St. Cloud District to Discuss Workplace Safety and School Violence Prevention

ST. CLOUD - The St. Cloud area school district will discuss a new board policy on workplace violence and injury prevention during a work study session on Wednesday night.

District 742 director of communications, Tami DeLand, says the purpose of the policy is to recognize violence and other hazards that have unfortunately risen in schools across Minnesota and the nation.

"It's coming to light more and more that there's a rise of violence in schools regarding weapons and other violence. The purpose of the policy is to recognize that violence and other hazards unfortunately sometimes impact schools."

The policy emphasizes communication to staff members on how to prevent and react to potentially violent situations. It ties in with several other policies already in place, like the district school weapons policy. It also stresses violence prevention strategies and policies for investigating all acts or complaints of violence in the district.

"This policy sort of gives an umbrella of other policies which may have already existed, but it ties them together and broadens it a bit so the district is clearly making an attempt to keep the working environment free of behavior that could cause injury," DeLand says

The policy covers adult-adult violence, student-adult and student to student violence.

This will be the first reading of the policy. Since it's a work study session, no action will be taken on the item.