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Davenport Schools Superintendent says crisis response, violence prevention summits start in a few weeks

Dr. Kobylski says he hopes the summits bring the community together, so students can focus on their education.

DAVENPORT, IOWA  --  The Davenport Superintendent says the school district is looking at how it addresses bullying after a student assaulted another kid at Davenport West High School in November 2019.

Superintendent, Dr. Robert Kobylski, said in an interview with News 8, that the district is planning multiple summits to hear everyone's ideas for improvement.

At the Jan. 27, 2020 school board meeting, school board members decided to spend more than $40,000 for a consulting team, CE Consultants, that will help get the new "crisis response and violence prevention summits" started.

Dr. Kobylski says the summits will begin with focus groups of parents, teachers and law enforcement to brainstorm ideas.

"CE Consulting will help us reach out to our community with focus groups and surveys, so we can gather information, about not only how people feel, but what they think," Kobylski said. "Then, we will start pulling folks into a room and coming up with a plan for how we want to handle situations that we are dealing with, not only from the school system but from a community perspective."

Dr. Kobylski says he hopes the summits bring the community together, so students can focus on their education.

"The community comes together and realizes that we have to form a consensus on what our goals are and what our aspirations are for our students and our community, but also to make sure we have a safe and orderly environment within our school system," Kobylski said.

He also said the school board is meeting with the Department of Education on Jan. 28, 2020, to work out details with the new consulting agency. He says community members should see the first meeting within the next month.

"We will engage the contract this evening," Kobylski said. "We have a meeting tomorrow afternoon actually to work out the details of the timing of that, but I would fully expect within the next month or so, those focus groups and meetings will be taking place."

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