whether they could be accessed by children or people from the outside, changing office structure and, but in that time also, as we'll get into safety of technology safety.

So you have the physical piece of safety, you have technology safety and then I wanted to talk a little bit about this, the safety of the students. Sometimes when we talk about safety, it's just, is it a comfortable, happy learning environment? And that's where children feel safe, if that's being fed.

Arriving to school safely, not having scary or unsafe incidences on their way to school. I've experienced that with some of my students in Philadelphia. Just sometimes coming to school is not safe. And then, but once they're there. How safety is a feeling we can have barriers and physical and structure safety, but that safety of that learning environment, how that child is feeling inside.

And we have seen that change dramatically in the last 10 years, a lot of mental health and bowling and that social media safety. And we can speak to that too. I had my time on the school bullying. We had It was the largest uptick in teen suicide in the East Valley in the Phoenix area. And students feeling that safety after an incident like that, the mental health safety and all those people that those kids interact with every single day is how do we make them feel safe.

Long story short.

Jared Taylor: Yeah, the defenses used to be to keep us in from chasing the dog down the street or things like that. It wasn't really keeping bad guys out necessarily. But anything you want to comment on? Just how did we get to, what changes you've seen over the last couple of decades?

Lindsey Crosland: Yeah, when I was in high school, there was a fence to keep us all in. And of course, keep running people out just to check into the front office, but I'm not sure that always happened. The thing that I remember about school safety was just that there'd be fights in the hallway. So it was more about just making sure you stayed out of trouble yourself or out of the way of someone who didn't like you, but I don't remember ever fearing from a safety standpoint of outsiders coming into a school.

Jared Taylor: I don't know about your high schools, but we had a smoking area. You have smoking areas.

Venessa Whitener: We did. Yeah. Whether does that fit into this? Discuss whether it was official or not.

Jared Taylor: It had a fence. It had trees.

Lindsey Crosland: We didn't have a designated smoking was it for students or staff?

Jared Taylor: No, it was designated for students and it was right by the junior lockers. And so it just smelled so bad. Now no one would even think of that. But back in the eighties when smoking was still a thing. But it's a different angle of school safety.

Venessa Whitener: Safety right now is we have vape detectors. We have certain particular smoke detectors in our bathrooms, in our schools and cameras all over that, yeah, just in the last, I'd say, 10, 15 years, 5 years.

Lindsey Crosland: And most of the cities in the Phoenix area where we are have laws around not smoking within 20 feet of a building, or I don't know what it is relative to a school.

Jared Taylor: I just bring that up because, Some of the evolution of school safety is because we're more aware of certain things, right?

Was there depression and anxiety in schools when we were there? Of course there were. I think today we're a little bit more tuned into it. And aware of its impact on educational progress. And I think that's a healthy thing. Just like smoking, right? Back then, the Marlboro Man was still cool. And we hadn't gone through that societal evolution where, okay, it's now not cool. It causes serious damage. And, let's stop the lying. There was all that. So I think that's also helped us tremendously with this whole thing of school safety.

Let's talk a little bit about, let's step back a little bit because this is one of the reasons why I wanted you to come on this is from a community standpoint I heard you talk a little bit about a community standpoint, how the community really needs to help own school safety because you can't just say, hey, principal, it's your job, or here, police department, it's your job.

Why don't you talk about a couple of points there that you've been sharing with other people about how it's really a systems kind of approach that we need rather than just try to point fingers here. Here's my child. Make sure they're safe.

Venessa Whitener: Right, there's two different thoughts here. I have spoken to some, we call them SRO student resource officers and police who are used to, being on the schools campuses daily. And we have two coins here. We have the coin where students might misbehave and parents either don't believe that it happened or it's someone else's fault or they target the teacher or why didn't the school do this?

Why didn't you do that? Why didn't you prevent this? No, it couldn't have been my kid. So we have that part. But then we have the part too where we can't just be so naive that the schools are teaching our kids everything when it comes to life skills, social media, safety health, safety, what we put in our bodies, there has to be parental support and guidance.

And so if you look at both those coins they have to be spinning together they have to be moving together. So it's the parents, it is the police, it is the schools, and it is your, I'm going to say your local, your most local government, and that includes your school board, but also your cities and towns. In the Phoenix metro area, we have student resource officers that are funded typically by the city or town, that department.

So we have those policemen on our campuses. There's activity that might happen outside of the school day. Maybe it's on the weekend. And some of that activity or poor behavior can filter into the school the following Monday or the following week. There has to be some type of communication. If there was an incident that police knew about over the weekend, but, students were warned, parents came and picked them up with whatever behavior act they were caught in or whatever.

So there has to be communication with the school. Hey, we have this incident over the weekend. Maybe the SROs don't know, maybe the student resource officers don't know because they're not the ones working on the weekend. So this communication that's happening with police and with schools, also that parents feel comfortable and safe enough to approach school leaders, school counselors and say, my kid is going through a really rough patch. I really want my parent or my, I want his teachers to know. I want the staff to know. This happened over the weekend. It could be anything. The kid got in a fight with his dad. The kid got in a fight with the neighbor. Somebody passed away.

I have seen on the school board where students gotten to arguments as friends over the weekend, and it just spewed and then family feuds and then protection orders against each other as neighbors. That communication needs to happen and we need to encourage parents that it's okay to share those things with teachers.

Hey, yes, grandmother passed away so that parents communicate with school leaders. Police are communicating with school administration and towns because they are funding the police and also at your local level as community support. There's been several instances where a school administrator has had an issue that like, hey There's students doing unruly activity, on this easement, it's, is it my school property?

Is it the town property? Who do I call? Or something that might have to do with the town that the school leaders don't know who to communicate with. When we have a breakdown between city leaders and town, or sorry, city and town leaders, schools and police, then we get unruly behavior and parents are just out of the loop.

And we can touch some of those specific instances that have happened in the East Valley where parents have felt like they have been left out of the loop. Who has direct access to parents and students?

Schools. But if the schools aren't communicating with the police and the towns, how can they get the information to parents?

Jared Taylor: And it seems like the bigger the city, the jurisdiction is. The less communication are between those institutions in that society, between schools and police departments and others. With social media, things are just perpetuating more and you get we just need to have more communication, not less.

Lindsey Crosland: Do you want to, for just the audience reference, do you want to give us an example of what that looks like what are you talking about?

Venessa Whitener: Police, if they're going to see unruly behavior outside of the school day, same thing in the school day. If, usually if there's an incident that's, that warrants calling the police are going to know that.

But specifically when we talk about communities, keeping kids safe. There's instances happening off campus and the police know about it. And specific instances at specific locations. And if we're talking in our community, in the East Valley. We have found out, as parents and community members, that there were 22 incidences of fights at a particular restaurant area, restaurants, and particular areas of complexes or movie theaters.

If there had been communication between the police department, the town, and the school leaders, that information should have been disseminated to the parents. Hey! This community, this district our community police department has shared with us, there has been an uptick in violent behavior or altercations at this instant this location, be aware, maybe not send your kids to this location after 9pm on the weekend or vice, or weekday, 22 incidences, why not an incident three or four as a parent who has and I think it's important to understand that when we look at the ages of Children that this directly impacts, there are parents who are frustrated.

Why wasn't any of that communicated that this has been happening for a year and a half? So where is the lack town leadership, police department schools, and we have seen a breakdown. I have seen towns and cities effectively have education committees that are led by the town. So the town has an education committee, and the superintendents and principals and SROs and police serve and make up that committee.

So that communication is constantly happening. When that's not happening is where we see the breakdown. We don't have anyone saying oh, we've had this many altercations that are unusual and usual. We need to communicate this to the right people. And that would be school leaders and parents. And as parents, we should expect that from our town leaders and from our police departments.

Just as a teacher, I would expect and would hope that a parent would communicate with me about their child's concerns. These are children in our community. That's a concern. We need to communicate to every stakeholder that, that touches these children. And, we've heard, I've heard some people say there's always been thugs and drugs.

Yes, but that doesn't mean we don't, that doesn't mean we don't do anything about it. That doesn't mean we ignore it. It doesn't mean that we continue to work for a better, say, a better day, a better next day. There's always going to be something that's going to come up. And we can talk and talk about social media safety.

There's always going to be something, but it always needs to be addressed. And it's our job to teach our children safety and teach them, Hey, if you see this altercation, if you see someone video this, if you see this, now, what do you do with it? And I feel that's where our schools have a good opportunity to.

To mentor that and teach that and if we can help our kids understand that, then that will filter out through our communities and as they get older, as they become active adults in their communities.

Jared Taylor: That reminds me, I, about 20 years ago in the community I lived, there was some teen violence going on and I would throw churches into the mix too because the police department came in and did some training with the ecclesiastical leaders.

Then, women that work with the youth And they say, hey if you see these colors it means this, If you see these numbers It means these types of drugs. And then they did all this really proactive training. What do you do if you see a fight going down or you see the colors coming together? It probably means a fight's going down or something that you're not going to like.

And you know some of the people. They said you go intervene, don't be don't run the other way, run towards it because they know you and you have a relationship with them from church or maybe the neighborhood or something like that. And I just thought that was really really effective in terms of how we can work together as faith groups or schools or law enforcement.

Venessa Whitener: It's a really good example when I was serving on the school board at the time and I alluded to a high incidence in a particular year of suicide particular in all in our district at the time and I Do look back and I look at the leadership style in which our superintendent at the time did call on every faith leader that she knew or didn't know or reached out to in our community.

And we did have, we had very helpful gatherings with these faith leaders, school leaders, and town leaders. How do we help kids feel safe? How do we help them manage and handle these big ordeals, these really heartbreaking situations. And that was a very helpful time as school leaders, that's a very a heartbreaking point in your community.

And we had three in one semester. And how do you overcome that? And it's hard. And that's one thing as a parent, as I have some grace for leaders. I don't expect my school principal or my school superintendent to handle all that. And if you are expecting that, that's the wrong expectation, but that school leader knew.

I'm gonna use my community. I'm gonna call on my town leaders. I'm gonna call on my faith based leaders and we had counselors just come in. We had these faith based leaders Individually talking to different groups of students depending on the need as a whole to parents and students and also addressing the staff and if you're a school leader A good school leader, you will search out those people.

And that goes to say with business leaders too. We had a superintendent who was very actively involved in business leaders because when something would happen or whatnot, she knew some people she could call on.

And I will tell you right here, we had business leaders in that moment who brought in snacks. Specifically for that time when a lot of kids stayed after school for extra counseling and just having those connections. So when we talk about community safety, suicide in your school, that involves, that should involve everyone.

Violence outside of school, violence inside of school. When we talk about particular violence or safety inside the school, yes, a lot of that is controlled by the school leaders or those student resource officers. But as parents and community members, how can we lessen that? And here's where I go back to if the police knew all these incidents were happening and the town wasn't relaying that information to the school, how can the schools? address it and bring it up and talk to the kids. Cause we could have 18 months ago been teaching kids, what's wrong and illegal for you to video someone without their consent and you sharing it.

That's defamation and that's illegal, but if we had known that or and there are schools already in Texas I know for sure are ahead of the curve on this when it comes to safety of violence and videoing and sharing on social media They have policies that are enacted in school that there are consequences for doing that and you're gonna start seeing a lot of Arizona schools doing that real soon. But just right there by adapting to a policy of a new So if there's a potential unsafe issue, parents are going to learn about that policy, and they're going to learn real quick when their student, when they're called in, because their student is, as a consequence for sharing a video, and this extends into chat, GBT, and AI, and so when we talk about safety, we have a whole nother side of tech safety. So as school leaders, we have to adapt, and that's what I'm saying, there's always going to be a bad issue, but we have to be willing to adapt, we can change policy in a board meeting.

And school leaders need to be able to do that and be willing to change to meet those safety needs.

Jared Taylor: And I think policy makers need to lean in, right? They don't have to feel like they know everything or the subject matter expert, but they know enough to take one step or maybe two steps, right? And then I really appreciate your systems approach to this.

Because you might have the best parents ever that are really working with their young person, but they're just a knucklehead. And they need a third party to come in, maybe a teacher, or a faith group leader, or a service leader, someone else, to just help them along the way. Because they've turned mom and dad off, or maybe they've turned their church off, or whatever it is.

But somebody else will have a relationship with them, and that's why we have to, as a whole community, And I appreciate that emphasis of that because for our youth, they really need a whole team. And I know when my daughters were acting out, that's what, that's the language I would use to say, we're on your team.

Venessa Whitener: You're like, but you're, I put you in timeout parents. I need this ref or I need this team member over here. And sometimes that happens. Yeah.

Lindsey Crosland: And I do think it's naive for a parent to think like you'd mentioned the drugs and thugs. Oh, my kid doesn't do drugs. My kid's not a thug. So I don't have to worry about it.

If your kid has a camera on their phone and they haven't learned basic civility or respect of others, they can be a big problem. So I think it's just important to think every parent has a responsibility to be involved, to be engaged, to help with the community. And I, yeah, I love the concept.

Have you seen it, like, where have you seen that work really well where community faith based. Base faith leaders and schools have worked together.

Venessa Whitener: Yeah. I, you it wasn't until this conversation was I thinking back. Oh we've done that a few times. We have done that a few times where we have had to call on faith leaders and I believe probably Quin Creek has done that as well.

When we talk about a particular instance that has spurred a lot of, safety and violent conversation in the East Valley is, the safety of moving forward after an instance, we've seen worse sports teams don't want to play another team for fear of retaliation or because this student who was involved with this incident is on this team's a different school.

We've seen games canceled for that reason, but there's also opportunities to learn and help children move through that. And I don't expect it to be the coaches all on the coaches. I don't expect it all to be on the parents. We've seen some new funding come in through the schools and a lot of that was more COVID funding, but we've seen a push more specifically for mental health support for students.

And I wouldn't say it's It, how do I there's kids who need a little extra help on their team is what I'm going to say, who just need a little extra help support. It's not always a dire situation and we don't want to make hard things in life, absolute hards. We want to be able to teach kids.

We're going to have highs and lows. We're going to have hard times. We have people here to support you. So we have seen an increase in counselors in Arizona at the time. A few years ago was the lowest counselor support per student ratio. It was like 1 to 5 or 400 kids. But now they're trying to get it 1 to every 250 kids.

So when we say counselor, not just the counselor who's doing the scheduling. But that little extra support and sometimes just that one little piece can make a big difference and, but it's informing the kids, Hey, we have this person on staff. You can go see them. I had a situation a friend's son, it got really irritable and let's just give you an idea.

And he left campus. Everyone's worried. They see on the cameras that he's gone. But within sight, he left the campus, but trying to understand more what was wrong with the student. How do you recover from that? Do you suspend the kid? No. My opinion, no, I don't know what they're all out of school. No, something was bothering the child.

So this this parent and this counselor, met with the student and what was nice is that the counselor and the teachers, and it's just be a simple email. Hey, when this child is feeling this feeling again, just let them step out into the hall. Or let them come to the office and see me for a few minutes.

That's it. Versus leaving campus, everyone worried, involving the police, SRO, police, and not a consequence, you left campus, you ditched, you have a three day, five day suspension. No, so we're just talking about that support that team and when school leaders are doing their budgets It's an important piece That there's just that little extra I wouldn't call it extra there's just support there.

So we don't have these monu these, I'm going to say these highs and lows that turn into monumental things. And then kids get hit hard with all these consequences. And here there's man, I just needed a little break. I didn't need a five day suspension. And now I'm missing school and I'm in trouble with my parents or that type of thing, lose credit, not graduate.

Lindsey Crosland: Yeah, that's when I think it's important, like that example where the parents communicated with the school. If your child has a really difficult morning and they're having a problem with, they're dysregulated, but that's, the bell's ringing and they have to go, then communicating that and then they can try to just maybe step in and talk to them, make sure they're okay.

Because then it could lead to them blowing up at somebody or leaving campus and everyone's worried and how you're losing, instructional time. Just that communication can really get ahead of big problems.

Venessa Whitener: And here's where you can bring in as a school leader, you're searching out the people who can help you.

And in our big East Valley of the Phoenix, in our Metro area, we have people who just rise up who are mental health advocates for Children who are safety youth advocates who are tech safety and they will rise up. But if you have to look for them as a school leader, or they're either knocking on your door and you're too busy and you think you're going to hear a complaint session, people might actually have good ideas to help you.

And and that type of thing where you can bring in that mental health advocate. And you can bring in your police department and say, hey, can you guys work together and put a couple of videos together for our teachers? We're talking a three minute spiel of, Hey, when you notice a kid acting erratic, it's not because maybe the kid hates the teacher and he's trying to make your day horrible.

What are some little tips? Those are your partners. Police, can you put us together a little two minute video for our teachers, a little training when they see a fight, what should their first reaction be? Cause as teachers, we're not always trained in these pieces, but just a little bit of help goes a long way.

And if school leaders are doing their professional development, a lot of these things can be learned and taught. We're talking in five minutes. Just here's some three tips. If you see a dysregulated child, don't take it seriously. Don't be offended. Help bring them down. And then bigger issues we've talked with our local police department and school superintendent that we would like to see a partnership where our police are putting together videos for safety for teachers, for students, and working on kind of that social media tech safety and the law that our kids aren't getting. And I'm not saying it's not the school's job to do that.

It's a partnership. And if we have a 20 minute advisory period, then we can try and utilize that time and say, hey, here's some information we're getting from our local police departments. Let's take it in. Let's be aware. And they can be shared.

Jared Taylor: And they're sitting on a lot of expertise and they don't need, if someone's listening to this, that is a police officer, don't think you have to have this finally curated video.

All the graphics. Get your phone out and just give some good old common sense about what you've seen and what you've learned. That, that's, that probably is more effective than some, PR produced video.

Just start, just engage, right? Because I've seen the disengagement from people that are sitting on a lot of the data relative to teen violence or violence in schools or mental illness in schools.

Schools have a lot of data on that as well. We know we do that because we have to report it all the time. But I like how you're saying is let's use it on an offensive basis. Not just a compliance basis as well. Take it to the next level. Create that dialogue amongst the offensive team and use it to help our young people so that the American classroom is a place of learning.

Not a place of uncertainty or stress or anxiety because they're just worrying about where am I going to eat, or who's going to beat me up when I'm on the way home, or whatever else it is. Because you just cannot learn if you don't feel safe.

Lindsey Crosland: You can't thrive.

Venessa Whitener: A lot of American classroom, with these discussions of building relationships around youth safety with your business leaders, your faith leaders, your police leaders, your town leaders, that's the American classroom.

Jared Taylor: They feel the support of their community.

Venessa Whitener: And parents will see that.

Jared Taylor: They're the future. They should.

Venessa Whitener: And you were talking to just get your cell phone and put out a little video and and it would be nice if we could see some of that come from our police department and our town that relationship in has to be bridged bigger it needs to be tighter. And those things with the help of the town can be shared through the school channels to parents And we need to utilize social media the best way that data shows, not a five page email, not a three paragraph long spill from the principal.

I've been on both sides of you guys have been on both sides too, as the leader and the parent. But hey, if you put a 20 second video or a little 20 second sponsored ad in front of me is, hey, we've seen an uptick In poor behavior or town, student behavior in this area or regarding this, just read last year, the viral destroy your school property and put it online.

Okay. Now that is a prime example. There's long old paragraph, not everyone's reading that, but if I got a 10 second video, hey, parents, there's a, there's a. What was the contest? What is it? A challenge? There's a challenge going out right now of your, of students destroying school's bathroom and posting it.

Can you please be aware and tell your kids not to do that? And look at your children's phones. Look at your children's phones.

Lindsey Crosland: Talk to them about it and then look at the content.

Venessa Whitener: But those are little tiny snippets that town and school leaders that we can send out to parents.

Jared Taylor: And let me just add that policymakers, I've seen, I've talked to people, you've been elected, I've been elected.

Policymakers during these tense times are leaned on by staff and said, don't go out and say anything because we have open litigation or open investigation. And there's definitely a role for discretion. I'm not saying we don't coordinate things, but what I've seen recently is they don't say anything at all and it makes the parents and the community very suspicious.

That they don't know what's going on. It just increases a level of skepticism of our government's so incompetent.

Lindsey Crosland: And they're going to lose trust really quickly.

Jared Taylor: Yeah, the agencies don't talk to each other. Yes, you need to be discreet in what you're saying, but you do need to communicate.

Because not communicating is the worst. You're just making it worse. And people are just

on you.

Venessa Whitener: And you and I live in the same town, Jared and I live in the same town and we have seen throughout the years, we have seen when the town has been involved with school leaders and I believe we just saw when there was a breakdown in communication. And that's what we're in right now is when we have seen.

Jared Taylor: It's because they were told don't talk or the policy makers by the police departments were saying, Hey, we have an investigation. You shouldn't talk. Okay. Fine. The police department should talk and you can tell the status of investigations without violating things that are going to put your investigation at risk. Or if there's litigation, you can still give updates and briefings that happens all the time. That's all I'm saying is right.

Venessa Whitener: Or 18 months ago. Parents could have gotten an email that said, hey, police have been called 10 times at these locations. Please be aware. Please check on your children, their locations. Please check their phones. We're having an uptick in videoing of violence and social media.

Jared Taylor: Here's how we can work together. Here's how you can help what we're doing.

Venessa Whitener: So you own it, you address it. Don't be afraid of it. I think sometimes when we don't want to look bad. It just gets worse.

Jared Taylor: Because policy makers think they have to go out and give these well curated speeches and be experts on everything. No you don't. You need to talk to the people who put you in office and help them know that you're working on it. Yeah. Here's what we're doing. Here's what we know. Here's what we don't know. We're so grateful for law enforcement's work in here and the faith groups are kicking in and doing great things. That type of stuff isn't going to put an investigation sideways, right?

Venessa Whitener: And we're talking the community piece here and it is different when a school system has to address maybe a safety issue with an adult that works in the school. And we've seen those where adults have made bad choices. And have not, have put children in an unsafe position and those are hard to, to address openly with personnel laws and things like that, but also know that those things do happen. We have unsafe issues with other adults who are caring for our kids and our district has done particular things with Fingerprinting, background checks, but also for parents who go on field trips.

And working with students, so that has something I have seen change also when you talked about school safety throughout the years, could my parents doing a background check to go into their school 20 years ago, 30 years ago, and be like, why? But and there was big pushback at the time, but there were also instances, we're talking coaches who aren't on your school campus.

But are coming just for a coaching position. So when we talk about school safety, that's a lot It's a lot. So there's things that maybe we didn't touch on but just know there's a lot that goes into it. There's a lot of people that work hard into school safety and I we use that term broadly and I know in the Arizona area we have to sometimes pass ballot measures for more funding for safety.

And sometimes those things aren't spelled out specifically. Sometimes it is extra staff. Sometimes it is offense. Sometimes it is filters on our computers or our Chromebooks. Sometimes it is just safety measures in the bathroom for vape sensors and things like that. I just want I want community and parents to know when we say school safety, I don't like lumping it just in that term, but it is so broad now.

There's a lot that goes into that, but I do think the community piece, communities and schools, towns, police, business leaders can actually improve that. And if we can improve some of those things and we're all on the same page, then it hopefully lessons some of the need for the other things.

Jared Taylor: Because Like in Arizona I think it's more than 50 percent of our state budget is for education. But what percentage of that money, that's a lot of money Is actually going to instruction versus safety or non instruction, right? And the less a community I think that's what you're arguing and I agree with that is the less a community works and talks About the things they know and the data that they sit on the less instruction your young people are getting the less educated they're actually going to be because they feel less safe.

They don't feel like they can really thrive and flourish in this thing we call education in a school because they're worried about this or that. So I think that's one of the most compelling reasons because you're paying for this. But where's it going?

Venessa Whitener: Now can we use instructional funding dollars to actually give instructional materials to students, I believe at a younger age, seventh grade that, in, in some schools are doing this, sometimes they call it common sense, social media or tech safety or could you imagine having instructions as a seventh grader where you're taught This is what chat GPT is. This is what AI is. Did you know it's illegal to put someone else's head on someone else's body? Did you know that if you video someone, a violent altercation, you could be held responsible? Did you know these are the apps that hide the other apps? That's instructional dollars. It's just, do we find that valuable enough to have in the school day?

I do. It's, again, it's adapting. And, but those types of things can make students be better in the classroom and academics. They're not being distracted by, oh, if I could just cheat using this way, if I could just had a Google picture and then I upload it and then it tells me all the answers.

If I could just do this and not being so distracted by some of the violent and inappropriate things they see on social media. And disseminating that throughout the school day as a distraction. I do see some of these important lessons to be taught in the classroom. That could help alleviate such a distraction as they progress farther in their academic journey.

And parents hopefully will pick up on some of that information too.

Lindsey Crosland: And you brought up so many topics in there. Teaching kids. Reminding kids about educational integrity, right? And that comes into AI, which we'll probably have a whole other episode on. And then internet safety and having, even if you have, we've done like internet safety nights.

Venessa Whitener: So this could be the whole, this is the basket.

And now you're going to do different eggs different podcasts on those particulars,

Lindsey Crosland: So many specific areas within this that we can address. But so I've heard you get really good recommendations for school leaders. And you've touched on for faith based leaders. If I'm a community member who doesn't have a school age child. Like, how can I, and I hear this episode, like, how can I make an impact? How can I help my community? Maybe they have a skill they can share. Maybe they have knowledge they can share. Should they reach out to their school? Should they reach out to the policy makers? What would you recommend?

Venessa Whitener: Even some instances that are happening with student behavior outside of the school day our town has talked about or our districts has even talked about a separate phone number. That just citizens can call and just say, hey, this is the type of behavior we're seeing at this location and not be able to report it without making a big deal.

Yeah, that type of thing. And just being, I just have a different idea. It's a youth safety social media channel. That all town citizens are all, anyone can belong to say, hey, did you know, this is a dot land, maybe not walk on this land or go practice your golf shot on this land. No, but like it would, it's for anyone who lives in that community, but where you can share information about town, but also that might involve youth safety. For example, kids surfing on their cars in the mall parking lot. Oh, who should they call? But that gets the police and the school leaders. So people are aware. But then that's shared on social media channels. So if you don't have kids, you might be like, I should look out for cars that are spinning around in the mall, that type of thing.

Lindsey Crosland: I like that because there's a lot of current platforms to share information, safety, there's the ring, there's the neighborhood there's the different websites, but for me, sometimes I turn the notifications off because it's like someone saw a cat on the ring camera and, 500 comments, so sometimes I just turn it off, but there could have been a youth safety issue that I missed.

So I like the idea of a place where we could go specifically for that.

Venessa Whitener: And in my opinion, it's ran by a town. By the town leadership, not an HOA or a neighborhood group.

Jared Taylor: Or it could be a committee that the town organizes that has faiths, school, service, just a cross section of the community that has interest in it.

Lindsey Crosland: And then they would get their content by people like sending it in.

Venessa Whitener: Yeah it's ran by that committee. Not anyone can just go share and post, but things like, hey, there we're looking for this. Hey let's talk about this car or hey, here's a public safety announcement. We're seeing a lot of e bikes on this road and that's not safe. So talk to your kids or maybe that person who doesn't have kids is saying, I'm having a lot of uptick of people riding their e bikes on this parkland and it's tearing up the grass.

They could send that information. So I'm talking about a channel that addresses, it involves youth. That's it. I'm not talking about someone's dog ran this way and it involves, yeah, but it involves the safety of youth. Yeah.

Jared Taylor: Vanessa, this is great. Thank you for being here to help kick off this little series of school safety and lots of things. Lots of good takeaways here. Lean in, elevate the communication. You're sitting on the data. Think systems. Think community, use that word. There really is power in community. Any last word that you'd like to leave with the listeners here?

Venessa Whitener: Oh, no, that was great. I love the lean in, don't be afraid to change, don't be afraid to adapt. And don't be afraid to admit that. There's bad things that happen. Yeah. Don't be afraid to admit that made a mistake and how can we do, how can we use admit that maybe your kid made a moments? Yeah, learning what's working, what's not learning and teaching moments. That's all I look at things is with learning. You either didn't learn or you did. So using all those partnerships to learn and make it better.

Lindsey Crosland: I love it. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and your experience. It's an important conversation. I feel like this is just the beginning,

Jared Taylor: Thank you. You're welcome.

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