The Upper Arlington Board of Education has approved several safety-related policy changes stemming from a comprehensive safety audit they had requested in February.
At the Board of Education meeting on June 12, Superintendent Paul Imhoff recommended policy changes that included updates to safety training, student ID card systems, visitor protocols and a four-year phase-out of the open-lunch policy at Upper Arlington High School.
The Board of Education considered those recommendations for two weeks so that parents, students and community members could share their thoughts on the proposed changes.
At the Wednesday, June 27 meeting, the Board welcomed additional public comment before taking action on the recommendations.
The recommendations stem from a full safety audit requested by the Board of Education in February. The audit was conducted by Safeguard Risk Solutions in collaboration with the Upper Arlington Division of Police and the Upper Arlington Division of Fire.
The district will be taking the following steps to improve student safety:
- Increasing a focus on all areas of student well-being as part of the next strategic planning process;
- Expanding the functionality of student identification cards to include the ability to have students utilize the ID card system to enter and exit schools, assisting with attendance tracking;
- Implementing a visitor management system;
- Adding two school resource officers (SROs), in collaboration with the City of Upper Arlington, so that there will be full-time officers at the high school and both middle schools, as well as an SRO who divides time among all five elementary schools;
- Increasing training and exercises for safety and violence prevention;
- Adding or upgrading security cameras at all buildings; and
- Discontinuing the open lunch policy at the elementary and middle schools beginning with the 2018-2019 school year and phasing in the discontinuation of the open lunch policy at the high school over a four-year period, as outlined in the safety recommendation report.
For more information about the approved safety-related policy changes, please view the Safety Audit Summary Report and Recommendation at www.uaschools.org/safety.
Safety Recommendations and Related Presentations at the June 27 Board of Education Meeting