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[Start of interview – 00:00:00] BILLIE-JO: …about your role in the district and how long you’ve been there. MANDY: Sure. I started July 1st 2013, and I’m the Director of Human Resources, and I have almost 30 years of HR experience. My prior background, immediately prior to coming here, I was with Henrico Doctors’ Hospital. There were multiple locations where I handled HR and employee relations, all aspects of HR for the hospital system. BILLIE-JO: Okay. MANDY: Prior to that, I was with Capital One. BILLIE-JO: Well, we’re glad you’re back in education. MANDY: Yes. BILLIE-JO: And if you could—I guess, I know there’s a few incidence that I’ve been in Henrico but how did you typically first learn of an incident that occurs? MANDY: How do I learn today or how did I learn when I started here because our processes have changed? BILLIE-JO: Yeah, why don’t you talk about how you first learn of incidences back in 2014? MANDY: Okay. BILLIE-JO: And then we’ll talk about how may be it’s changed. MANDY: So when we would hear of incidences that would usually be from the principal or maybe one of the administrators in the building, and it would be—maybe that day, maybe the next day, maybe a couple days later that they would call and tell Human Resources then. BILLIE-JO: Okay. MANDY: Previous, when they got to it, they would call HR. BILLIE-JO: And would you say that you were personally involved with the phase or identification or resolution of the cases back in 2014? MANDY: In ’14, yes. BILLIE-JO: Okay. And would you say, very involved, moderately involved, very little? MANDY: Very involved. BILLIE-JO: Okay. Well, I want to ask you some more, maybe I’ll ask you now since we’re already talking about it but—or sorry— MANDY: Do you want me to talk and then—do you want me to kind of tell you the story and then you can ask from there? BILLIE-JO: Yeah, why don’t we do that and then, that way, I’m not poking around and you can just kind of tell me your general perceptions and then I’ll ask follow-up questions. MANDY: Sure. So we had an incident where there was an allegation of a teacher and student having a relationship together. And we did what we normally do. We had all hands on deck from an HR instruction leadership standpoint and kind of swooped on that school the morning after we found out. And immediately separated the teacher so that she would not have any access to any student, and we did a whole bunch of things wrong. We interviewed the dad, the student who was involved came in and spoke to us, the student’s brother was privy so the brother came in and spoke to us. We had a lot of people speak to the victim from our school district. And what I didn’t know at that time was the night before, when the dad found out about the relationship, he had called the emergency police to send a patrol man to the house and that patrol man took the victim’s statement, and then they decided to go to the hospital to have a rape kit performed. So he was interviewed again at the hospital. So by the time the Child Advocacy Center with CPS got involved, he’s been interviewed like four times. And that caused a big problem because they say every time someone is interviewed, their story might change slightly or they might remember it slightly different. So they really want to interview victims in a setting that is—they feel safe, that they don’t feel intimidated, that they don’t feel like they’re on stage in front of an audience. And so we were concerned—they were concerned, police and commonwealth attorney, concerned that we were operating in our own silos and we were. And so the police were doing their thing, schools were doing their thing, and a couple of attorneys go, “Wait, wait, wait, we need this to be handled—” CPS was involved and they’re doing their thing. And the three of us really—or four of us weren’t collaborating and I talk mainly in the three of us. So after that particular incident, police, CPS and schools, with commonwealth attorneys sat down but we created an MOU between schools, police and CPS. And created some protocols and some expectations of behavior for all of us and so we could all work together and collaboratively and not be in our independent silos in investigating something. So here I was concerned about not getting the student and teacher near each other and making sure that student was—I mean, that teacher was out of the building. CPS was—and I’m not saying I wasn’t concerned with the victim but CPS was more concerned about the victim, I was focused more on the teacher. And the commonwealth attorney was focused on how can I best prosecute and not have my evidence tampered with? BILLIE-JO: Yeah. MANDY: So we all agreed. We had a series of meetings and CPS—and I say this [inaudible 00:06:24], bless their heart—thought, “Yeah, we can get back to you in 45 or 60 day with information.” And I’m like, “No. In the school system, our obligation is, if we were going to put a teacher on paid administrative leave, we need to give them an update within 5 days so I can’t wait 60 days. And for the 60 days that you’re investigating, I have a multiple classrooms of kids not being taught by a certified teacher, so that’s not going to work for us.” BILLIE-JO: Yeah. MANDY: And that was a big eye-opener for them. Yeah, I think police thought it but it was an eye-opener for CPS that you can’t just tread water when it comes to a teacher and providing that education that we’re expected and we want to provide for our kids. And so, fast forward, we have an awesome relationship. I’m the main contact for police and CPS, and I have a CPS contact, and I have a police contact, and we have each other’s home phones and cellphone numbers and we call each other all times of the night and day. And if I hear about any type of incidents happening, I call my contact to say, “Hey, have you heard?” We’ve retrained all of our principals and administrators, and truly all staff on what being a mandated reporter means. And we’ve talked to them about signs of grooming behavior. We created the Employee Conduct Policy, which was a policy specifically related to what’s appropriate and inappropriate behavior. And you wouldn’t think that you have to say, “You can’t have sex with kids,” But you have to say, “You can’t have sex with kids.” And you have to be very direct and what is appropriate and not appropriate because not everyone has the same judgment. BILLIE-JO: Yeah. MANDY: And so, the attorney and I do kind of a roadshow. We’ll go to staff meetings and we talk about social media, and we talk about blending the gray line between what’s a loving, caring, compassionate role model and leader and what’s taking it too far, and text messaging, and social media, and we go through the whole gamut in the presentation. And we give horror stories and we tell them the realities of what’s happened to other people and give them warnings about not putting themselves in those positions. And it’s really great now. I am notified within seconds after something has happened. They have a checklist. If it’s adult-student, call CPS first and then call me, and then tell your SRO, your police officer on site. If it is student-to-student, tell your SRO immediately. If it’s anything sexual, you call your SRO first, you don’t do anything else. And then, depending if it’s a student-to-student or student-adult, then CPS and call HR. And typically, what happens is one administrator would be on the phone with CPS as the other one’s calling me. And so the lines of communication have truly opened up. The principals understand that they can be prosecuted if it’s not done in a timely manner. Anything involving one of our employees and student that’s CPS-related, they have a two-hour guaranteed window of letting us know if they’re going to pursue or not pursue, which helps us tremendously to know if we’re going to need to put somebody on paid administrative leave while the investigation is happening. The police let me know when the charges are pending. I get called when [inaudible 00:10:31] on the weekends. The communication lines have really opened up and it’s been wonderful. BILLIE-JO: Great. I’m just taking a few notes here. You mentioned the employee conduct policy, the mandatory reporting, and the MOU, would it be possible to get copies of those things that you have in place? MANDY: Yeah, I don’t think that would be any problem. BILLIE-JO: That would be great. And could you talk about how you came up with the MOU? Is that something that you put together or how was it developed? MANDY: It was all three into this. So years ago, the school system had an MOU with CPS and—I mean, years and years ago and I think they got kind of a draft of that. And we all sat down and just talked it through of what’s realistic for—you might not be realistic for me so we need to figure out what our plan will be. So it was a lot of really—we’re all in this together. We all want what’s best for kids and in order to do that, we’re going to need to collaborate and truly their eyes were opened with some of the rules and regulations that schools have. And it was just a collaborative effort and I think our attorney put the first swipe together and then sent it over to the commonwealth attorney and sent it back to us and eventually, our superintendent find it and our county managers find it. BILLIE-JO: Okay. MANDY: The employee conduct—go ahead. BILLIE-JO: No, no. You go ahead. MANDY: The employee conduct policy was partially from the experiences that we’ve had but—like from those specific experiences but it was also from just other stupid things teachers do. And we’d had a teacher who had excessively been texting a student and yes, we had to address that. Or a student who would ride in a car with the teacher and so we had to address what are the protocols for driving a student in your car, or seeing a student after hours. The Director of Operations, who oversees security for the school division, and I do a separate roadshow where we go through like 10 scenarios and say to the admin team, we meet with the admin team, school counselling and any administrative aides or any other leader, teacher-leaders that you have in the building, and we go through scenarios to say what would you do? And 9 of the 10 times, they get it wrong the first couple, and they kind of get into the mindset of things are different now. We don’t collect statements from students right away until we find out if police or CPS are proceeding because we don’t want to interview them or have them write a statement without the appropriate person who’s been trained to interview a victim interviews the victim. BILLIE-JO: And in the MOU, do you have any required meetings or communication that you all have? Like a monthly meeting or do you just communicate as often as needed? MANDY: We don’t have required. I have already spoken to my police contact once today. We probably talk minimum three times a week. Sometimes, three times a day. I don’t talk to CPS as often but whenever we have a question or need to talk to one another or I need an update on a case, I email them and they immediately respond. But we don’t have any particular structure in place. BILLIE-JO: Okay. MANDY: The main thing is for CPS, police and me to be really collaborating and communicating correctly but it tends to be police and schools the most. BILLIE-JO: Okay. Is there anything about that agreement or MOU that you would say is like the key to having a successful relationship with CPS and law enforcement, other than just having the agreement and open communication? MANDY: I wouldn’t say there’s anything specifically in that, in like written, but we have had a conversation—I’ve had a conversation that this is not “Gotcha!” This is not a, “Look, schools didn’t follow the MOU again.” Or, “Police overstepped their boundaries.” Or, “Police didn’t communicate.” This is about us working together and so the facts that get reported to my contact aren’t necessarily the same facts that get reported to me so—and there’s nothing wrong with that. Police tend to communicate in very short increments of words. BILLIE-JO: Right. MANDY: They are shortened to the point where we give them more long, flowery story of every single thing that happened. And so sometimes, the context might be missing a little bit. And so again, all it takes is my contact calling me to say, “Hey, I heard this happened. Can you check it out?” And I checked it out and say, “Well, that did happen but let me tell you the context of why it happened or what else happened along with it.” And so, we’ve grown to a point—part of it is trust, I think. We’ve grown to a point that we both know we’re not—we might not get the entire story from one person and so it kind of takes learning from both sides of the story, what really happened. And how it was reported, and who did their job in reporting, and who dropped the ball in reporting. And honestly, this has been a bigger challenge for my principals than it is for police. My principals are accustomed to, “Something happened in my school, I investigate it. I get everybody to write a statement. I get every witness to write a statement. Then, I issue a consequence.” They are very consequence-focused and not as much was a crime committed and what’s the impact of me tampering with—they don’t see this tampering with evidence. They see it as conducting a school investigation. BILLIE-JO: Yeah. MANDY: So that has been the hardest part. To have educators who have been doing this for 20 or 30 years, completely change their mindset that this isn’t the school silo. This is really a collaborative effort and if there is a victim and a suspect, and the suspect still plea, we want that suspect to be prosecuted. So therefore, we need to step out and let them do their job. BILLIE-JO: Yeah. You mentioned that you do a presentation and you mentioned that it’s also hard to get—to convince principals of what they need to do to report, what has been successful for you in convincing them of that and what do you include in your presentation to get that point across? MANDY: So, it’s not so much convincing them of what they need to do. It getting them out of the habit of what they’ve done for the prior 20 years. BILLIE-JO: Right. MANDY: And so, what the answer is doing it over and over again. So we do it two to three times a year in large group settings. And then, we’ve had members from the Sexual Victims Unit come in, the Chief of Police, we’ve had every—we have a handful, maybe 10 officers there at one time. We’ve had CPS with us as we go through scenarios and talk it through. And, “What would you do in this situation?” And, “Here’s what the real answer is of what you should do.” And so, we’ve found that talking about real scenarios works best. And then in the roadshow that we do, I just have a piece of paper with 10 scenarios, with the scenario and then the right answer under it. So when I’m doing it, I don’t give them the piece of paper but I always leave it with them so that they can refer back to it. BILLIE-JO: Okay. MANDY: And at the high school level, we’ve done so much training that they’re really doing a great job with it. And now, we’re ticking into middle school. We’re finding there are more issues that really—just in the last two weeks. Middle school has been the hot button of just stuff happening, where investigations have to take place that involve either CPS or police and HR. BILLIE-JO: Okay. And for that presentation, are you specifically talking about what we will call school employee sexual misconduct or you include in other things in that or is it specific to the sexual harassment of students by school personnel? MANDY: It’s everything. So, it is, “Suzy reports that Johnny has a big bag of weed in his backpack and he showed it on the bus. BILLIE-JO: Okay. MANDY: “What are you going to do?” Or, “Mary reported that the substitute, the male substitute was rubbing her arm and back and telling her how pretty she looks and it made her feel creepy. What do you do?” To, “Sarah reported she was just raped in the band room and won’t tell you who it was or talked to you at all. What do you do?” BILLIE-JO: Yeah. Do you all have a formal training that you use at all for dealing with sexual misconducts specifically? MANDY: We group sexual misconduct in with the other police and CPS trainings. BILLIE-JO: And that would be the mandatory reporting training or—? MANDY: Mandatory reporting training but then all the scenario training that we do. BILLIE-JO: Okay. MANDY: And so the number one thing is that we share that I think everyone has gotten now is there’s an issue with a gun or anything sexual in your school that’s happening. Be it student-to-student or adult to student, you stop everything and tell your SRO, you police officer. BILLIE-JO: Okay. MANDY: And anything of a sexual nature, anything of a gun nature goes—bypasses all code of conduct and go straight to police. And then the administration participates as the police invites us to participate. BILLIE-JO: Okay. And for those scenarios, did you create those or is that something that you pulled from somewhere. MANDY: No. Unfortunately, they were all real-life examples that we’ve experienced. BILLIE-JO: Yeah. Which often is the best ones because people can relate to what’s—can you tell a little bit about how you handle cases where the student is over the age of consent and you handled that with police and Child Protective Services? MANDY: So if an 18-year-old sexually assaults a 15-year-old? BILLIE-JO: So for a—if a teacher say is having sexual relations with an 18-year-old student or even a 16-year-old student. I know 16, I think it’s just delinquency of a minor but say if it’s an 18-year-old student, how do you handle that or what do you tell your staff to do with those types of cases? MANDY: Well, again, anything of sexual nature goes directly to police. And so police would investigate in collaboration with Human Resources because it’s still an employee issue as well as a student issue. We have found that if a student is above or is 18 or above, the police will investigate but they do not pursue, and then it becomes strictly an employee issue. And of course, then, what’s again helped us create this employee set of codes, this employee conduct policy because you’re not allowed to have those inappropriate relationships with students, so then we can fire you. BILLIE-JO: Okay. Every state is a little different so it’s— MANDY: Yeah. BILLIE-JO: So again before, when you first came on, before 2014, did your district had policies that specifically address sexual misconduct of students by school personnel? MANDY: Not that I’m aware of. Again, I think it’s one of those things that you didn’t know that you had to explicitly say— BILLIE-JO: Yeah. MANDY: Until we realized, “Oh my gosh, you have to explicitly say it.” BILLIE-JO: And before—sorry go ahead. MANDY: I was just going to say, we have a student code of conduct but each school often has a school code of conduct so it was probably, at the teacher level, probably addressed at the school level. I feel confident actually that it’s addressed at the school level of maintaining your boundaries and professional relationships and even texting, if you’re going to text your class, text them in a group chat not one on one with a student and we’ve got to a point where we give examples of what we consider excessive and what’s not excessive, and what a lot of that is in the eye of the beholder. But I think most of that was done from an employee code of conduct kind of per school. BILLIE-JO: Okay. But not a formal policy? MANDY: Right. BILLIE-JO: Okay. And that was typically communicated through the schools, you said, to staff members? MANDY: Yes. BILLIE-JO: So that would be the principal doing it? MANDY: Yes. BILLIE-JO: And then how about for students, was there any written policy that was communicated to students back in, before 2014? MANDY: We’ve always had a student code of conduct that they had to sign off on, and revisions have taken place from time to time. BILLIE-JO: And— MANDY: I think it’s mostly student-to-student, not—I don’t think that it says you can’t have a relationship with an adult in your building. BILLIE-JO: Okay. Does it have information in there about like grievance procedures or how to file a complaint or examples of what boundary-crossing behaviors would be? MANDY: I’ll have to look at—I’ll have to check for you. I’m not sure. BILLIE-JO: Okay. No problem. And how about parents, is there anything that you all do to make parents aware of what school employee sexual misconduct is and what to be aware of? MANDY: Parents also have access to the students’ code of conduct. But I’m not aware that they have direct access to teacher miscon—well, our policies and procedures are in our website. They are open to the public. BILLIE-JO: Right. MANDY: You could go on our website now and pull up to [inaudible 00:27:41] employee conduct and that policy would pop-up. But unless—I don’t know that we push anything at them but if they wanted to look it up, they could find it in our website. BILLIE-JO: Okay. And then, based on the student policy, how would a victim make a formal complaint? MANDY: In a number of ways. We have a violence search websites and that would be an anonymous complaint but we’ve had some of those before too. They could go to school counselling, they could go to any teacher, basically any adult in the building, they can go to anyone in the administration, and any adult in the building that they can share that with they would then escalate to the administrator. BILLIE-JO: Okay. And do you all have a Title IX or compliance officer for Henrico? MANDY: Yes. BILLIE-JO: And is there one in every building or is it just district level? MANDY: District level. BILLIE-JO: Okay. And does everybody know who that person is? MANDY: I believe so. BILLIE-JO: How does that disseminated to students? Is that something that’s in their handbook about who the Title IX officer is? MANDY: I’ll ask [inaudible 00:29:16] BILLIE-JO: Okay. Title IX— MANDY: I think it’s on our website. I’m confident it’s on our website but I’ll look and see if it’s in the students’ code of conduct. BILLIE-JO: Okay. I’m asking there’s—I’ll just give you some background. The OCR guidance document says that all students and staff should know who their Title IX compliance officer is to be able to make a formal grievance complaint. But every time I ask a district about Title IX, they typically don’t know who their Title IX officer is, and so you wouldn’t be alone there. But I just want—that’s why I’m asking about that. MANDY: Well, we’ve had three for as long as I can remember, so as long as I’ve been here. So we have on person that’s, in fact, she’s the Assistant Director of HR. We have the person who’s over all student activities and all athletics. And then we have our Assistant Superintendent for Instructional Support so she’s our third. So depending upon kind of what and where was in Title IX, we have different go-to people. BILLIE-JO: Okay. Great. And then, how do you feel like policies have changed since as a result of the incident that you talked about? It sounds like you all have the MOU, but how was like the school board policies—I guess you mentioned also that you have the explicit policy now that says, “Don’t have sex with students.” But any other changes? MANDY: It doesn’t exactly use those words but people can understand what it’s saying. No those—the MOU is more of the biggest thing we’ve done from a practice standpoint and we’ve done education if like formally two or three times a year and then informally going to, we call it the roadshow, but going school to school and doing it for them as well. And then, truly, the biggest policy change is then us creating this employee contract policy. BILLIE-JO: Okay. MANDY: And not just because of the incident in 2014 but a variety of incidences that have occurred. BILLIE-JO: Okay. And then how about technology use or social media, is there anything that has changed around that in terms of policies? MANDY: We have an acceptable use of policy that everybody has to sign off on every year to say that they’re going to use technology for good and for—it’s really for school-related matters that, say that somebody goes on to a shopping website for five minutes, what they could say is during their lunch period, we don’t really care about that. But it’s saying that you would access appropriate websites while using your school-issued technology. Social media, our attorneys has created an amazing presentation that he updates every day. He gets alerts on any types of sexual misconduct that happens that comes out in the news so he’s constantly updating his presentation. But he does that every year, it’s called New Teacher Academy, when our brand new teachers are coming in for the new school year. So he does that in front of that audience and then he also does—he goes school to school and does it for staff meetings as well. BILLIE-JO: Okay. Great. How does he get those alerts? Does that just something he signed up for through like Google alerts or—? MANDY: Yeah, I think it’s like a Google alert so it will—but it’s some newspapers everywhere so it must be through Google but pretty much anything of a sexual misconduct, he’s notified on and he’s constantly—he’ll send them to myself and to the superintendent, “Oh, you’re not going to believe this one.” Just when you think you’ve heard it all, there’s something new. BILLIE-JO: Yeah. I help track cases for a non-profit. We track almost 500 last year. There’s a lot of stories so— MANDY: Have you heard of Crunk Bear? That’s one [inaudible 00:34:00] that he talks about. BILLIE-JO: No. Which one is that? MANDY: It’s some girl who—a teacher who—either her Twitter name or her Instagram name was Crunk Bear but she took photographs of herself smoking pot and drinking in the parking lot and I think she had a sexual relationship with a student. And it was just— BILLIE-JO: Oh my god. MANDY: Boggling the mind that how much people will actually post and show photographs of things that will send them to jail. BILLIE-JO: Yeah. Alright. So as far as training though, it sounds like you all do it—a training that’s developed by Henrico for staff, is there any other training that you do for staff that’s like a formal training that’s online or anything like that? Any other trainings? MANDY: No. BILLIE-JO: Okay. And then how about of students, is there anything else you do for students? MANDY: I’ll have to—I’ll ask and get back to you on that one. BILLIE-JO: And then, just going back to the staff one. That’s once a year, is that correct? That you do the— MANDY: It’s a minimum of two, sometimes three and that’s in a formal, large group setting. BILLIE-JO: Okay. MANDY: Like all of the administrators in the entire district in one setting. But then, we also do informal training, where we go school to school. BILLIE-JO: And that’s with all school employees? MANDY: That is with administrators primarily. It is with all school employees from the social media presentation, which highlights stupid things teachers do, basically. BILLIE-JO: Okay. For the all school employee category, do you feel like you cover the school employee sexual misconduct specifically? MANDY: Yes. BILLIE-JO: Okay. And then, how long is that training? MANDY: It’s about an hour. BILLIE-JO: And do you think it’s effective, and why or why not? MANDY: I do think it’s effective. We get a lot of comments of what you’re telling us is common sense but we find that we’re here training—we’re not here just to hear us all talk, we’re here because the common sense that you have is not the same common sense that somebody else has. And we’re here sharing these stories because they’re real life. And you could be put in a situation that is a difficult situation. You could be put in a situation where it appears that you’re having an inappropriate relationship with a student, when maybe you’re not at all. And so, it’s not—you have to also think about what is the perception of others as you’re interacting with students. BILLIE-JO: Yeah. Okay. And then we’ll just [inaudible 00:37:12] to reporting a little bit. What would—if an employee observed or was told about an incident, what would they do? MANDY: They would go to one of their administrators. BILLIE-JO: And then, are they required to report directly to CPS? MANDY: It depends on how it is portrayed and it depends upon what the situation is. So if someone says—one of my scenarios is, “Mrs. Smith and Johnny walk in everyday to school together. They’re both holding Starbucks cups and Johnny was always in Mrs. Smith’s classroom and they seem exceptionally close. You’ve seen them outside of school together, driving in Mrs. Smith’s car, what do you do?” And the answer is, “Tell your administrator.” And that’s something that the administrator would have to investigate. At that point, the administrator could go, “Oh yeah, Johnny’s mom is paying Mrs. Smith to tutor him for SAT prep, or to help him write his college essays. I know all about it. The mom cleared everything with me.” And then, everything’s truly on the up and up. But there are situations where people assume that the teacher is doing the right thing and that’s probably tutoring or probably coaching in some type of way. But that might not be happening so the right thing to do is to escalate it to the principal and then let the principal take over that investigation from there. BILLIE-JO: Okay. In the— MANDY: Now, if someone said, “I saw Mrs. Smith kissing Johnny.” And they would report that to the principal, and the principal would immediately call the police because that’s our number one on anything sexual. And then contact CPS if Johnny is under 18, and then contact me because it’s an employee issue. BILLIE-JO: Okay. And then, how about for teachers, do they have to contact Child Protective Services directly in the State of Virginia or is that—the administrator can do that for them? MANDY: Anybody who works in the school, custodian, school nutritional services, anyone, bus driver, they’re all mandated reporters. Our protocol is that they typically go directly to the administrator. If for some reason, it’s an odd day and there’s not administrator around, then they are obligated to call CPS on their own. BILLIE-JO: Okay. MANDY: We’ve never had a day when there’s no administrator, but we give that example because we are all empowered and mandated to call CPS on our own. But the preference is that it go through to one of the building administrators. BILLIE-JO: Okay. And then, what are the consequences for not reporting a case of school employee sexual misconduct in Virginia? MANDY: I think you can be prosecuted and it’s a misdemeanor. BILLIE-JO: Okay. And do you feel like staff are aware of that? MANDY: Yes. Because we’re making them aware of it. BILLIE-JO: Okay. And then how about if a case, say, is founded or someone is convicted, what are the requirements for reporting that to the state Department of Education for license revocation? MANDY: So, we go, again, if it’s sexual in nature, it’s the police first and so the police would need to work through their protocols. We would have the personnel on paid administrative—it would depend on what the official—once they’re actually charged with something, then we could put them on unpaid leave. Once the charge turns into an actual conviction, then we can terminate the employee. The employee does have the right to appeal, so that goes through our school board. And there’s a process for that. Once the superintendent issues his recommendation for a termination that employee has to appeal within 10 business days. If the employee does that appeal, then I think it’s within 15 business days, they can appeal to the school board. Once the school board approves the termination, then it’s a done deal. If they are being terminated because of sexual misconduct and probably some other non-sexual misconduct, then we are obligated to report it to our state Department of Education and so we then either request the suspension or revocation of that person’s license. BILLIE-JO: And that’s something that you do? MANDY: Yes. BILLIE-JO: Okay. MANDY: And then, the state and that employee are noticed saying that, “Henrico County has applied for the revocation of their license due to xyz and then that employee will have a hearing with the Department of Ed and that employee has the opportunity to appeal the Department of Ed’s decision and then it’s final, final. BILLIE-JO: Okay. That’s great. And then, do you feel like incidents are reported as often as they occur? MANDY: Yes. In our school system, yes. BILLIE-JO: And do you feel like that’s always been the case? MANDY: No, not forever. I think that over the last three years that has been the case. BILLIE-JO: What were things like before? MANDY: So again, I came in 2013 but I think, they kind of dealt it on their own or with their SRO. They didn’t necessarily get Human Resources involved. They didn’t have the bigger picture of prosecuting of potential suspects. They had to be code of conduct or the, not employee conduct but we could inhabit them, but they are more focused, I think, in their silo of discipline or what do they do next with this teacher than the bigger picture of prosecuting. BILLIE-JO: Yeah. And do you feel like some things that are reported that shouldn’t be? MANDY: No. We err on the side of caution in working with police and CPS. So if a student says that a teacher grabbed his shoulder and hurt him, we report it. We report every negative touch and so CPS might say we over report but we don’t want the judgment to be in anyone else’s hand. So we pull it down to if there’s any negative touch, be it a slap, a punch, sexual misconduct, any negativity that’s involved in it, we report. BILLIE-JO: Okay. And then, is there somebody in your district that’s in charge of doing investigations? So you mentioned that the police will do theirs, CPS will do theirs, but who does the school ones? MANDY: Human Resources does. BILLIE-JO: Okay. And is that yourself then? MANDY: It’s typically, I’m involved and I have an HR Specialist, one for elementary, one for middle and one for high. BILLIE-JO: Okay. MANDY: And so, we do everything in pairs. BILLIE-JO: So if something comes up, you go to the site and you would interview folks on site or collect data on site? MANDY: Possibly or I would leverage the information that the police or CPS gleamed through their investigation because they get first shot. BILLIE-JO: Yeah. MANDY: And leverage their information in making our recommendation. BILLIE-JO: Okay. MANDY: But we always engage in the interactive process so I would always have the suspect come and talk to me. And hear that person’s side of the story. BILLIE-JO: And for those folks that are doing the investigations, is there any training that you all go through on what to do, what questions to ask, things like that for investigating? MANDY: I wouldn’t say training per se. We typically will use a Google doc and we’ll put our questions in. We’ll have our attorney review it to see if we missed anything. Depending upon the situation, we might give them the Garrity Warning so that anything that they share with us can’t be used against them to prosecute. It depends upon the situation. BILLIE-JO: Okay. MANDY: That typically makes some—a little bit open to talking to us. Knowing that whatever they share with us is just going to be an employment decision and not a criminal decision. BILLIE-JO: Right. Okay. I think we’ve talked a lot about the before. MANDY: I’m going to have to go in just a couple of minutes. BILLIE-JO: Yeah, we’ll wrap up here so just quickly, what’s your—just your perception about what are the challenges or limitations with dealing with school employee sexual misconduct? MANDY: I guess the biggest challenge is that it happens from time to time. It’s still mind-boggling that it happens from time to time. I mean, there’s a point where it’s pretty black and white: you did this or you didn’t do this, and it’s a crime or not a crime. And often, if it’s not a crime, it’s still a school violation. It’s still misconduct from a behavior standpoint that we wouldn’t want in our school. So there tends to be not a lot of gray in my opinion. BILLIE-JO: Okay. What do you think is misunderstood for those employees that engage in misconduct? Or what might be confusing for them? MANDY: I can’t think of anything that’s confusing or misunderstood for them. They’re making a conscious decision to do something that they know is wrong, thinking that they’re not going to get caught or that I think they think that they won’t get caught. BILLIE-JO: Yeah. And then, how about just barriers for effective implementation. So getting people to report or not investigate. What are the barriers there for effective implementation? MANDY: And so I don’t think we really have. I’m sure there are some but I can’t think of what they would be. We’ve done so much training, so much education. We’re very direct in our communications. Our attorney is very direct in his communication. It’s one thing to have the HR person standing up in front of a crowd and saying, “This is what could happen.” But we need to have your attorney standing in front of the crowd saying, “You will go to jail. You will be fired. You will be prosecuted.” It’s very direct. BILLIE-JO: Yeah. MANDY: We feel being direct is the right thing to do. BILLIE-JO: Alright. And then, just lastly and then we’re going to wrap up here. If you are talking to another district and telling them, “These are the things you should do to prevent and respond to these types of cases.” What you tell them? That don’t overlook these things. These are the keys to preventing this. MANDY: A lot of education and it’s like Groundhog Day. You have to do it over and over and over again. It’s not a one-time deal. It’s multiple times throughout the year. It’s in different avenues and different venues, different people doing the same training. We’ve had whole bunch of other school districts ask if they can just take our employee conduct policy and use it, and we said sure. It isn’t until you have a whole bunch of issues happened that you realized, “Oh gosh, I really need to put some of these more explicitly in writing.” To me, education and doing it over and over again is the key. BILLIE-JO: Yeah. What would you recommend as the frequency for trainings if you were telling them, for all school employees and then just for the administrators? Sounds like, they’re different for you all. MANDY: I would say, all school employees need at least once a year. But you can touch on it in a variety of ways. So again, we have one, we do the scenarios of when to call police, when to call CPS. And then we do the second presentation, which is social media, which deals largely with sexual misconduct. So it’s two different subjects but still accomplishing the same goal. I would say for administrators, two to three times a year. And all staff, a minimum of once but that would truly be the minimum. BILLIE-JO: Okay. And how about for students or parents? What would be your recommendation there? MANDY: I don’t know. I don’t deal with that piece of it so I’ve written down questions about our student code of conduct so I’ll investigate that and then I will get back to you and get you copies of the other things that you requested. BILLIE-JO: Okay. Alright. I know I’m going to let you go so I very much appreciate your time today. Thanks so much for talking through this. I know it’s not a fun topic so I very much appreciate your insight and it sounds like you all have a lot of great things in place in Henrico and I’m hopeful that we can share some of the things that you’ve learned with others. MANDY: Okay. BILLIE-JO: And hope that they can put some of those things in place that are working for you. MANDY: Thank you. I did have one quick question. BILLIE-JO: Yep. MANDY: My police contact called me to say, “Hey, I understand you’re working with the Department of Justice on sexual misconduct stuff.” So I did find it interesting that this is supposed to be anonymous but yet someone reached out to them to say that I was participating. Or that Henrico County School is participating, and I think requesting their assistance and participating as well. BILLIE-JO: Yeah, we—part of the study is contacting school officials regarding how things are handled in the county and we did let them know that there was an MOU with Henrico public schools. I didn’t mention you name but—that we were doing the study with Henrico. And again, we won’t be using any county names in our reporting or any individual names in our reporting. So that’s— MANDY: It would just have been nice if you’d given me the heads-up so that I could have shared it with them versus them wondering what it was and then reaching out to me. I just want to give you that feedback. BILLIE-JO: Okay. That’s definitely—from our conversations before I thought it was that—a lot of districts have been very helpful in reaching out to the county officials. But it just seemed like that you all only wanted us to do the one interview and not work with you any further. And so, I didn’t want to ask you to do more than you wanted to do. I definitely—I apologize for stepping on any toes or going around you in any way, that wasn’t my intention. MANDY: Okay. Alright. Well, thank you so much. BILLIE-JO: Alright. Thank you, Ms. Baker. I appreciate your time. MANDY: You’re welcome. Ba-bye. BILLIE-JO: Take care. Ba-bye. [End of interview – 00:54:10]