LAUSD lays out 'Every School Safe' training calendar and brings back operational rounds

Andreas Chait, LAUSD chief of school operations, presented the district’s Every School Safe blueprint and a year-long professional development calendar at the School Safety & Climate Committee meeting. He said the blueprint—now in its third year—will be refreshed and that monthly modules cover topics from welcoming school environments to suicide prevention, substance-use awareness, deescalation and cyber security.

The nut of Chait’s presentation was an emphasis on making the training practical and replicable at school sites. “It’s our blueprint. It’s our map for all things safety related to the district,” he said, describing modules tailored for students, staff and parents. Chait said the district surveyed student groups to inform next year’s refresh and that the most-requested topics included drug awareness (marijuana and vaping).

Chait outlined a renewed practice called operational rounds, in which principals and site leaders visit model schools twice a year to observe supervision and restorative practices in action and return with commitments to implement changes. He described an October round focused on supervision practices at Hollywood High School that included walkthroughs during lunch and nutrition periods so visiting principals could see adults actively engaging students.

Chait also gave staffing and training details for three frontline classifications: campus aides, restorative justice (RJ) teachers and school climate advocates. He said the district has about 2,300 active campus aides (with roughly 100 vacancies at a typical moment) and delivers six online campus-aid modules on multiple dates so aides with limited hours can participate. ‘‘They are the folks that wear those bright neon jackets so that the kids know where they are,’’ he said of campus aides and noted a roughly 70% training sign-up rate.

For RJ teachers, Chait said about 125 certificated teachers receive a mix of three in-person and four virtual PD sessions and coordinate closely with the district’s Systems of Support Advisors. He described roughly 320 school climate advocates—mostly at secondary schools—who meet monthly on topics such as cultural diversity, equity and implicit bias and who run student engagement campaigns.

Board members pressed for clarity on parent involvement in operational rounds and how the district will measure whether school-level changes stick. Chait said principal supervisors and principal meeting debriefs are the primary accountability touchpoints now, and that standing up a centralized tracking system for implementation would require new platforms or data work with the Office of Data and Accountability.

Next steps: the ESS blueprint will be refreshed for the coming year, the Unified Against Hate campaign will be embedded into ESS modules (addressing racial slurs and racist language), and operational rounds are scheduled again for late March/early April to focus on restorative and positive behavior practices.