Teachers get notice of student trauma

Pilot program has police giving heads-up to districts

For many students, school is a safe place ... which means it’s also where they tend to act out if they’re dealing with something unexpected.

Sometimes teachers may not realize why a student is acting out. Or, if a student is instead oddly quiet, their behavior may not even register.

A new program in the Lehigh Valley

is helping educators connect the dots between children’s behavior in a classroom and a precipitating event outside the classroom. That might be a car crash, a domestic dispute, or just witnessing an arrest.

The Handle With Care program, which started this school year in the Lehigh Valley, lets police send a quick note to schools when children witness something potentially traumatizing.

“When they get to school, it’s going to come out one way or another,” Liberty High School Principal Harrison Bailey III said. “We know what’s going on, we see behavior, we’re able to understand and support that student.”

Police using the app don’t say what a child was involved in or saw, they simply put the school on notice.

“It really is equipping the school with the knowledge the child might have been exposed to something traumatic, so they can take a trauma informed approach to the child,” Beth Tomlinson, senior director of education at the United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley, said.

The referral process is being piloted this school year in both Lehigh and Northampton counties. So far, there have been 61 referrals in Lehigh County and 47 in Northampton County.

The United Way and Resilient Lehigh Valley were awarded a state grant in 2019 to roll out the program. Tomlinson said they’ve been speaking with police chiefs and creating training materials for officers and trauma-informed classroom guides for educators.

Under the program, teachers can keep an eye on flagged students and support them accordingly. They might be better equipped to connect that student to support services or mentoring. If the student looks tired, they can send them to the nurse for a nap. They could also check in to make sure the student eats breakfast, or give the student a break on a test that day, Tomlinson said.

“If a school doesn’t have any idea ... [they] might not notice Jamie has her head down or Jane didn’t hand in her homework or is looking especially agitated today,” she said. “If you have that Handle With Care notice, you can say, ‘Hey Jane, how are you? I’m here for you.’ “

The program is used in several other states. Tomlinson said it started thanks to the opioid crisis in West Virginia, where children would show up to school after a parent or sibling overdosed and teachers had no idea.

Tomlinson said the plan locally was to start with just Bethlehem Area and Whitehall-Coplay school districts, but once they reached out to the respective district attorneys’ office, they expanded throughout the Lehigh Valley.

The Handle With Care program has been integrated into the statewide Safe2Say system that allows schools and law enforcement to communicate about tips around student safety, including threats, overdoses and suicide. With the program, law enforcement officers only need to know a child’s name and school to send the notification.

“It’s simply a Handle With Care statement, and then the district knows the student may have experienced something and we have the ability to keep an eye open and keep an ear open,” Whitehall-Coplay Assistant to the Superintendent Chris Schiffert said. “It’s not something where the child is called down and spoken to.”

If there’s no need for intervention, the child just continues on with their day, Whitehall police Chief Michael Marks said.

From the law enforcement perspective, he said, officers note a child’s name and school at a car crash, arrest or other traumatic event.

Submitting a notice takes about 30 seconds, Marks said.

The Handle With Care program helps educators react to students with empathy, Bailey said.

“It’s that little bit of understanding the kid is dealing with something, going through something traumatic and as a result they’re struggling,” he said.