I was browsing the page for the General Assembly’s interim study committee on education (as one does) and came across this memorandum (pdf) from the Indiana Department of Education describing required training for school employees:
CPR (all license holders)
Suicide Prevention (all teachers)
Bloodborne Pathogen Training (all school employees)
Bullying Prevention (school employees and volunteers)
Child Abuse and Neglect training (each employee likely to have direct, ongoing contact with children)
Criminal Organization Activity training (school employees)
Human Trafficking training (employees likely to have direct, ongoing contact with children)
Dyslexia training (reading specialists)
Homeless children & youth training (school corporation homeless education liaison)
School safety training (school safety specialists)
Seclusion and Restraint alternatives training (“appropriate school employees”)
Concussion training (all coaches)
Heat preparedness (specified coaches)
Internal Control standards training (school corporation employees who have duties related to school funds)
Lock out/tag out training (“affected employees” and “employees whose work operations may be in the area”)
Between the testing and the training, it’s a wonder teachers have time to teach.
Schools have become the de facto last resort for society to find and catch various social and medical ills that children will present with when they walk into a school, so I guess the GA figures that they might as well get training for it, but I almost expect to see some schedule where teachers are punished financially because they have spent so much time learning various skills instead of trying to teach to the achievement tests. I wonder if some creative legislator will conclude that, because teachers are trained to rescue children, the GA can cut those unnecessary expenditures for social workers and nurses.
I have taken most of these training modules and the shortest are 30 minutes and the longest (4-5 of them) are up to 2 hours. Of course these are only the mandatory trainings and don’t include multiple other items. Stuff similar to business (slip and fall, safe lifting, ladder safety etc for maintenance employees), ongoing training in school finance (for business office employees) curriculum related activities for teachers and other professional development (leadership, technology integration, etc).
Having done a lot of HIPAA Security Compliance and other regulatory compliance work as a HIPAA consultant and an attorney, it begins that so much of what you draft is merely paper compliance records to comply with rules, policies and accreditation standards. Compliance must be strongly enforced, but it can become a tough operational job.
Following Carlito’s comment, compliance is one thing but actually learning and internalizing the skill and carrying out the behavior is something else. Usually, compliance is a one or two session “workshop” that agencies can check off and say that they’ve accomplished. Unless training is followed up, reinforced by colleagues and administrators, and people learn to carry out the behavior in real situations, nothing changes aside from the notion that one must “be careful” or avoid difficult situations. As Carlito said, compliance “can become a tough operational job”.
Unfortunately, given the amount of mandatory training subjects (which as Doug says is many times a reaction to legislative CYA) compliance suffers.
There are simply only so many hours/day at schools available and the goal is to use as much of that time completing the core mission of educating kids.