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Northern New England Facility Masters Conference, 2016

Beyond checklists, beyond compliance. Stories from a school safety culture.

James Kaufman, founder of Laboratory Safety Institute, promotes teaching safety and teaching safely. "Those who enforce safety rules not only avoid accidents in school but they give students the skills and attitudes necessary to safeguard their future families and co-workers and to live safer healthier longer lives. Safety rules and regulations are the lessons we learn from other people’s mistakes and short cuts. What rules really are, are monuments; they are gravestones. It’s not that safety people sit up late trying to figure out how to make it take longer and cost more money and irritate the living daylights out of their colleagues. It’s that -- as night follows day --  if you do what those people did, sooner or later, you are going to get the same result.” Kaufman 's father once asked him, “Jim, what’s the difference between school and life?  Well, in life the test comes first and the lesson comes afterwards."

Safety, Security and Secrets: Stories from a School Safety Culture

Responsible for school safety and security? Silence is the enemy of excellence. Join a conversation about overcoming a culture of silence.  What are the lessons of incidents, accidents and near misses?  When lessons are learned, lives are saved. Shape an action plan designed to inspire a standard of health and safety you can be proud of. Bring the lessons of the 1937 Texas School Explosion to Your School.

Northern New England Facility Masters Conference 2015

Workshop I: C is for Custodian. S is for Safety  “Our daddies and mothers, as well as the teachers, want to know that when we leave our homes in the morning to go to school, that we will come out safe when our lessons are over.“ Carolyn Jones Frei, March 25, 1937 speech to the Texas Legislature after the 1937 March 18 Texas School Explosion

Custodians are on the front lines of school health and safety. They are the guardians (if not super-heroes) of the school’s increasingly complex people and technical, mechanical and environmental systems. School communities rely on custodians to manage energy efficiency and indoor air quality as well as the sanitation and hygiene measures to reduce the risks of a wide range of conventional and emerging infectious diseases, blood borne pathogens and hazardous materials -- Flu, Ebola, Hepatitis, MRSA, HIV, and food allergens, and asbestos, mold, pesticides, disinfectants, solvents, mercury and other hazards. There is a maze of regulations, standards and guidelines. Yet, according to a recent NEA ESP study, fewer than half of support professionals receive regular health and safety training…. even though many face these issues on a daily basis. This workshop will address the essential features of a school safety culture – beyond checklists, beyond compliance.

Workshop II: Safety, Security and Secrets ”Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.” – Aristotle

Responsible for school safety and security? Silence is the enemy of excellence. Join a conversation about overcoming a culture of silence.  What are the lessons of incidents, accidents and near misses? Shape an action plan designed to achieve a high standard of health and safety, injury and damage prevention, emergency preparedness and security.