Students might be dealing with pressures outside of school, but adults within the school community can provide a safe haven, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring said Monday morning.
“You can be a safety net,” he said.
Herring’s remarks opened the Virginia School and Campus Safety Training Forum at the Hampton Roads Convention Center. More than 700 school and campus safety officials from across the state are attending the event, which runs through Wednesday and is hosted by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services and sponsored by the attorney general’s office.
Herring called the event a “timely, relevant and important forum” and reminded attendees that students are coming from all kinds of situations.
“They might be responsible for raising siblings, or facing pressure to get involved in gangs or drugs or other illegal activity,” Herring said. “And for 18,000 students who are homeless, they may not have a physical home to go to. But when they come through the school doors every day, you all can provide the stability, support and mentorship that these kids need and want and deserve.”
Herring touted his office’s Virginia Rules program, which teaches about laws and good decision-making for students in middle and high schools. He also spoke about Virginia’s crackdown on relationship and sexual violence at colleges and universities, which Herring has worked on as chairman of Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s Task Force on Combating Campus Sexual Violence.
“Even though the report is focused on colleges and universities, there’s a lot of great information for school educators and law enforcement, especially for kids who are preparing to go to college,” Herring said. “Virginians probably have the most comprehensive plan to address campus sexual violence in the country, part of that being changing the narrative and discussing these critical issues before kids go to college.”
After his prepared remarks, Herring talked about the value of the forum.
“It’s a great opportunity for them to come together to share best practices, to learn about some innovative things that are going on to make sure that our schools and campuses are as safe as they possibly can be,” Herring said.
Issues such as gangs, tobacco, drugs, dating violence, bullying and online safety are all critically important right now, he said.
“What this conference does is help give some tools to school resource officers, counselors, administrators, others who are involved in safety, the tools they need to help do their job better,” Herring said.
“Some of the things that are going to be covered involve not only how to address some of those safety issues that children face, but also conflict avoidance and school discipline.”
Booths in the lobby were bustling as representatives from various organizations handed out materials and chatted with participants.
Mark Medford, Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program coordinator for the York-Poquoson Sheriff’s Office and a York County School Board member, said that one difference at the training forum in recent years is that more educators are attending and it’s no longer just for those in school security and law enforcement.
“They hear what we’re hearing,” and that helps, said Medford, who was recently named state DARE coordinator.
A line formed at the Virginia Rules table, which was just fine with program coordinator Shannon Freeman. Her group was handing out pens, plastic bracelets, CDs and booklets and offering to mail bulk amounts of materials to anybody who needed them.
“This is a great venue for getting that information out simply because we work year-round with school resource officers, and this is their big annual conference,” Freeman said. “So it’s, for us, sort of one-stop shopping to push out information to several of them at once.”
Williams can be reached by phone at 757-247-4644.
