By Jacoby Soter, UP Youth Program Specialist

The Vermont Governor’s School Safety Conference convened for its annual fall conference on Monday, September 30th, and UP for Learning was there to bring youth perspectives and experiences to the forefront. 

Youth and adults from UP presented the initial findings from a project bringing the voices, experiences, and perspectives of Vermont youth into policy conversations about school safety and security. This in-depth work, supported by the Vermont Agency of Education (AOE) and Department of Public Safety (DPS), raises the voices of Vermont youth who participated in dialogues and took our school safety survey. The UP for Learning team analyzed the dialogue and survey data, sharing insights of the more than 1,500 youth who participated in this project with the 300 school safety professionals who gathered for the conference.The conference opened with messages from Vermont Governor Phil Scott and Interim Education Secretary Zoie Saunders, followed by a keynote address from Michele Gaye, one of the co-founders of the Safe and Sound Schools Initiative. Michele started Safe and Sound Schools after losing her youngest daughter during the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. During Michele’s presentation, she emphasized the idea of improving school safety by working with law enforcement, school administration, teachers, mental health agencies, and students.

Michele’s message of working together with all stakeholders, including youth, resonated with UP’s presentation. We shared the perspectives and experiences of the 122 youth who participated in our in-person dialogues and 1,456 youth who completed our School Safety Survey. 

Between June and September, youth facilitators with UP for Learning led eight School Safety Dialogues around the state (read more about the dialogues here), asking their peers to share about their experiences and perspectives. To get a more complete picture, UP also developed and shared a Youth School Safety Survey earlier this school year. 

Here is a description of our project timeline:

  • In the spring, UP’s Youth Program Specialists (YPS) met to develop questions and agenda that would be facilitated at each in-person and virtual dialogue we would host
  • In the summer, youth and adults from UP organized and facilitated four regional and virtual school safety dialogues. 
  • In August, after seeing the success of the dialogues, we began planning four more school-based dialogues and a 30-question survey. The survey questions were also co-created by UP youth and adults, with support from a research partner at University of Vermont’s (UVM) Vermont Center for Rural Studies
  • At the end of September, UP presented the initial findings from the survey and the dialogues to the Governor’s Vermont School Safety Conference!

Throughout the project, UP collaborated with filmmaker Ned Castle, so that we were able to share the authentic dialogue experience with adults at the conference. Ned and his crew were able to document four of the dialogue events, and their seven-minute film (below) shares the process and the diverse experiences and perspectives of many dialogue participants. 

In addition to sharing the film with all conference attendees, we also shared a written overview of the project and our initial findings. This one-pager had some of our biggest findings as well as some of the most important recommendations we wanted policymakers to bring back with them. 

Bringing the insights from this project forward to this group of statewide policymakers and administrators was a powerful way to engage youth in the conversation that has typically been held without them. Our next step as an UP team is to go into more depth with the dialogue and survey data, and compile all of our findings into a report for our state partners at the AOE and DPS. This report will ensure that youth are centered in policy-making and implementation at the state level. 

Looking for more resources on school safety? You can check out the Vermont School Safety Center and please remember to share the Anonymous School Safety Tip Line: https://safe4vt.org.