Abuse reporting scrutinized in Cd'A

COEUR d’ALENE — School officials in Coeur d’Alene might change the district’s abuse and neglect reporting policy.

Coeur d’Alene School District policy 5260 requires district employees and volunteers to report concerns of child abuse, abandonment, or neglect to law enforcement or the Department of Health and Welfare within 24 hours.

Superintendent Steve Cook has proposed changing the procedure district employees follow to make such reports. Currently, a district employee who has the concern must write down a report listing “the reasons believed that a child has been abused, abandoned, or neglected.” That report goes to the building principal and superintendent. Law enforcement or the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare is also to be contacted within 24 hours of the concern, according to the current policy.

Cook wants to change the policy by removing the requirement to create a written report kept in the district’s hands. Instead, the reporting person will only document the name of the person to whom the report was made, the reporting agency (Health and Welfare or law enforcement), the date the report was made and the initials of the alleged victim. This information will be maintained only to show compliance with Idaho’s mandatory reporting statutes.

Another proposed change would specify that failure to report abuse or neglect not only constitutes a misdemeanor, but may result in employee discipline up to and including termination.

The policy provides immunity to the reporting persons, except in the case of malicious reporting.

“Any person who reports in bad faith or with malice will not be protected and may be subject to statutory and/or civil damages as allowed by law,” the policy states.

District spokesman Scott Maben said the school district had 66 such reports in the 2017-18 school year. The district has 30 reports to date for this school year.

Cook said the policy revision establishes the appropriate balance between the protection of students’ and parents’ rights to privacy afforded by the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, while maintaining the legal obligation for mandatory reporting by district staff, and while recognizing the confidentiality of the counselor/student relationship.

Lead school nurse Nichole Piekarski said the policy change wouldn’t affect district employees’ legal obligation to report child abuse and neglect. However, she likes how the proposed change would streamline the reporting process for district employees.

She said district employees with concerns fill out a Google form behind a district firewall and submit it to the district office, which then sends it on to the state. According to Piekarski, the guidelines for what constitutes a concern are pretty broad, but that nurses keep their eyes open when they assess students. Often something that doesn’t make sense about a situation will make a nurse’s radar go up. Staff members often collaborate with counselors to make the report, said Piekarski.

Piekarski said she has had questions about what happens to the report at the district level.

“As a health care provider, I wondered: ‘They’re obligated to read it. Are you also obligated to act on it?’”

No, she said.

Experts at Health and Welfare do that job, she said. It’s against best practices for district employees to further interview the child.

“We want to collect only enough information to make a report, not to interrogate the child or ask the child further questions,” Piekarski said.

Piekarski leads 15 nurses in the Coeur d’Alene School District. Their duty is to report a concern, not to determine if actual abuse or neglect occurred.

When the district reports concerns to Health and Welfare, the district’s obligation is complete, she said.