Click here to subscribe today or Login.
HARRISBURG — The state Auditor General issued a stinging media release this week, saying nearly a quarter million students statewide attend districts lacking updated policies on child abuse.
But two local superintendents said it may be a case of lag time in updating the policies.
“It is completely unacceptable for any district to have an outdated or missing policy dealing with suspected child abuse,” DePasquale said in the release, which reported the results of a check his office did with all 500 districts in the state. They found 21 percent of them lacked “an updated policy that requires staff to report child abuse and neglect concerns directly to ChildLine, the state’s child-abuse hotline.” The change was required in a 2014 state law passed in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
The release included three lists: Districts that updated the policy after his office called, those with a policy that had outdated language regarding reporting, and those that didn’t have a policy until the office called but now have one.
No Luzerne County districts were on the third list. Two — Dallas and Wilkes-Barre Area — were on the first list while Greater Nanticoke Area, Hazleton Area, Northwest Area, Wyoming Area and Wyoming Valley West were on the list of those with outdated language.
But Wilkes-Barre Area Superintendent Brian Costello said the problem may have been a lag time between implementing policies and actually getting them written and approved by the school board. He noted that most districts, including Wilkes-Barre Area, adopt policies drawn up by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association and tweaked to fit the local situation.
“Our policy committee meets every month,” Costello said. “We immediately follow any new policy, but it still needs to be adopted.” He said that can lead to a situation where the district is in compliance with what the state wants, but may not yet have formally adopted a written policy because there are so many that require annual review and revision. In this case, he said, the district had conducted all required training and started following the requirements of the new law but the revised policy had not yet gone through the approval process when the Auditor General’s office called last fall.
Greater Nanticoke Area Superintendent Ron Grevera said via email that his district is similarly in the process of updating all board policies, and that the child abuse reporting policy is in draft status and will be updated in March.