Running head: EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT 1

Holly Altiero
Effective Management Platform
ELP 509 Winter 2020
Portland State University
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Effective Management Platform

The term In Loco Parentis is Latin for “in place of the parent” and is a nationally used

“Common Law” that Oregon is no exception to (William, 2006). In Loco Parentis implies that

while children attend school, the adults in the building around them assume responsibility to care

for them in the parent’s absence. But what does this mean in terms of school safety and the

responsibility of the teachers, administrators, and other staff members to keep children safe at

what is often at the cost of their own personal safety? Oregon Educational

Leadership/Administrator Standards Performance Standards (2009) identify six domains for

professional Practice. Domain (3) is identified as “Effective Management” and subsection (C) in

this domain identifies administrators must strive to “Promote and Protect the Welfare and Safety

of Students and Staff” as a primary function of effective school management and I will be

exploring the implications of this further below.

Today more than ever, school staff are being asked to restrain, intervene and bear the

brunt of outbursts from students. In a segment dedicated to these issues in early 2019, local

journalists interviewed dozens of educators in Oregon schools for an ongoing investigative

expose entitled “Classrooms in Crisis” which detailed and chronicled teacher accounts of student

safety concerns and ongoing managerial concerns in Oregon’s public school system (Severance,

Tierney & Johnson, 2019). Throughout this expose` educators repeatedly indicated that they

often felt that administrators were asking them to put their own safety, both physically and

mentally, in jeopardy in order to work with more challenging students (Severance, Tierney &

Johnson, 2019). I know when this expose first came out I found myself shaking my head right

along with these educator’s firsthand accounts of both being witness to and involved in student

crises. As a school counselor, one of my primary job functions over the past decade has been to
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intervene when students were in crisis mode because I have the training to do so. However, in

more than a few instances, even my de-escalation training has not helped me and I have been the

victim of physical attacks from students both mild and severe.

As an aspiring administrator, and current school counselor, I find school safety to be of

the utmost importance when it comes to being an effective manager/administrator. According to

Murphy (2017), “both the presence and absence of the norm of safety can be traced directly to

the quality of the instructional program” (p.127). Murphy (2017) also indicates that the process

by which a school identifies staff and student safety policies should be lengthy and collaborative

in nature. At my current site, this is an initiative I would very much like to propose in terms of

the revision of staff and student safety protocols. Currently, staff members feel confused as to

what their role should be in terms of restraint, responding to crisis, and protecting other students

and themselves from violent student outbursts. Frequently in my building I interact with

specialists that are being hurt, students that are being hurt, and parents who are upset at both

factors. No one seems to be very clear on what the policies are on how to respond to these threats

to school safety and a staff/community inclusive review of these policies might be helpful in

creating a common vision and increasing positive school culture around school safety.

A literature review by Kutsyuruba, Klinger, and Hussain (2015) found that multiple

research articles corroborated what was indicated by Murphy (2017) regarding school wide

perception of a safe school environment as positively correlated to increased academic

performance. Additionally, Kutsyuruba et. Al. (2015) found that a variety of literature reviewed

revealed that the perception of students that school was “safe” varied greatly based on race and

socioeconomic status. Murphy (2017) also indicates that safety perceptions vary among racial

demographics with students of color often not perceiving school to be as safe as their white
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peers. This is a key factor that would need to be addressed when both evaluating and creating

new policies regarding school safety for student and staff.

As a principal, I feel that a large focus needs to be placed on the basic rights of students

and staff to feel safe at school in order to effectively learn, teach or otherwise achieve success

within the school environment. The task of creating a safe environment is multifaceted and

would require systemic review and implementation. This would be a managerial task I would

aim to address right away to assess my students and staff perceived levels of safety. Utilizing

collaborative efforts, collecting and analyzing data, and seeking staff, student and community

feedback regarding how to improve school safety is, to me, the most important of the

administrative “Effective Management” tasks.

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References

Kutsyuruba, B., Klinger, D.A., and Hussain, A. (2015). Relationships among school climate,

school safety, and student achievement and well-being: a review of the literature. Review

of Education, 3, (2), p. 103-135. DOI: 10.1002/rev3.3043

Murphy, J.M. (2017) Professional Standards for Educational Leadership: The Empirical, Moral,

and Experiential Foundations. Thousand Oaks: CA. Corwin, A SAGE Company.

Oregon Educational Leadership/Administrator Standards (2009). Retrieved from:

https://www.oregon.gov/ode/educator-resources/educator_effectiveness/Documents/or-

admin-standards.pdf

Severance, C., Tierney, J., and Johnson, D. (2019). Classrooms in Crisis: Verbal, physical,

sometimes violent outbursts plaguing Oregon Classrooms. Retrieved from:

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/classrooms-in-crisis-verbal-physical-sometimes-

violent-outbursts-plaguing-oregon-classrooms/283-490a6255-23d0-4bab-af74-

895102734e78

Williams, R. (2006). In Loco Parentis, Substantial Interest, and Qualified Privilege. ASCA

School Counselor. Retrieved from:

https://www.schoolcounselor.org/magazine/blogs/september-october-2006/in-loco-

parentis,-substantial-interest,-and-qualif