Innovative Program in Texas School Improves Student Safety

HUFFMAN, Texas, March 28, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Huffman Elementary School, located northeast of Houston, TX, has found a breakthrough approach for student safety. Huffman implemented the mytaptrack® data collection and communication system at the beginning of the 2021/2022 school year to assist its special education team. Since that time, Huffman has reported zero student restraints for the current school year. In a one-year period nationally, over 70,000 students have been physically restrained per the most recent Civil Rights Data Collection Report from the Department of Education.

Physical restraints and classroom evacuations can be necessary when a student's behavior becomes a safety concern for themselves, other students, and/or school staff. 80% of all restraints are students receiving special education services according to the Department of Education. In a year challenged by the continuing Covid-19 pandemic, at times Huffman experienced over 30% of staff out sick. The lack of teacher continuity can contribute to inappropriate and dangerous student behavior. However, the school's educators didn't just reduce the number of student restraints and classroom evacuations, they eliminated them all together. What changed?

Tasha Bennett, the school's Adaptive Behavior Specialist, had a vision to improve how students were supported which included actionable, real-time data, improved communication, and real time on-demand support for classrooms around the school. Her goal was to anticipate and accelerate the right support for the right students at the right time.

Ms. Bennett's plan successfully came together with the implementation of a new, innovative tool in special education, mytaptrack®. mytaptrack® allows educators to capture, collect, and measure behavioral impacts in real-time and share the collected data with the student's entire support team. Alerts can be sent to accelerate the right support while collecting data provides proactive deep insights to improve student outcomes through detailed, easy-to-use reports.

Ms. Bennett worked closely with mytaptrack®'s technical team to implement her vision which, overtime, developed into a schoolwide strategy to address challenging behaviors early and provide targeted support quickly. The implementation of her program has allowed her to support almost twice as many students as her peers in other schools in her district and teachers report the collected data helps them be proactive and more effective with all students.

In a recent survey of the staff using mytaptrack®, one teacher commented,

"Support is provided before it is a crisis situation which allows ALL students to continue to stay in the classroom and engaged in the material." 

Ms. Bennett says,

"Without mytaptrack® our department would fall apart. Typically, handling more than 20 cases is a breaking point in our program, but mytaptrack® has provided the capability to handle over 40 cases and still provide strong support where and when it is needed. We are less reliant on handheld radios and other tools previously used to communicate and support behavioral needs."

In addition to accelerated classroom support, Ms. Bennett, in collaboration with other school leadership, use the data collected with mytaptrack® to identify student health concerns, adjust for the best environment for learning, improve parent communication, and develop stronger partnerships with the entire support team to enhance each students' learning.

About mytaptrack® 
mytaptrack® is a flexible behavior tracking solution for schools, allowing multiple types of methodologies and tracking tools to be used to adapt to each unique environment and special circumstances. The tool provides more accurate data to be captured and communicated in real time to the child's entire support team, allowing better solutions to be supplied to the classroom. mytaptrack® is committed to providing private, secure, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) compliant solutions for children nationwide. Learn more at mytaptrack.com and @mytaptrack on all social media platforms.

SOURCE mytaptrack