>> Kentucky kids and teachers have settled into a new school year.

There are some assignments.

Educators are sending out.

>> Is Kentucky making the grade on school safety and addressing the teacher and school staff shortages across the state to find out now on ♪ ♪ thank you for joining us for the kickoff of season 19 of connections.

I'm Renee Shaw.

We're looking at some important education issues and today show school safety and teacher shortages.

School districts across the state are making consistent progress in school safety with enhancing security measures and addressing social and emotional concerns of students.

Is it enough?

What more needs to be done?

I talked with the state school safety Marshall, Ben Wilcox and the executive director of the Kentucky Center for School Safety John Acres to find out.

John Acres.

Ben Wilcox, thank you for being here with us.

We appreciate it.

But again.

>> So I want to talk to you all about the recent school Safety Risk Assessment report that came out recently.

And we've had you on talking before about where we stand when it comes to school safety.

>> The beginning of the school year.

This is always top of mind along with academic progress of students.

But then talk to us about the strides that have been made in the improvements, perhaps over the last time that you and John were here.

>> Very excited about the report.

Very excited about what we're finding when we go into our risk assessments in schools.

He does risk assessment is broken into 2 parts.

The first part, Bean Access control, which is your first line of defense when it comes to protecting kids.

That's making sure your doors are locked, making sure the exterior doors are controlled.

Your engines are controlled.

We're at 99% compliance.

And you don't hear that very often.

Anything.

That's 99% declines.

It's about the same numbers as last which means that we're maintaining a lot of consistency in our safety.

And I think that that's what's very I think what's important is that our staff and students are not a compliance issue anymore to commit men issue.

And that's what we're seeing in.

And I think that's why we're so very happy with the report is that we're going in and we're not having to work a lot with with such with staff because they're doing what they're supposed to be doing.

>> delineate for us.

Compliance versus commitments.

>> Well, that's the thing.

It's good.

You know, compliance is checking a box commitment is we're doing this because this is what we're supposed to do.

This is the important thing.

This is why we're keeping our kids safe.

You know, it's not shutting the Checking a box.

No, it is.

You know, we're we've we've we've bought into the program.

We know what's important and we're there to protect our kids.

And that's what we're talk about.

When we say it's not a compliance issue, more to commitment that we're getting from our staff.

>> Are you satisfied with how things are going, doing?

You know, I think our partnership with the office state school security marshal has helped a compliance issue absolutely into a commitment issue.

>> Early on when his compliance officers would go there and they would pass, they would check the box and then some things will slide.

But now that's not happening as much as we hope that it would be doing this.

But in those terms, but they are showing that commitment a lot I will highlight a quick one Milberg South Middle School.

Does this thing called Doug a War door, tug of war to the war.

>> That one staff walks around the building planning, period.

Whatever as they passed next year door, they may discover just get a little tough, just to be sure that it's in the lock was not from whatever.

So that's just going well over and beyond the call of duty when it comes to just being just something part of the fiber of the school.

Right?

>> We know that there are lots of conversations and concerns about active shooter drills and the the secondary trauma primary trauma that that could have on children.

Is that being addressed about him even having the instant ago by a door and Todd on it, you think?

Oh, my gosh.

I mean, it's almost a sad state of affairs that that's where we are.

>> Well, and John, discuss that you all have awesome program with lockdowns and and the Let you discussed that for sure.

Well, let's turn the clock back about 3 years ago.

The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, which are usually 2 opposing organization.

Penned a white paper talking about how elementary children are being traumatized when schools do lockdown drills.

And so that 3 years ago, our friends down at Murray State University put together a task force.

The look at what can we do?

They have safety practices in elementary schools as opposed to lockdown drills and, you know, those type of things.

And so it's very child oriented for that age.

Appropriate group.

High school kids in middle school kids.

You can kind of get by with that.

But we're not talking about active guns going off in the schools and things like this.

We're just making sure they know where the flow the traffic should And we develop what we call situational awareness.

But with the elementary kids, we wanted to be really sure that they get into a safety practices and understand that there might be a dog in the building.

So we need to get away from the door so people didn't see and hear.

And of course, that dog obviously is possibility an intruder that we don't tell the kids that somebody is after with a gun.

Sure.

Sure.

By law department, criminal justice training puts together active shooter video that every staff member staff member in the state is required to watch.

If you have connection with the student or and I don't know any other staff don't have connection with students and working it school and what we pushed really with that video is planning.

You're not going learn about active shooter situation in the hour.

But you are going to learn how to plan how to, you know, if something happens, what are we going to do?

What's going to work for my my school, my classroom and what we want to do is get the staff together when they watch that video for 2 Everybody needs to know what everybody else is doing and they they got that support the video is but they can bring up some trauma.

So we want everybody to there.

You've got your counters there.

You want your SRO there or your law enforcement to talk about these things.

So it's not a traumatic event learning about the potential trend traumatic event.

It's a planning and making sure that we're doing it to KET our kids safe.

Let me add a footnote to that real quick then did his homework on that?

He just didn't bring cops and then say what we do.

He brought in educators, counselors, school Sykes, people like that.

What can we do to get this out to?

There are principles to our teachers, to our classified staff as we head everybody's input on this before.

They did this rather than just assuming that.

Thank you so kudos to him for doing that through his department.

And I appreciate that, John, because we have to focus there's training for police officers.

It needs to look a certain way.

There's training for staff.

It needs to look a certain way and they're trained for kids.

And then it's a look a certain way.

And you can make some all right.

You might be on point with that.

Thank you.

>> So let's talk about school resource officers or law enforcement and and how how is that going?

Do most school districts have a school resource officer or share them among schools.

And I'm just reading a 66% increase in SRO since the passing of School Safety Resiliency Act.

As we've gone from over 400 rose to now into the sorrows in the state range.

>> Now that's numbers from last year.

There have been a whole lot of hires this year on SRO.

So we're gradually picking up our SRO is where they need to be a majority of districts in some capacity at some school.

Did you know building we 51% of our campuses are covered and over 728 actual schools are covered.

So a majority of us are going to be a middle school high school, Larry, because of the reason why we have sorrows and 700 schools covered because it to campus level.

So you may have sro's covering more than one school.

So the requirement is to have one for every campus.

Are we improving?

Yes.

Are we gaining every year?

Yes, we're not there yet.

We still got to have more SR. >> And the way you get there is more funding from the state legislature, more funding and more personnel.

And that's basically what's in the law is, you know, when it's contingent on those 2 things.

>> And we have some places that have the funding that just having trouble finding the personnel and then write some folks are and are looking for the funding to make that happen.

Funding always helps.

But also is we've got bus driver.

We've got superintendents that are driving buses, you know, a cafeteria workers, all those things.

So I'm hoping and we are seeing a swing upwards in our sro's because our training is going up.

So we've just got to maintain be maintained as well.

And is one thing to have your principal may be driving the school bus, but it's another to ask them to be an SRO.

>> The SRO?

That's correct.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

And something else I want to dovetail again on what I was saying is that our partnership with the Department of Criminal Justice Training, they were able to help us promote and produce a video about sro's in our state.

There's been a lot of misinformation out there that you have the police officers in the building and all they want to do is arrest kids, get him out of there and know their counselors, their mentors, a center like that.

So we showed about a 15 minute video on that.

We showed it to the task force on school safety here back first of August.

And I think that's very important to show that.

And to miss, you know, be basically let the public know that those officers are there to create relationships with the kids and see what we can do to prevent some Quick stand here.

2 years ago, there's over 4,000 encounters with SRO officers in the schools which led to 107 arrests.

So if you do the math, that's what less than 2% right.

And the question is, well, what happens to them while the principle and their sorrows work together as a team and get mom and dad and there and see what we can do to avoid getting the kids enjoy involved the juvenile justice system.

So it's working well in our SRO officers and principals have a really good partnership.

Now they know one another's roles.

They're separate, but they can work together.

>> So I want you to bring up the visual aids now.

visual and number one.

So tell us about these posters.

>> Okay.

We have a partnership with the AM Department of the Homeland Security here in our state and there are tip line.

And so I've printed up 62 63,000 of these posters.

I've sent out 25,000 these posters to all schools in Kentucky, public schools that is and they have plenty posters per school for that may have a next probably is Their own colleagues relationship that we have.

>> When we have these, these are magnets.

I had a a ran into a really good deal at 600,000 of these.

Well, Fred, up we're going to be given to the dpp's in our school districts to get them into the school district.

>> I'd like to see these on every refrigerator in every home in Kentucky.

Even a private schools can use this program as well.

And then that's another thing that we do with school safety and with then shop is that we address private schools when the call saying could you help us out a little ensure they have kids or parents pay taxes will not help them out.

Right?

>> And we know, unfortunately, the national shooting was at a private school covenant.

So and and not to make too Extrapolation there between what's happened in Tennessee.

And and here.

But do you think that there might be more funding that could come for school safety per the 2019 school safety and Resiliency Act.

Right?

That it was it was written that should funding become available.

Well, we've got a 3 point, something billion dollar surplus.

And if you had to give a magic number to state lawmakers, what would it be?

>> Wow, that's a tough question to ask.

But I will say this we can't KET up with our demand.

For example, we do safe school assessments and the superintendent sign up for these things right away.

We had 118 request and they can only feel this year.

Same thing with training issues on threat assessment.

Same thing with principal mentoring.

We have more demand than we can put people out in streets to do our work force like that.

So yes, I would like to get a bump up in money for school safety in the state.

And I'm sure there are other people like school nurses, for example, right now, there are a lot of that have legitimate reasons to do so.

If I were to the ballpark, something like that, I would say right now is the state of Kentucky gets 13 million dollars for school.

Safety know I operate our center one on 10% of that.

The other 90% goes out to the school districts in the formula based on Durst number size of kids to have a number of kids they have in their school district.

And I would like to see that bump up to around 20 Million.

Just to give you a ballpark shot there where we can work with a little bit more money and be able to address those needs that we have that we can make right now and also get the school district's little bit more money where they can buy an SRO officer or they can get additional support staff for mental health and there as well.

>> Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned the mental health component because we did hear a lot about that.

And there is some growing support and the Kentucky General Assembly to support youth mental health efforts in and we see that with social media and all the other external is that kids are facing like that is so crucial, whether it's from a safety perspective or not just having mental health services more robustly available for children is important.

>> And I would like to add to that mental health for the teachers.

we're losing teachers by the droves.

U.S. district are still trying to find teachers this late in the game.

They just don't want to be in schools right now because of a whole host of reasons.

And so the more we can take care of those who are with us right now and help them through whatever trauma they're dealing with.

I think that's important too.

Yeah.

And so in looking at our report, you people ask me questions all the time.

sorrows and I'm former law enforcement in a former SRO.

We also are looking for cancers.

We need one poor, one counselor for every 250 You know, our first report was the state ratio was one to 346.

We're now down to one to 306.

>> sorrow, counselor, they're both tools and you can build a house just with a hammer.

You got to have tools you know, to help those kids and help our staff.

And so we know we're working directly with counselors will be at the counselors association.

We're doing a presentation on S Rosen counselors working together.

So there's a lot of things that are still needed is as happy as I am with the report.

There are things we still got to continue to work toward.

>> And that's the one thing you said last or John, that our member, there's the hardening of the schools and the heartening.

I'm the signals.

All right.

And I think part of that.

>> Starts over with sorrows.

I'm so pleased with what Ben is in charge of those.

You know, the training now and to have a gentleman of his caliber and his style of working with kids as a leader of that group is so important.

And that just permeates through the whole training right there.

Again, they're not cops trying to get kids, you know, to Patty Way to get him out, their kids that these SRO officers that he'll tell you many kids came to his office when he was one asking for help.

And if I can't, as a principal help out somebody church good to have a team player that could help out as well.

So it's a good partnership right there.

And they're part of the hardware.

But also this get over to the hardware as >> Well, we thank you anything report that's important for us to now and to share with our view will sit.

One thing I want to talk about with the tip line.

Real quick.

Yes, a lot of folks will say, well, the report looks good we do.

What can you say?

What can we do different?

What can we do better and what makes the school safe and >> this tip lines, one of them.

And, you know, we have to go by people telling us what's going on in the schools.

And so this tip line is so important for parents, for kids, for staff.

If you see something, you say something and that's the easy way to do it.

And that's why I think this is so very important.

So my advice to you for parents, as you send kids back to school is be part of your kids.

School experience know what's going on with your child.

And if you see something, please tell the school, can't do anything about unless we know about it.

That's right.

And and like I've said before, I think on this show that we have the kids 15% of the calendar year.

And so somebody else has an 85% of the year.

So what was bin was saying there?

We need the help from the home front.

Tell us what's going on.

And we also need to have them teach the golden rule home doesn't hurt come across to some things like that.

That makes our job as a principal and teachers lot easier.

Yeah.

>> Well, good words to end on.

Thank you so While Cox, a pleasure is all that's always a pleasure to be with Keeping school kids safe is always a top priority.

And so is having enough school staff to teach and protect some the coalition to sustain.

The education profession launched by the Kentucky Association of School Administrators.

>> Is petitioning state lawmakers to adopt solutions for teacher recruitment and retention to help block the shortage.

Bka essays.

Executive director Rhonda Caldwell spoke with me recently about the push to pay Kentucky teachers.

More.

Doctor.

Rhonda Caldwell, it's a pleasure to have you with us.

Thank you.

So excited to be here with you today to talk about public education and what it looks like today will.

So what are the big challenges as we are getting this new school year under way?

What are you hearing from administrators and educators about?

>> How things are going so far?

Always enjoy connecting with colleagues across the state, whether it is a principle, whether it's a superintendent, whether it is a teacher, the cars, first and foremost, we always hear that message of positivity.

I'm so glad we're back in school.

My children, my kids, my students, they are home and we are rolling this.

So there's always that enthusiasm that excitement to get.

They have post summer learning back to school started.

When I I think about challenges that we're facing.

Obviously we've struggled with transportation across the state in terms of our bus driver shortage, different forms of illness have already hit us.

We have students who have been out of the different diagnosis are everything from strep to virus, too COVID.

You name it.

It's typically in our our school setting.

And so a little bit of absenteeism as you would normally expect.

The school start up.

But I think probably one of the biggest challenges for us next to the bus driver shortage is going to be our ongoing teacher crisis in terms of having a shortage that started long before the pandemic.

And some people say that this was just a phenomenon that resulted from the pandemic.

But you and others who've been on various shows here at KET of told us that there were trends long before that.

>> That something was going to happen.

And in fact, it is indeed caught up to us.

What does it look like and what do you hope can be done about it and the coalition you represent?

So the teacher shortage in terms of how it looks in comparison to how it look before the pandemic, the for the pandemic.

It showed up in the Those difficult to fill positions in terms of math and science.

Also special education in foreign languages.

We speak of 144 languages here in Kentucky.

So before the pandemic 2019, I was part of the Casey County Administrative Professional Learning event for a couple of days.

Second great opening a second grade opening and there were no applicants for the position on all.

This was in July at a time when many folks already had their employment secured for the year.

But as second grade opening, that's the time that we love our teachers.

We love to be at school every single day and we can't miss even when we're sick, we need and we want to go to school.

So before the pandemic 2019, we were starting to see.

PE.

We're starting to see elementary positions become vacant and that there were 0, 1, maybe 3 to 5 so fast forward to 2023 and all openings are subject now to not having a sufficient number of candidates to choose 4 from, especially in for seeking high quality teachers for the classroom.

Yeah.

So no alternative certification, an emergency certification.

>> The General Assembly has addressed this by allowing more options and they literally are called option.

Whatever name your number is that helping?

It is helping for the short the challenges with the emergency certifications as they were before the pandemic.

>> And as they are today with the various options, you're basically bringing someone into the classroom who didn't go through there to traditional teacher preparation program and what that teacher preparation program dies.

It prepares you to jump into a classroom with effective classroom management skills with pedagogy.

All of those things that I think on the surface, we don't necessarily consider in terms of teaching and learning that there those are skills that we need talented, highly skilled experts in our classrooms taking care of our children today, right?

And being just a subject matter expert does not necessarily translate to being an effective educator in the classroom.

That's right, Renee, it's going to take some time to get.

>> That individual who is there on an emergency certification not only are they and some type of a preparation program finishing up that pedagogy trying to figure out that effect of classroom management from an education perspective.

They're also in a classroom trying to hands on experience to bring those 2 things together.

That takes a lot of time and it also takes a lot of bandwidth from the school district.

So right now we have a 20.4% turnover in public education in the classroom.

So if I have 100 teachers and I'm down 20 just for easing mask all the and then let's say that 25 students are assigned to each of those 20 teachers whom I can't find the positions to fill them.

And those 500 students, 20 teachers, 500 students now do not have a particular teacher looking after them.

So we hire emergency certification.

We hire option teachers.

But now we need the remaining 80 teachers to become part of the onboarding and the assimilating right.

Shin Team to bring those teachers and catch them up.

At the same time, we're trying to take care of those 500 children.

What whatever the population is now of the entire school.

So it becomes very unmanageable.

Yes.

What's the solution?

And we know that you are part of it.

What called the coalition to sustain the education profession.

>> Along with bin executive director, the Kentucky Association of School Administrators.

What's the main goal of the coalition as we approach the upcoming legislative session that begins January second of 2024, the main goal of that coalition is to figure out the teacher teacher shortage.

How do we stop it?

How do we sustain it for the future when we consider public education's role in society today.

And the fact that 90% of our children attend our public schools.

The goal is to put the very best highly qualified teacher in classrooms.

And at the end of the day, that's going to take a focus on and not just starting pay, but also for those to retain teachers who've already are dedicated 5, 10, 15, 20 years.

recommendation going to be putting forward to the Legislature is two-fold.

One day at a beginning, teacher pay in the state of Kentucky.

Regardless of your ZIP code should be a minimum.

A $45,000.

So $45,000, which currently for beginning teacher pay in the state of Kentucky is the the average is 38,000 and another number that I think it's very important that we factor in here.

The Policy Institute set a minimum living wage.

A $49,000 for the state of Kentucky for one adult in for one child.

And so our lowest pay in the state is actually 34,000.

And so our recommendation at 45,000, it comes at a very critical time.

The state of Kentucky has set payment a minimum teacher salary a 50,000 as has a South Florida is at 47,000 and in addition to beginning, teacher pay, we also need to focus on teacher salaries across the board and so our second part of this recommendation is that all teachers receive a 10% salary increase across the board over to you by any means.

And what we know about that, changing that one salary number by 5%.

Our veteran teachers will begin to work longer 3 to 5 years in the classroom and provide us with that expertise that high quality teaching that we need in front of our students today and the research shows us that when a teacher is paid at higher levels, our student achievement on standardized testing and are learning increases as well.

To the point about teacher pay and the retention of teachers who have more experience in the classroom.

Doctor Glass when he was education commissioner, he will still be with the time this airs.

>> It talked about the turnover rate for teachers who had less than 5 years of experience was pretty high.

I don't remember the specific number, but if you think about the number of teachers who could retire in the next 3 to 5 years, this would also help give them some incentive to stay in the classroom a little longer.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So looking at teachers, if we want teachers to care for our children.

>> We need to as a society step up, step in and take care of our teachers.

It's it's long overdue.

And the competition for them is fierce right now.

Yeah.

Well, thank you for the the challenges and there are a lot of success stories and we hope that with Kentucky Edition or other problems, we can show.

>> Just how impactful our public schools are in the great work they do in keeping the community together.

And we've seen that through disasters and upset or how the schools have been the hob of helping our community heal and and to thrive.

Thank you, Doctor.

Rhonda Caldwell, for all you do.

We appreciate you being here today and thank you for having me.

>> Thank you so much for joining us for this season's first episode of Connections.

We appreciate your viewership.

Over the last 18 years.

More interesting people and informative topics are coming your way.

So join us next Sunday at our new Time 11:30AM, Eastern 10:30AM, central right here on KET.

Thanks again for joining me.

I'm Renee Shaw.

It until I see you again.

Take really good care.