By Shelby Stewart-Soldan
Staff Writer
OXFORD TWP. – During the Dec. 12 regular meeting, the Oxford Board of Education and Superintendent Dr. Vicki Markavitch gave a response to the Guidepost investigation in regard to current and future school and board of education policy and practices.
“As you know, the Oxford School Board hired Guidepost Solutions through the investigative council Varnum to conduct an investigation that would address concerns and questions following the Nov. 30, 2021 tragedy,” said Markavitch. “It was structured so that decision-making and the investigation process was independent of the board and district personnel. There were two reports generated, report number one was issued May 8, 2023. It was about the school safety and security policy, guidelines, practices and measures in place at the time of the report. The second report was released on Oct. 30, 2023, and that investigated what occurred just prior, during, and just after the tragedy on Nov. 30, 2021.”
Following the release of report one, Oxford schools incorporated policy and practices into their ongoing recovery plan, and will do so as a response to report two.
“As always, our ultimate goal is to learn as much as possible from the tragedy and for our district and our personnel to remain committed to creating a more safe, more secure and more supportive learning environment,” Markavitch said. “There were topics from the Guidepost report – and we went through those topic by topic – and those topics where they indicated some improvement would be advisable. Many of these things are already in place.”
The topics covered in the response include board oversight; policy implementation and monitoring delegation of responsibility and oversight of policies and administrative guidelines; policy and administrative guideline review and acknowledgement by faculty and staff; training; proposed changes to policies and administrative guidelines; district’s threat and suicide risk assessment policies, practices and protocols; emergency operations plan; district safety committee; student searches for weapons; armed securing and school resource officer presence in Oxford buildings; ALICE; PA and lockdown alert systems; parent involvement in threat and suicide assessments; review of social media during threat assessments and suicide assessments; monitoring of student online use at school; social, academic, and emotional behavior risk-screener (SABERS); Use of SABERS data and multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS); student reporting; PrePlan Live system; NightLocks; PowerSchool and student documentation; safety drills; trauma-informed support.
Each topic covered highlighted what the district is currently doing in each category and how they plan to improve on each topic.
Some upcoming changes include recent changes to the suicide risk policy.
“We will be bringing the board, in the next month or so, a new suicide policy even though you just adopted one last year, because we have added an entire process for screening prior to full assessment,” said Markavitch.
There were also questions regarding student backpack searches, and if parents are not cooperative with the district when they are asked to take a student home for the day.
Students cannot be searched without reasonable suspicion under the Fourth Amendment, though part of the suicide and risk assessment screening includes talking with parents or caregivers and the student about access to weapons. Markavitch stressed that cooperation from parents in these kinds of situations is important, especially if a student is acting suspicious or threatening to themselves or others.
“At this point, if a student remains suspicious and the parents continue to be uncooperative or unavailable, that student will remain with an adult in the school building for the rest of the school day and we will consult with law enforcement,” she said. “There’s liability issues related to this, so moving forward we’re going to work with law enforcement and maybe work with the legislature in terms of trying to develop process, procedures, helps that schools can put in place, if and when this ever happens again. It doesn’t happen often, our parents are for the most part very responsible, but when it does happen the school is left with a great deal of liability and not much direction to go with it.”
The remainder of the document lists all of the feedback the board received during the 14 listening sessions that were held throughout the community, including questions, suggestions/considerations, and what the district should keep doing, or is doing well.
“As you go through these questions and suggestions, you’ll see that probably 80-85% are answered within our response,” said Markavitch.
The full response can be read at oxfordschools.org.