Category: Safety Blog

Safety Changes for 2025-2026

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Good morning and Happy Friday!  This week’s safety snippets are resources and documents that pertain to the upcoming changes to the response protocols in our schools for the 2025-2026 school year.  These changes are commonly referred to NYSED’s adoption of the “I Love U Guys Standard Response Protocols.”  The link below is for the NYSED I Love U Guys landing page and the documents are some of the key changes.  If your district needs training specific to these changes, please reach out to Tim Richardson, who is an I Love U Guys train-the-trainer.  These changes also need to be updated in your District-wide School Safety and Building Level Emergency Response Plans.  Training on this is now part of the annual training that staff/students need to receive by September 15th, 2025.

Standard Response Protocol and Standard Reunification Method | New York State Education Department

Have a great weekend and stay safe.

First Aid Stuff

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Good morning and Happy Friday!   This week’s safety snippet involves first aid and how to respond to common emergencies that we may face at work or in our daily travels.  The following website has several different tidbits on how to handle common medical emergencies and is from FastMed.  The printables are from the American College of Surgeons, Adapta Pharma, and the American Red Cross.  On behalf of CA BOCES Health and Safety, have a safe and enjoyable Memorial Day while taking time to reflect on what this day means.

Urgent care services – FastMed

 

Silica Stuff and Inspection Frequencies

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Good afternoon and Happy Friday!  This week’s safety snippet is all things silica with a bonus document regarding common inspection frequencies from The NYS Office of Fire Prevention and Control.  The links pertain to silica safety whether it be in art/kiln rooms or when working with masonry.  These resources are from:  CDC/NIOSH, OSHA, Princeton University, and “The Pottery Wheel.”  Enjoy your weekend and stay safe!

Ceramics | Office of Environmental Health and Safety

How to Clean Up Clay Dust – Keep Your Pottery Space Safe

Silica, Crystalline – Overview | Occupational Safety and Health Administration

Silica and Worker Health | Silica | CDC

Engineering Controls for Silica in Construction – Cut-off Saws | NIOSH | CDC

Electrical Safety

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Good morning and Happy Friday!  This month is “Electrical Safety Month.”  This week’s snippets are resources from the NFPA and OSHA with the NFPA link having several safety tips and resources for your home’s electrical safety.  Enjoy your day and have a great weekend!

Electrical Home Fire Safety | NFPA

Ergonomics Stuff

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Good morning and Happy Monday!  This week’s snippet topic is a “heavy lift”, ergonomics.  A lot of people think that it is the “heavy lift” that injures people, but repetitive stress or lifting a light weight incorrectly can really do damage to our workers.  The link below will take you to the OSHA Ergonomics Resource Page and the Ergonomics Workbook was put together through the Midwest Worker Center and was funded by a Susan Harwood OSHA Grant.  Have a great and safe weekend!

Ergonomics – Overview | Occupational Safety and Health Administration

Reporting a Fire Incident

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Good morning and Happy Monday.  This topic comes up from time to time and we wanted to share this in case you do not know where to turn when there is a fire in your school.  This link will take you to the reporting form that NYSED requires, and the PDF is the process to follow.  It is a pretty easy process to follow and please reach out to John Hanbach or Tim Richardson if you have a fire so we can help you through this.  We will contact the NYSED Fire Safety Desk, so they have a heads-up as well as to provide guidance for any other documentation that needs done.  NYSED Fire Safety is currently working on a policy for which fires need to be reported versus which ones can stay at the local level, more to come on that as we get that information.

Microsoft Word – Fire Incident Report Form.docopens PDF file

Ergonomics Stuff

Published on
Good morning and Happy Friday!  This week’s snippet topic is a “heavy lift”, ergonomics.  A lot of people think that it is the “heavy lift” that injures people, but repetitive stress or lifting a light weight incorrectly can really do damage to our workers.  The link below will take you to the OSHA Ergonomics Resource Page and the Ergonomics Workbook was put together through the Midwest Worker Center and was funded by a Susan Harwood OSHA Grant.  Have a great and safe weekend!

Ergonomics – Overview | Occupational Safety and Health Administration

Farming and Agriculture Safety

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Good afternoon and Happy Friday!  My thoughts are the more Spring Safety Snippets we put out maybe just maybe Spring will eventually get here!  This week’s topic involves safe working practices on the farm and in agriculture.  The website is from the National Farmers Union and has a variety of YouTube safety videos; the Fact Sheets are from OSHA.

For those of you who are traveling next week, travel safe!

Safety Potpourri

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Good morning and Happy Thursday!  We will be out on a training assignment, tomorrow, so our Safety Snippet is a day early.  The links below are to two different safety blogs with various topics for April.  There are a wide variety of different safety topics that you can pick and choose from to share what you think is prudent to your folks.  The document this week is a summary of last week’s AESHP Spring Safety Conference.  The agenda was jam packed so I summarized the conference as best as I could, and it is still 8 pages.  If you want to know more on any of the topics, please reach out to Tim Richardson.

HSE BLOG:  April Safety Topics: Stay Alert and Prevent Accidents This Spring

Safety Stage: 8 Engaging April Safety Topics And Messages For Your Workplace – Safetystage

In closing, if you can have a chat with your high school chemistry teachers, to see if they want their unnecessary lab chemicals cleaned out and if they do, please reach out to Tim and John with their contact information so we can coordinate with them to get this inventoried and quoted for the summer chemical pickup.  If you have general chemicals for pickup, please coordinate with us as well so we can start that process.  It will probably be a big pickup so the sooner the better.

Have a great weekend and stay safe!

CA BOCES Health and Safety