Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is adopting a new safety protocol from a national foundation ahead of the new school year, which starts on Monday. The “I Love U Guys” protocol is used by schools across the country.
At a back-to-school press conference Tuesday, CMS officials said they believe the new protocol will help standardize the terms understood by students, staff and families, streamlining responses to emergencies. CMS Chief Operations Officer Tim Ivey said the previous protocol called for different variations of “lockdowns” during school safety incidents, which often caused confusion.
“That was creating some anxiety in students because you've got the term ‘lockdown’ being used overly,” Ivey said. “So people weren't really understanding: What do I really do in this situation?”
The "I Love U Guys Protocol" instead uses different commands for different types of incidents: hold, secure, lockdown, evacuate and shelter. Each has specific instructions that are communicated over the intercom and through visual markers. The CMS website includes information about all the different actions.
CMS said protocol also includes guidance on age-appropriate safety drills and updates for parents during and after incidents. It comes after parents criticized the district last school year over its communication regarding school safety incidents and threats.
Infinite Campus switch still underway
North Carolina schools are switching to a new system, Infinite Campus. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools officials said Tuesday that so far, 40,382 students have at least one parent or guardian with an active parent portal account.
Beth Thompson, the district’s chief of innovation and strategy, acknowledged there have been some headaches — largely because 141,000 students and families learn how to use the system all at once.
“So it’s not that the platform is not working,” Thompson said. “Largely, it’s that we’re still acclimating people to being able to use it. That’s taking a little more time in some cases — so something that might have taken them three minutes to do last year might be taking five minutes this year.”
The district is also still using its ParentSquare app, but Thompson noted that it's different from Infinite Campus. While ParentSquare is for district communication, Infinite Campus houses student data, grades, schedules and information. A massive hack last year of the previous PowerSchool student information system resulted in stolen student and teacher data.
Vacancies update
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools students return to class on Monday still lacking teachers in every classroom. CMS officials said Tuesday there are 228 classroom vacancies, with the most vacancies in grades K-6 and in exceptional children’s programs.
There are also 97 bus driver vacancies, but CMS said they don’t anticipate any impact on transportation since all routes are covered ahead of the first week of school.
At the CMS board meeting last week, officials said there were fewer vacancies than at the same time last year.
