School districts are making efforts to measure risk management performance. 

The New Jersey School Boards Association Insurance Group created an instrument for its member school districts to use each year to evaluate their risk management progress. The scores from the evaluation effort provide a means for comparison and guides for improvement.   This 8-part instrument illustrates one version of a "balance scorecard" for risk management. The NSJBAIG document is now available from the Institute. 

Bickmore Risk Services based in Sacramento, CA is helping some of its school clients with a performance measurement system that rolls up  data electronically on key performance measures. Bickmore's Risk Management Analytics program helps generate meaningful recommendations for continuous improvement.

The May 2000 Colorado PRIMA publication, " Benchmarking, Best Practices and Performance Measurements for Public Entity Risk Management"  is still an excellent introductory resource for school districts. It is available at no cost from the Institute.

The Institute is gathering information related to individual and group projects that help performance and  improvement efforts.   Please contact the Institute Executive Director to share your experience or to obtain further information. 

Earlier this month, school transportation directors started hearing about a new company dedicated to school bus safety.  From its home office near Cleveland, OH, School Bus Safety Company is reaching out nationwide to introduce The Driver Training Course.  This is a newly developed product that features " a comprehensive, systematic curriculum based on experience with more than 30,000 bus drivers across North America."  The course materials are divided into 15 modules with a DVD for each subject, together with classroom and behind-wheel-trainer's guides and a study guide for the driver's themselves.

School Bus Safety Company offers an approach to driver training and accident prevention that starts with the premise that "safety is freedom from risk." With this idea in mind, the creators of the curriculum offer a complete set of instructional and learning tools to dramatically lower the frequency of driver error and raise the level of driver performance. Each program within the course teaches drivers how to avoid unsafe behaviors.  They have integrated high quality video and advanced behavior-modification theory that is universally applicable.

The Driver Training Course helps school districts follow a successful  model that previously only a large organization could afford.

You can obtain more information from Mr. Jeff Cassell at 800 728-2827 and at www.schoolbussafetyco.com   

 
Examples of scorecard reports were showcased in a presentation at last summer's conference of the Public Risk Management Association.    A  white paper on Dashboards and Scorecards produced by Shelter Island Risk Services in New York discusses many of the issues that arise in creating operational scorecards.

The Institute Topical Library now makes it easy to find  presentations and white papers related to performance assessment. 

Business Officers who attend the April 6-9 CA  ASBO Conference will have opportunities to learn about a wide variety of risk management strategies and find ways to control costs in workers' compensation and liability.  Thirteen sessions are grouped in the category of risk management.   A closer look at the entire 3-day program shows that there are many more sessions that also fit within the broad definition of risk management. 

      

Looking at performance statistics in an unconventional way may help busy administrators and risk managers.  Two companies have been  calling attention to a book that offers lessons about information science and risk decision making.  Mr. Kevin Hammond of Target Safety, has been promoting the book,  Moneyball, which suggests ways that school districts can  find solutions to get ahead of  risks,  even with fewer resources.   Mr. Chuck Hall of Siemens Building Technologies used a similar theme in his talk, "Moneyball 101,"  at a recent School Facility Masters Conference in Little Rock, AR.  Finding the information that will change the game is not as easy as it sounds, however, it can be done.

The position of AIG/Lexington Insurance in the school property insurance market was on the minds of many who participated in the facilitated breakfast discussion at the Association of Governmental Risk Pools meeting March 12.   There was a lively discussion on several other topics, including the methods being used by pools to quantify the value of risk control services provided to districts.    

AGRIP staff worked hard to make the conference program appealing to school pools  and the new AGRIP president Cheryle Mangels and board member Donna Abersman both attended the school breakfast, along with representatives from several large school groups.  Membership service director, Bill Tackett, served as the breakfast facilitator. 

Open exchange at AGRIP meetings, consistent, intentional dialogue and collaboration should help accelerate the risk management efforts of school districts. 

 

There are many examples of school leaders who provide confidence to the district team and produce lower costs over the long run.  The Institute wants to raise awareness of the risk management achievements of school districts.