The WVEA has long been concerned about school safety and worked to assure our schools are safe places in which to learn and work.

WVEA offers professional development training in addition to hardcopy informational material that outlines your authority, rights, responsibilities, resources and protections as public school employees in all types of situations (teacher empowerment, assault, expulsion, suspension, harassment, disciplinary removal of students with exceptionalities, etc.). Sessions also review and explain the pertinent sections of WV Code and WVBE policies and so they are enforced. Educators interested in a conversation or resources regarding safe schools can contact their WVEA staff person or the WVEA Help Center.

More resources:

NEA’s School Crisis Guide offers a step-by-step outline of what to do before, during, and after any school or community crisis. 

• Prevent: Avoid the occurrence of incidents or lessen the harm done by unavoidable incidents.
• Prevent: Plan for worst-case scenarios, including a continuous cycle of planning, practicing, and evaluating actions aimed at an effective response to an incident.  
• Respond: Steps to minimize harm to people and property during a particular incident.
• Recover: Restore learning and teaching environment after an incident.

The WVDE’s Safe Schools Tookit includes preventive measures and guidelines on Safe and Supportive Schools reporting, which is done each fall. The toolkit provides information about policy and laws, crisis prevention, crisis planning, safety schools helpline, student threat assessments, crisis recovery along with providing training resources.