How Prepared are Online Schools to Identify and Respond to Student Abuse?: Not Well, but There is Hope

In our rapidly-advancing technological world, little is known about school safety planning in online school settings. We expanded the Crisis Event Perception Survey (CEPS) to the Sustainable, Accessible, Feasible, and Effective (SAFE) Crisis Event Perceptions Survey to assess verbal, physical, relational, and cyberbullying prevalence and administrator preparedness in online school settings. We found that almost half of school administrators assessed were untrained in responding to physical (48%) and relational (43%) bullying and approximately one-third of school administrators surveyed felt unprepared to address physical and/or relational bullying in online schools. Furthermore, we found that only about half of administrators are trained about physical and sexual abuse. These results could be used to inform prevention and intervention methods for various types of bullying and abuse that occur in online school settings. We suggest an integrated, multisystemic approach to address familial, social, school, and community risk factors.