Business Spotlight: Edu-Safe LLC

Columbine. Jonesboro. Paducah.

Those three city names recall school horrors that even today, 10 years after the fact, strike fear in the heart of every parent.

"Those horrific events brought home to everybody the fact that school safety had to become a top priority and had to be an organized professional effort," says Edu-Safe LLC co-owner Dennis Lewis.

Those tragedies in the late 1990s became the driving force behind the creation of Springfield-based Edu-Safe LLC, an advisory and training organization that helps educate school officials across the United States in student searches, safety procedures, emergency preparedness, and identifying and handling potentially violent students.

Lewis and co-owner Judy Brunner bring double-edged expertise to their business.

Lewis has 30 years of law enforcement experience under his belt - in Branson, Taney County and Springfield, where he was director of school public safety. He is also a graduate of the School Safety Leadership course at the National School Safety Center and has served as vice president of the National Association of School Safety and Law Enforcement Officers.

Brunner brings 26 years of experience in school leadership, as a principal at both elementary and high school levels. She is also an author, consultant and adjunct professor in training and school safety at Missouri State University.

Lewis credits Gov. Mel Carnahan for protecting Missouri students in the wake of those tragic shootings in Colorado, Arkansas and Kentucky.

"At the time, Gov. Carnahan traveled around the state encouraging schools to do whatever it took to insure that students were safe everywhere," Lewis recalls. "Then MSU decided to offer an accredited school-safety course to teachers and administrators." Brunner already was associated with MSU, so she was tapped to teach courses in school safety and school-crisis management.

"A lot of people became immediately aware of the need, but most plans were not practical or cost-effective," she recalls.

Brunner says bullying is one of the most prevalent problems in schools today.

"Electronic bullying is becoming more and more common, just as in the recent case that's been in the news where the victim committed suicide," she says, referring to St. Louis teenager Megan Meier who allegedly took her life in 2006 after dealing with a cyber-bully. The incident has set off a federal trial involving the mother of Meier's friend and social network site MySpace, where the online harassment is said to have taken place. The jury trial began last month in Los Angeles.

"Bullying also can be physical or emotional," Brunner adds. "Of the two, emotional bullying is the most difficult to deal with."

She says approximately 80 percent of Edu-Safe's work involves bullying. The other 20 percent involves crisis management. The firm recently presented the program, "How to identify and manage the aggressive/violent student," at Hickory Hills K-8.

"It gave our teachers and administrators specific tools to help them identify both the aggressor and the victim, and how to handle a situation before it reaches crisis proportions," Principal Kelly Allison says. "It's knowledge that we didn't have in the past and very often a bullying victim won't tell parents or teachers about the problem."

Although they are sometimes called to a school district to help resolve a specific problem, more often Edu-Safe's work is training administrators to recognize and prevent problems before they become major. Edu-Safe has performed consulting, and teacher and administrator training from California to the Carolinas - including some sessions across the Atlantic.

Clients include Safe Schools Europe, British Broadcasting Co., National Parent Teacher Association, Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice, Illinois Regional Institute for Community Policing, Public Broadcast System, National Association of Secondary Principals, National Association of Middle Schools and the National Association of School Law Enforcement Officers.

Other major projects involve the Los Angeles Unified School District, where Edu-Safe presented its bully management program, and the Region 20 Education Service Center in San Antonio, where the company will provide emergency-response training for south-central Texas educators.

Edu-Safe also does a lot of work in Missouri, with the Reeds Spring, Bolivar and Monett school districts on its client roster.

Although aggressive student behavior is the focus of most work, the firm also handles inspections of school buildings for potential hazards such as the location of walls and abutments and stairwells that might be blocked in an emergency. For instance, Lewis and Brunner were called to consult and make recommendations before a recent bond election in the Potosi R-III School District.

"The school district used our assessment in presenting the proposal to the public and the bond issue passed with 82 percent voter approval," Lewis says, noting that the bond revenue will cover renovations to improve school security. "Aggressive and violent behavior is, unfortunately, a fact of life in today's society, and we try to help resolve those situations in schools before they explode into another Columbine."[[In-content Ad]]