Safe & Secure

Safe & Secure Learning Environments

The physical safety, mental well-being, and security of our students, staff, and community is the absolute top priority of the Cedar Rapids Community School District (CRCSD). We are completely committed to maintaining a safe, secure, and welcoming learning environment on every one of our campuses.

Threats, bullying, and violence in our schools are not tolerated. Our team continually works to review, test, and strengthen the comprehensive safety measures we have in place while exploring innovative new ways to keep our schools secure.

Proactive Security & Building Measures

While many of our security protocols and procedures must remain private for safety reasons, we want to provide our families with a general overview of the protective layers guarding our students every day:

• Secured Entrances: All CRCSD buildings feature a single, monitored main entrance. All exterior doors remain locked throughout the school day.

• Visitor Screening Protocols: Every visitor must enter through the secure front entrance, state the purpose of their visit, check into our digital visitor management system, and wear a highly visible visitor’s badge at all times.

• Surveillance Systems: Our campuses are equipped with advanced security cameras strategically placed throughout building interiors and exteriors (including hallways, entryways, parking lots, and playgrounds) to help administrators actively monitor common spaces.

• Inter-Agency Collaboration: We work hand-in-hand with local emergency management, Cedar Rapids law enforcement, fire/rescue, and regional healthcare institutions to ensure our comprehensive Emergency Operations Plan aligns perfectly with local and national crisis standards.

CR Schools and Department of Justice finalize agreement on seclusion and restraint

The Cedar Rapids Community School District (CRCSD) concluded its review with the U.S. Department of Justice and a final agreement relating to seclusion and physical restraint policies, procedures, and practices has been reached.

The Department of Justice stated that “[t]hroughout the investigation, the District fully cooperated with, and worked in good faith to respond to, all of the Department’s requests for information.”

“I’m proud of the hard work our staff have already done before and throughout this investigation,” said Superintendent Noreen Bush. “CRCSD welcomes the opportunity to continue to improve our practice to support our students.”

The DOJ has not identified to CRCSD any specific incident, complaint, child, or school as being the source of the ongoing review that began in October 2020. The review encompassed a collection of over 10,000 documents, numerous interviews of District and building-level administrators and staff, and site visits to several District schools.

As a result of this agreement, the District will be discontinuing the use of seclusion in all buildings and programs, effective 30 days from the date of the agreement. The District will also be making significant changes to limit the use of physical restraint and to rethink how student behavior is analyzed and responded to, District-wide. “Over the next 30 days, the District will be in communication with staff, parents, students, and other stakeholders about the changes on the horizon,” said Superintendent Bush. “This is hard, important work, and we are excited to be a leader in creating positive change for our students.”

In 2017, in response to concerns raised at the state level, the District embarked on systemic improvements in its response to student crisis behaviors. CRCSD believes this agreement with the Department of Justice will lead to further improvements that will benefit all students.

Annual Board Report 6-10-24

Legal Documents

2022.9.12 DIJ CRCSD Settlement Agreement Summary

2022.9.12 CRCSD Fully Executed Settlement Agreement (final 508)

2022.9.12 CRCSD Cover Letter (final 508)

Crisis Prevention

What is Crisis Prevention?

Crisis Prevention is the process to provide district employees with prevention and de-escalating strategies to address student behaviors.  Understanding the underlying causes of our students’ behavior is a cornerstone of the Cedar Rapids Community School District’s process for Crisis Prevention. As a result, our ultimate goal is to find individual, student-centered, positive interventions that can replace challenging behavior.

What is the Role of Crisis Prevention in CRCSD Schools?

Our adoption of the Safety Care Crisis Prevention model ensures that district employees implement approaches to student behavior that are evidence-based, positive, and the least restrictive means of responding to each student. As a result, our efforts provide a heavy emphasis on prevention and de-escalation strategies such as truly knowing and understanding the reason for individual student behaviors, giving a student choices, listening to a student, and encouraging/collaborating with the student to find solutions.

The Cedar Rapids Community School District provides district-wide training designed to focus on prevention and de-escalation techniques and other alternatives to restraint and seclusion, as well as:

• Evaluating risk of harm.
• Monitoring for signs of distress.
• Documenting incidents.
• Safe, less-restrictive physical interventions to be used only as a last resort.

Our training equips district staff in utilizing decision-making skills to match the level of the response to the risk of the crisis, focusing on the least-restrictive response to ensure the safety and care of all learners. This includes recognizing the stages of an escalating crisis and learning evidence-based techniques to appropriately de-escalate.