Threats of Bullying and Harassment Persist [And Worsen] in Schools During COVID-19. Here’s How to Fight Back.

STOPit Solutions offers schools a comprehensive, team-based support program to make onboarding easy for staff and help schools successfully launch the nation’s leading anonymous reporting system.

COVID-19 has impacted the daily lives of nearly every human being around the world. And even after nearly six months of trying to ‘manage’ this pandemic, for those of us living in the United States, back-to-school situations are still in flux. The truth is, this is still a very new, very dangerous health crisis and we are all having to adjust to a new way of life that is constantly changing.

Administrators, teachers and staff are all working hard to create a ‘new normal’ while school buildings remain—or are again—shuttered. They are also developing new ways to engage with students attending classes in-person, fully remote or negotiating a hybrid of both.

Add concerns like the increased threat of cyberbullying, and, needless to say, they have their hands full. But with STOPit, schools can be proactive instead of reactive when it comes to dealing with incidents of inappropriate behavior that lead to avoidable issues. Everything about STOPit is designed to save time and reduce workload, including our virtual onboarding and launch capabilities.

 The Right Answer? Let’s Do What Works Best For You.

That’s right, STOPit, the nation’s leading Anonymous Reporting System, can get our comprehensive reporting solution in the hands of staff and students either in-person or virtually – or both – depending on your school’s circumstances.

“Our new customer experience means that once you’ve signed, your account representative will transition you over to onboarding, when you’re ready,” says Cindy Moore, Onboarding Specialist for STOPit Solutions. ”Then your personal Onboarding Specialist will get you set up and lead you through the onboarding journey.”

“You’ll get our welcome letter, which outlines what the onboarding process will look like,” Moore continues. “We then walk you through the steps to get started on STOPit Admin.”

STOPit Admin is the easy-to-use incident management system for reports submitted via the STOPit app, website or hotline. From STOPit Admin, administrators can follow-up on incidents, send out notifications, run analytics and trend reports, and much more. And it’s completely customizable for schools: administrators can set custom alerts, incident tags or other trackable factors, create folders, and organize data in whatever way is beneficial to a school’s unique character and schedule.

“After the introductory communication welcoming you to the STOPit community, the next step is to attend an onboarding session,” says Moore. “During this training, we encourage you to go in and test the system. This way when you go live, you’ll have experience with the full STOPit solution.”

STOPit provides comprehensive onboarding and training for administrators and a detailed launch plan for students. This includes delivering age-appropriate, functionally sensitive guidance on how to recognize safety, misconduct, and/or compliance concerns, whether we are engaging in-person, or via virtual learning. An onboarding specialist leads this training, demonstrating how to download the app and log in to the Admin dashboard, as well as how to log incidents, and respond to or escalate those incidents. During onboarding, school staff also learn how to view and manage reports, another task made easy thanks to the app’s intuitive user interface.

Ready For Launch.

After successfully completing onboarding, schools choose a launch date that works best for them. Depending on the size of the school, the average time from onboarding to launch is typically 3 to 6 weeks – but it can be done in as little as a week from the first conversation if a quick launch if needed.

Prior to the launch date, schools are provided with a launch kit that best serves their needs for an in-person or a virtual launch. The launch kit has been designed with the needs of students, staff and administrators in mind and is updated to include helpful feedback from users. The kit contains all of the tools and resources needed to successfully implement the STOPit platform, including:

• Flyers (printed versions are used for an in-person launch)
• Videos for students, staff and parents
• Student assembly agenda
• Staff meeting agenda
• Press release template

These materials have been designed to make it easy and fun for schools to launch, and include suggestions for an in-person student assembly (in small groups and observing all health and safety guidelines, of course!) or virtual activities, if that’s what’s best for the school community.

“If the school plan is to hold classes virtually, and an entire class needs to log-on together, that time is a great opportunity to show the virtual launch video and watch it together,” says Moore. “And since we know that each school may be managing a little differently right now, the STOPit Onboarding Team is happy to conduct a needs assessment with schools to customize these tools to be even more helpful.”