Best Practices: Beacon Rollout

Best Practices

These are some best practices to keep in mind when setting up and using Beacon in your school:

Be selective about Users added to GoGuardian Beacon. When adding someone to GoGuardian Beacon, confirm that all users are prepared to receive information pertaining to student suicide and self-harm. Consult your school’s suicide prevention policy to determine which staff members should have access to your school’s Beacon deployments. Most commonly, mental health officials such as school psychologists and counselors will have access to Beacon. Typically, teachers do not receive access to this sensitive information.   

For schools with Beacon 24/7: Please be very thoughtful about who is added to the 24/7 Escalation List that the Safety Support Specialists will be calling and notifying when an Active Planning alert is generated. These school administrators and staff should be part of the school’s suicide prevention protocol and policy team. If 3rd party individuals are contracted by the school/district for student mental health services (such as crisis centers or SROs) please be sure that contracts with those entities meet your school’s privacy standards (including but not limited to  FERPA), have received the proper training on your district’s approach to discipline, multi-tiered system of support, the Beacon tool and have the appropriate access levels. Best practices include running practice drills or hypothetical situations as part of training to ensure all staff on the Escalation List are prepared to receive an incoming Safety Support Specialist call.

Be mindful of access levels. Super  Counselor permissions are for those school officials with the authority to make decisions regarding Beacon settings pertaining to suicide and self-harm. They will have the ability to edit settings within their deployments. To learn more about the different access levels, click here.

Ensure all added Users are aware of your school's crisis/emergency protocol. All users should be informed and trained about suicide prevention in general, your school’s suicide prevention and/or emergency protocols, and how and when each user should respond to Beacon notifications.

Keep Settings and User Roles Updated. Staff and their roles can change. Remember to disable Users and/or change access levels as appropriate.