Here’s how Cedar Rapids schools’ $3.5M investment will improve student safety

CEDAR RAPIDS — A $3.5 million investment into student safety and well-being by the Cedar Rapids Community School District is meant to better support kids with behavior needs from kindergarten on up.

Dozens of staff positions will be added to the district this fall at the elementary, middle and high school level in an effort to improve learning outcomes and reduce office referrals, suspensions, fighting and even juvenile court appearances.

Positions like campus safety liaison will add a staff member trained in security to each of the six middle schools in the district.

An increase in paraeducator hours will provide more support to kindergarten classrooms — the grade with the highest number of major office referrals this school year in the district, said Ryals Parker, executive director of behavior supports.

Social emotional behavioral health intervention specialists added to nearly every school will support students with the highest needs. This will free up the time of engagement specialists and school counselors to focus on the needs of other students, Parker said.

“We’ve heard from the community, building administrators, and students and families that the No. 1 reason people are leaving our schools is because of safety concerns. This is our answer to their concerns and a commitment to making sure our buildings are safe,” said Janessa Carr, the district’s safe and secure learning coordinator.

Social emotional specialists

Adding 29 social emotional behavioral health intervention specialists to district schools is meant to provide more support to students with significant learning or behavioral challenges.

The intervention specialists will focus on the needs of students in Tier 3 in a three-level system of instruction designed to meet the diverse needs of students. Tier 1 provides universal support to all students and Tier 2 offers targeted intervention for students who need additional help.

Additional Tier 3 support will free up engagement specialists to focus on Tier 2, and school counselors to focus on Tier 1, which in turn could prevent some students from needing more supports later on, Parker said.

In an ideal state, about 80 percent of students would be in Tier 1, 15 percent in Tier 2 and 5 percent in Tier 3. About 67 percent of students at Franklin Middle School are in Tier 1, said Jay Richardson, the school’s principal.

“This new role is going to dramatically help us meet the needs of kids that need intensive support, who need extra help because they’ve got things happening outside of the school day in their home lives that change the way they do things here at school,” Richardson said.

Franklin also is adding two additional engagement specialists this fall, increasing the number of staff in that position to three.

Campus safety liaisons

A campus safety liaison will be added to each of the district’s middle schools as a way to “reimagine” what was previously known as a security paraprofessional, Carr said. The liaisons will receive some training from “experts in security” as well as community partners like Kids First, which specializes in restorative justice, Carr said. Restorative justice is a practice that focuses on repairing harm and rebuilding relationships after conflicts and emphasizes accountability.

While there are no formal plans now for the district to contract with Kids First to help train liaisons, Carr said the organization is one it is considering consulting.

The liaisons are “meant to be on their feet all day” and keep vigilant on “hot spots” where students are known to fight, vape or engage in other inappropriate behavior, Carr said.

The Cedar Rapids school board in 2022 voted to remove school resource officers — or police — from middle schools in an effort to reduce the number of student arrests and charges filed and reduce the disproportionate arrests of Black students. School resource officers remain in the high schools.

Carr said the campus safety liaisons are not police and are not trying to recreate the role of a school resource officer. The liaisons might reach out to police in non-emergencies, or if needed, in an emergency.

“As a building administrator, I’m super excited about this position,” Richardson said. “We need this layer of support at Franklin.”

Richardson said the school doesn’t always have the staff to manage student behavior in hallways. He and the assistant principal have worked at desks placed in the hallways as additional eyes and support. But teachers’ jobs are to focus on “reading, writing and math” and not on security, he said.

Safety and success advocate

Another position being added is an elementary student safety and success advocate focused on fourth and fifth-graders at risk of group affiliation or at-risk of gang involvement, Carr said. This is a district-level position that’s not tied to a single building, Carr said.

This person will work to intervene early and provide support to families of at-risk students. Carr said students considered “at-risk” will be “backed by data.” School officials will begin looking at data from middle and high school students with a history of fighting or who are in the juvenile court system.

Essentially, district officials will gather data on potential risk factors for group affiliation using questions like: What did kindergarten through fifth grade look like for these students? Were they reading on grade level? Are they in a two-parent or single-parent home? Are they from low-income families? How many office referrals did they have?

“The data is going to tell us who needs earlier intervention and who needs support,” Carr said.

Building behavior technicians

Building behavior technicians will be added to all middle and high schools in the district in an effort to “drive down” out-of-school suspensions, Parker said. Schools now don’t have the staffing capacity to efficiently and routinely hold in-school suspensions. This position will change that, he said.

Reducing the number of out-of-school suspensions eases the burden on families who might lose time at work or leave a child unsupervised at home. During in-school suspensions, students can receive education on “appropriate behaviors,” build stronger relationships and not miss out academically, Parker said.

Instead of missing an entire day of school, students might be suspended for a few class periods, Parker said. This “certainly will” drive up the number of in-school suspensions initially, Richardson said. But it could, over time, reduce the number of repeat offenders.

Here’s why the distract says it’s needed

Parker attributed some of the need for additional supports — especially at the elementary level — to the worst of the pandemic when child care wasn’t available to many families and kids weren’t getting enough socialization.

There also are “a lot of community pressures” for middle and high school students to make “poor decisions,” Parker said.

“Our schools are battling that within their walls. I do think this is a real challenge we’re facing that maybe we didn’t face 10 years ago,” Parker said.

Richardson said students’ access to cellphones and other devices in school is leading to a rise in instant gratification, and students easily can ignore teachers by turning to the internet instead. “As much as it’s a great tool, it’s also a great hindrance for us in education,” he said.

“I think we are seeing a reflection of the impact of technology, the impact of cultures outside of school that clash with school expectations and a huge gap in the understanding from parents and families of how schools function,” Carr said.

Parker said most of the safety and security positions being added are focused on ‘learning appropriate behaviors, how to manage conflict, how to de-escalate.“

Fewer behaviors frees up students to focus on learning and think about what they want to do after high school graduation, Parker said.

“We want them to leave our district knowing they got a great education and that they’re going to be successful beyond these walls,” Richardson said.

Open positions are posted online at crschools.us/departments/human-resources/employment.

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