caretakers will be talking to their kids about as we head back to school here in middlesex county will be sending about a quarter of a million children to either start or go back to school and we know they're going to confront some new challenges and unfamiliar experiences and it's our hope today to begin a dialogue about some of these issues talking about different kinds of issues both safety issues on riding the bus and what are walking to school and some of the are serious issues for older kids in terms of cyber bullying dating violence and we know that every parenting caretaker is most concerned when they send their child off in the morning about their safety and it is the chief law enforcement officer in male sex county i'm concerned about the safety of our communities as well so just before we begin just thinking about some general safety tips what to run folks to make sure that their children know their address their parents cellphone number how to use nine one one it's very important that you talk to children about never going or leaving a place with someone other than you unless you've given them permission you might want to talk to your kids about things like having a code word so that even if someone says your mom or your dad sent me to get you they know that unless that person knows the code word they shouldn't be going with them another thing to talk about with kids is never to accept gifts or other things  value from anybody except family members so i one of the ways that we get this prevention information out is by partnering with those in the community who can help us to keep everyone safe so i'm very honored today to have three guests with us we're to help us do that to my left is chief william taylor the superintendent of the lowell police department to his left is rebecca mooney the executive director of the melrose alliance against violence and finally christine healy who is the director of community relations at lahey health and we're going to start just by asking each of you to tell us a little bit about yourself and what your interesting connection is to these issues obviously pretty obvious for you  well thank you very much mary it's great to be here i've been with the local farmer for about thirty five years now and i've been the superintendent of the chief close to three years now so school safety and getting children back and forth safely to their schools is extremely important one of the core functions that we do is a police agency i think it's very important this time of year now that school is recently back in session that we go over this school safety some basic procedures with the parents with the students and with the general public so that we can work together to keep all of our students are there so i've been the executive director of the melrose alliance against violence for eighteen years the organization has been around for twenty years and we really started as a domestic violence agency working to raise awareness in the community about domestic violence and help victims connect to the resources that they need but over the years we've evolved to really focus quite a bit on prevention so we do a lot of work in our local middle school and high school and we have also reach down to the elementary level and work on bullying prevention and i think that's you know really my interest in being here today is to talk about bullying and teen dating violence because we really see it on the same continuum they are relationships of power and control and a lot of the dynamics are very similar so that's pretty much what brings me here today  hi thank you again for for having me here as well so leahy leahy health is obviously a health care provider so as a health care provider wanting to make sure that families have all of the right information that they have to keep their family safe but also to keep their families healthy and we do this by partnering with the community and by attending different fairs and resource being a resource to the community to make sure that they have information on sleep and helmet safety and action plans and making sure that they have have the right information so that they can be connected to their providers and be connected to the right info when they when the families christine speaking of fears on september tenth this year leahy partnered with my office to host a back to school safety fear we had several hundred children and their parents come in through the generosity of a number of agencies including our local police departments we had about fifty five vehicles emergency kinds of vehicles the kids could climb over those try those out and at the same time we were giving out safety information about some of the topics you mentioned and one of the things that l y hosted was the very popular teddy bear clinic kids get a lot of information about the kinds of things that happen to them when they go to the doctor the hides checks as well as what happens when they sustain an injury how important is that tell us why that important to be connecting with the children as well oh it's an it is so important you know there are the is this this notion that going to the doctor can often be fearful so by going out into the community and by introducing  children to their care provider so introducing them to their doctors into the nurses really helps to ease some of that fear and it takes out the the notion that going to a doctor is scary because it's really not and we want to be able to prepare kids and prepare their families and often their siblings that going to the doctor is ok and it just helps them to soothe them and to take away some anxiety is that they might have when they have an upcoming appointment yeah chief let's just back up a little bit and talk but just the very basic getting back and forth to school community perspective where the safety issues that parents should be thinking about in terms of whether their kids are exercising their right to walk to school riding a bike perhaps riding a bike we've had a lot of issues lately with by giving bike safety but i think two of the most important things for marion is that parents want to have these discussions with their children with the students in advance and go over it and i think the other very important thing is for the parents to lead by example so if they want their child the child to wear a helmet all the time on the bicycle which obviously we certainly think is a great idea it's important that parents make that a routine in the parents were bicycle with their helmet if they're on the bicycle if we talk about children taking the bus for example there's some basic pretty common sense safety rules that we can on the parents can have a conversation with their students about  they have to remember that they want to stand a safe distance away from the bus while they wait for the bus to arrive we recommend six to ten feet away from the curve if you're crossing the street to board the bus you want to remain on the sidewalk until the bus stops and you get a motion or a recognition from the bus driver that it's safe to proceed very important never walk around from the bus abhi high in the bus because the buses will not the bus driver very frequently will not have the ability to see a small child in front of the bus in very important have good behavior on the bus so that the bus driver can concentrate and devote their full attention to driving the bus and i think that needs to be you know brought to the children's attention and stay and you see keep keep yourself in a safe position in the bus while the bus is moving that's for a bus if there are children a walking to school what we recommend to the children is that they walk either in a group or with  responsible adult that's the safest way to get to and from school if they're going to be crossing the street we recommend that the the cross crosswalk are with the assistance of the cross and god most communities have crossing guards in close proximity to schools walk on the sidewalk if it all possible away from the curb and if you can't walk on the sidewalk for some reason we recommend that students walk against traffic so that they can see run if you're going to try to cross the street always walk across the street and very important especially in urban environments like in my city and law students should never walk between two pockets out into the street creates a very much a problem for the motoring public to try and you know see those students and then i think probably the one big thing that you're going to constantly hear reinforced from all police agencies is distractions and it can be distracted walking distracted driving distracted on a bike the use of headphones if bud's are electronic devices like smart phones while students are walking  constantly has a problem and we see that repeated over and over again with students and not cognizant of the surroundings and not concentrating on the traffic walking up bicycling where they're going and that causes many many serious injuries all the time quickly with respect to biking to school very important always wear a helmet and i think parents can reinforce that isn't mentioned by constantly getting a child into a routine once they get out into the parking into the into their driveway or their garage put the helmet on for us before they allow the children to get on the bike and if you set those routines in place in advance very likely the children will follow that follow the rules of the road with traffic if you go back and forth to school if you come to a four way stop we recommend the allow the motoring public to go for us to signal the bicyclists to proceed that's the safe course of action and just generally again because innocent of your surroundings if you're walking up bicycling are getting on a bus and teach you know go over these basic safety rules with all your children in th in the students good time to remind motorists as well of the bulls about stopping when the fleg comes out of the school bus keeping an eye out for kids who may be riding to catch up or to the bus that kind of thing so now the kids get safely to school rebecca and you mentioned some of the pressures that they might be facing whether it be from bullying or some kind of dating violence tell us a little bit more about those common pressures that are on kids sure well we were mostly with middle school and high school students and i'm sure some of these pressures are even younger but i would say at the middle school level the main thing is at this age that kids want to fit in and they want to belong and it's a time of sort of shifting friendships you know they've come from their small elementary schools into the middle school and so it's  and natural for there to be some shifts but i think what we hear about a lot is sort of the drama of middle school and just all the you know the things that happen between students that can be really difficult and you know the word bullying what i what i hear from students is that you know not everything that happens falls into the category of bullying but it's just sort of constant sort of the teasing and the put downs and the harassment or the name calling and it's not always the obvious things but those really do affect students i mean words have a lot of power and one comment you know the kids are already kind of in a vulnerable age they're figuring out who they are and how they fit in and so one comment can really shut someone down and repeated actions can really lead to some very serious problems of you know wassup self esteem and school phobia kids just stop wanting to come to school basically they can drop out of activities they were involved in anxiety depression so it is really important to pay attention as a parent to how your child is feeling about school and if they're complaining about headaches or stomach aches not wanting to go to school that would definitely be a red flag other things it would be unexplained injuries or you know torn clothing loss of possessions and another thing would be loss of interest in previous activities or friendships someone just sort of withdrawing and not hanging out with the kids they were hanging out with before one of the things i always tell parents is just having one friend is such a protective factor if your child has one good friend they can talk to hang around with they're going to be able to withstand a lot so as a parent you know you're kind of wondering well what do i do about this one thing to do is just encourage your child's friendships that is a real protective factor against bullying you know the kid that gets picked on a lot is someone that doesn't have a backup so if your child is picked on and they have one friend even that will stand up for them there are a lot less likely to get picked on so i always say to parents do whatever it takes to encourage friendships with your children whether it's driving them places or having them to your house or taking them on vacation with you do all of those things to help your child to believe at least a couple of good friends because that really will serve them well throughout the teen years so one of the things that certainly seems to exacerbate these issues to these kids electronic devices because it continues all day and i was slightly so important for parents to think that through about whether to give the kid their children  device also how to limit when they can beyond that and also is it impacts their sleep if they're on there all night they were obviously not getting the right kind of rest yes and i think somehow parents forget that they have some control and some authority and they think it's just out of their control i remember one woman that said when my daughter and her this is middle school my daughter and her friends come over after school i just have a rule that they put their phones on the counter you're here to socialize with each other not to be on your phones talking to everyone else and you know she said you know first your daughter was mortified but then they accepted it and i said you know i'm going to spread that word because i think parents need to hear that other parents are setting that kind of those kinds of limits and that they can do that and it's important for them to do that and christine leahy obviously has a focus and keep being kids and young people well and healthy and one of the folks who may see some of the things that were back i was talking about the school nurses you know they're really in a position during the day to see kids see how they're interacting and you have a program that really focuses on that role as well which is tell us a little bit about that short so school nurses are absolutely essential to school and to keep few different initiatives with the school nurses one that i'd like to talk about today is the program that we have around asthma management and making sure that the school nurse is connected with the family to ensure that the families and the children have the asthma action plans in place so that the kids can have proper asthma medication while they're in school another program that we're working on is ensuring that school nurses are educated on proper diabetes minute medication and if a child comes in that's a diabetic ensuring that they have the again the right training on how to manage diabetes and how to manage that medication so we've done trainings throw them pretty much throughout the state on the diabetes management also working with the schools on on a program around concussion management so this is this is a program where we're working to ensure that student athletes have access to helmets and we're working with the school nurses to do some testing to ensure that all student athletes have the proper concussion management and rebecca the melrose alliance against violence has very unique program that focuses on getting information to kids in addition to training thing folks like the school nurses and parents how important is that really connecting with the kids to get that information out it's essential it's absolutely essential that we really kind of talk about a triangle and we're talking about preventing bullying or teen dating violence of students parents and school and that each really reinforces the other and it won't be effective if you don't do all three but the way we really approach it with students is through cultivating students as leaders and at melrose high school we have what we call our student action board and it's one thousand peer leaders and we train them on issues of teen dating violence and then they go into classrooms and do presentations they lead assemblies and probably most importantly kind of serve as bridges between their peers and adults so they're kind of our eyes and ears on the ground and they hear about what's going on in other students relationships far more than the adults in the building so if they're trained to know what the warning signs are and to know how to respond and to how to encourage that child to get help from a trusted adult that's that's our goal at the middle school level we focus more on bullying prevention then teen dating violence and we're just actually partnering with the middle school this year for a new initiative called project impact working with the a anti defamation league as well but it's the same approach training thirty five what we're calling peer influencers and this is across range of students not just your national honor society not just your captain of the sports teams but students from all across all groups but students who have some influence with their peers so the idea is that if you train them and they again work with their peers but also serve as role models of them their behavior starts to change the norms of the school it's sort of becomes this is the way we act this is the way we do things and there's actually some really good research out of princeton and yale and wreckers that says exactly that for bowling prevention the most effective way to make a difference is to train these peer influencers because at that age that's what matters the most you know back to mention chief the the fact that having these kind of pressures in school may cause kids either to be reluctant to go to school to be showing up late for school and you had a chance to do some thinking about that sort of the impact of either absenteeism or tardiness which people i think don't always associate with is being is dangerous to kids it can to new really coming disrupting the classroom what have you see you know learned about that in terms of its impact on the community and on individual students well what we've seen certainly in the hole for police perspective is that children belong in school when they're not in school bad things happen organically and you know they are more likely to be involved in criminal activity they're also more likely to be involved with gangs of substance abuse or are very often sometimes too they can be victims of crime and over multitude of different areas so i think what we try and do is work in a collaboration with the school department with the district attorney's office and with the police department to make sure we do everything we can as a community to have the kids in school in a positive educational environment because we do know that if they're not in school they're not getting a good education then they suffer want term consequences it negatively impacts the ripple you go to school  potentially get a good job and even increasingly potentially impact some ability to even go into the military or things like that so they belong in school that's what we're dedicated to try and work with there's a community wh why kids need to be there every day and you've really made that a priority for the department in been involved in that effort we've been putting things out all over town some of the other things that would include offering discounts and that sort of thing to progress in local stores so that if kids can go in and show they've been to school regularly they may get a discount to say a wage or an ice cream or something like that anything else that you've done in terms of communicating that in the department about why that 's such a priority well i think wood is important is that it's a community wide effort marian and i'm very proud of the involvement of the police movement in this initiative and really i have to give you great credit for being willing to step up as a district attorney and also be part of this effort you know we have a very proactive and substantial school resource officer program in the city of will we have nine police officers dedicated to the schools across the city and so i think it shows that we really view this as an effort that the police department is critically important for us to be involved in and i think the initiative that we came up with in conjunction with you in the school department  summer and it was very well received students came up during these events and they signed a pledge to make sure that the students school and they also put some comments in there about why it was important to be involved in it and you change behavior by changing the whole community getting a different view of things and i know we've talked about a lot of topics today but i want to be sure that our viewers know where they can go to get more information in christy where will people go that way to get more information about the lady programs so you can go do health dot org and i also encourage viewers to visit winchester hospital when just a hospital is a member of leahy health the activities that we participated in with you at the teddy bear clinic where all staff fire wonderful staff at winchester hospital so winchester hospital dot org is a great resource in terms of the educational information nutrition information is available on that website as well and is really will be really useful as families start to think about what they're packing for lunches for their students so we encourage everyone to visit and of course facebook and twitter and rebecca what about other communities as folks watch this and here is talk about it what's a good place in the community to go for resources so bullying prevention i would say first of all i have to say we have a website melrose alliance against violence so it's  a dot org and there are lots of resources on bowling prevention and teen dating violence prevention stop bullying dot gov is an excellent site and they have something that we use a lot called webisodes which are animated little cartoons that you watch and then discuss and we've used those a lot with young people i always encourage parents to watch those with their children there's also a program called the massachusetts aggression reduction center that's out of bridgewater state college and they do a lot of trainings on bullying prevention and cyber bullying so if a school system or a parent could bring it to their school system was interested in that they could contract contact the aggression reduction center for teen dating violence prevention i know that reach is an organization that serves belmont and a lot of the communities around here reach beyond a mystic violence is their full name and their and wall family and then just one other resource  violence is a great website called love is abuse i'm sorry love is respect dot org they get in shape obviously police departments are a great source of information for safety but when is it important for somebody to get the police department  issue that the school department will give them advice about bringing in the police about when it's appropriate or they certainly can call the police department in time either way i think it's the porton thing is that the parents recognize that their child be the victim of some bullying and they get help either through the school or the police to well unfortunately we're out of time it's been an honor to have all of you with us today i want to thank chief taylor rebecca mooney christine healy for being with us and thank you all for tuning in we hope that we prevent presented some helpful information that will get you off to a good start for the school year thank you