The Susitna Valley Jr/Sr High School is hiring a Student Safety Coordinator (SCC) this coming semester as part of the Mat-Su Borough School District Keeping Schools Safe initiative.
The District added SCC positions at both Su Valley and Career Tech this year. That means all secondary schools now have SCCs—twelve around the district. Su Valley principal Lisa Shelby says this step is of paramount importance to fostering a healthy and working school environment.
You know, it’s our responsibility to make sure that there’s a safe environment for both physical and psychological well-being of students and for staff in creating positive school climate so students can learn.
Shelby explains that the SCC’s first role is safety and security, then discipline.
They’ll be highly visible throughout the school and grounds—proactively monitoring the school buildings for any issues, externally or internally, to make sure that the building and facility itself is safe. And then also responding to student discipline concerns—bus write-ups, tardiness, truancy, helping with the vaping issues, making sure students are where they’re supposed to be.
Over the past decade, the district has prioritized hiring security officers. This effort comes as school shootings have increased across the nation.
I think that’s a piece and a part of it, and funding has kind of come in because of some of that happening. I think also just overall what we’ve learned from all that—I mean that’s the downside of what we’ve learned about how to prevent and be prepared. And prevention is number one, and relationships with students is number one. That’s the best prevention.
Most security issues happen in urban settings, and Su Valley only has 225 incoming students. But this doesn’t lessen the need for a safety officer, says Shelby.
We’re up here. You know there’s not a city police, and sometimes the call-out if we were to have an emergency can be longer than what it is in the valley. So that will also just help have another person to make sure that if anything were to go wrong that we’re supported in the way we need to be.
Having an SCC will allow Shelby to focus more on instruction, instead of discipline.
We have seen an increase, just like other schools around the nation have seen the last couple of years, in negative behaviors: vaping, bullying, just behaviors in general that are not conducive to a positive school environment. We’ve also seen that increase.
Behavior issues are always a concern for middle and high school students, but events over the past few years have been unprecedented.
And I think over the last few years with the major disruption of the pandemic. We lost students, who were learning remotely which is really difficult, and then them coming back into school. It’s just been very disruptive, and then add to that earthquakes, and fires, and wind events. There’s been so much disruption. That has kind of created some anxiety in students. We’re seeing that anxiety and that stress coming out with behavior.
There are also quite a few new incoming teachers this year, so the high school will be dealing with more change. Having someone who is just devoted to supporting students will allow for flexibility to adapt to these changes, says Shelby.
The ideal candidate would have a background in law enforcement or military, and/or have been in the security area previously and have some experience in that area. Just someone with a different level and lens of situation awareness, familiarity with firearms, has been in stressful or chaotic situations.
The district is still looking for candidates.
For KTNA, I’m Nell Salzman.
