Administrators at Pagosa Peak Open School (PPOS) sought to strike a balance between community engagement and student safety in a discussion of school volunteers during its board meeting on Sept. 18.
Board members and School Director Emily Murphy grappled with a draft of guidelines for volunteers at PPOS — which currently asks parents and guardians to pledge 10 or 20 volunteer hours every year, depending on household size —and weighed how best to move forward.
“Part of my struggle is I want minimal barriers to volunteerism, and I also want our kids to be safe,” Murphy said. “And, I want our volunteers to feel safe and supported, as well.”
With “lots of ways to volunteer and participate in social events, including during after school hours,” as the draft guidelines state, the parameters and scope of volunteering at the school came under scrutiny during the board’s discussion.
Board president Lawrence Rugar speculated about what the ramifications might be if a volunteer violates the expectations set forth by the school.
“What I don’t see [in the guidelines] is if an angered volunteer tells a child to be quiet and they don’t, and they bop them on the head … what do we do?” Rugar asked. “It’s a good time for us to have a conversation about nonspecific things like that.”
“I want to make sure that volunteers feel supported,” Murphy answered. “And they feel like they can participate and they feel like there’s a process if something happens when they’re in violation of the policy.”
Murphy acknowledged that “incidents” between volunteers and students have taken place in the past, but declined to provide specifics during the meeting.
“I don’t want to be too specific. As things progress, then we have a policy that supports multiple situations instead of just singular incidents,” she said.
Murphy explained the school already asks consistent and overnight volunteers to sign waivers and submit to background checks, but suggested she wondered about what steps the school should take when vetting volunteers for other roles.
“I don’t want that [the background checks] to be restrictive and there are a lot of times when we have volunteers with kids outside of being a consistent volunteer or overnight volunteer,” she said. “So, I’m finding a lot of worry areas where I’m trying to balance accessibility to volunteerism and safety.”
Board vice president Jesse White advocated for the latter.
“Given that there isn’t really anything in the strategic goals about having an abundance of volunteers, I would lean into safety over accessibility,” White said, but expressed agreement that finding a balance would be an important challenge facing the board as it strives to finalize policy and guidelines around volunteers at the school.
“Just put the square block in the round hole,” he said, sparking laughter. “It’s easy.”
The PPOS board is next scheduled to take up the issue when it meets at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 9, at 3133 Cornerstone Drive.
garrett@pagosasun.com
