With 10 schools serving 5,500 students and a new 1:1 technology initiative in place, School District 87 in Bloomington, IL needed a trusted provider to keep students safe. In order to help prevent the many issues students face both online and offline—such as bullying and cyberbullying, fighting, suicide, and self-harm—the district turned to the Gaggle student safety service.
Before adopting Gaggle, the district had devices and its students had email accounts using Microsoft Office 365, but they were reluctant to allow students to send and receive emails outside of the District 87 domain. “We wanted a product that could do that monitoring for us and notify us on anything that needed to be followed up on,” says Barry Reilly, Superintendent of Schools. “We now have that great confidence with Gaggle.”
Since implementing the service, Gaggle has helped the district successfully intervene in at least six potential suicides and keeps administrators informed about other potential issues—both on and off campus. “Whether it's bullying, student mental health issues, school violence issues, or another problem, this is one of the tools that you really can't be without,” says Reilly. “It’s helping us on a daily basis prevent and/or solve important problems.”
The service has also helped intervene with smaller issues, like alerting the district when two sixth grades students used the chat feature within their school email to plan a fight after school. Administrators were able to step in with conflict resolution and alert the students’ parents, preventing the situation altogether. Read the case study to learn more about how School District 87 uses Microsoft Office 365 together with Gaggle to keep students safe.