Winnebago Cusd #323 (IL)

District Overview
Schools: 4
Students: 1,290
Employees: 200+

In Illinois, Regional Offices of Education (ROEs) provide many services to the districts they oversee, including technical assistance visits that look for proof of compliance with federal, state, and district mandates.  After the Boone-Winnebago ROE finished its technical assistance visit of Winnebago CUSD #323, then Superintendent Scott Bloomquist learned his district had just been cited for a major infraction.

Winnebago CUSD #323 was responsible for providing staff with thirty safety trainings. They were compliant with only four.

Useful Advice

After the citation, Bloomquist contacted several superintendents who used the EmployeeSafe Suite in their districts and learned more about their experiences with the service.

The others superintendents’ testimonials led Winnebago CUSD #323, as well as Winnebago County Special Education Cooperative, the district’s special education services provider, and Kinnikinnick CCSD #131, a neighboring school district, to implement the EmployeeSafe Suite. In the case of Winnebago CUSD #323, EmployeeSafe addressed not only the district’s need for better, more comprehensive training. It also streamlined the management of maintenance, accidents, and chemical safety.

How EmployeeSafe Helps

After the initial set up, Managed Training, part of EmployeeSafe, automatically emails each employee with links to their personalized online courses. (In addition to courses about bullying and harassment, for example, a chemistry teacher also receives courses about the safe handling of chemicals, while a coach receives training about concussions, etc.) Each course has a deadline for completion, but employees can complete the courses when and wherever they choose. To ensure employees complete the training in a timely manner, the system periodically reminds them to complete their training before the deadline. If an employee fails to do this, the system automatically sends non-compliance reports to administration.

In other words, the online training process allows staff to receive training at their leisure, which, in turn, allows schools to focus their in-service days on education. The automation of compliance tasks ensures completion of drills, safety meetings, and inspections before the deadline, without burdening administrators.

While Managed Training greatly enhances staff awareness of how injuries can be prevented, accidents will sometimes happen. When they do, the Staff Accident Management System responds with maximum efficiency. In the past, reporting an injury required a lot of inefficient paperwork, with too much time passing before all relevant parties were notified. Now, injured employees simply fill out an online accident report in the Staff Accident Management System. Once the report is submitted, key contacts instantly receive the news via email.

Also, before investing in EmployeeSafe, staff needed to sift through lots of paperwork to properly label and handle chemicals. Now, with the EmployeeSafe SDS Now! System, employees have 24/7 access to online safety data sheets (SDS), which, of course, can be easily printed. Staff can also call a 24-hour hotline manned by chemical safety experts to have SDS emailed or faxed to them, obtain chemical information, or, in the event of an emergency, receive immediate assistance. The district spreads awareness of these resources by posting strategically located posters and stickers (provided by PublicSchoolWORKS) that feature the hotline information.

More Safety, More Peace of Mind

By investing in the EmployeeSafe Suite, Winnebago CUSD #323 not only provided its staff with required training while also streamlining the management of maintenance, accidents, and chemical safety. It also greatly relieved the pressure on administration.

“The roll-out went better than I was anticipating for both certified and noncertified staff,” says Bloomquist. “Even with the large number of teachers reporting for the first day of school, we were able to complete the first section of training quickly. The head of our food service department even reserved a computer lab for her staff so they could quickly knock out their required training.”