BUCKLAND — The Mohawk Trail Regional School District School Committee has approved implementing a child sexual abuse prevention plan that was developed in collaboration with Enough Abuse.

The district has been working with Enough Abuse, a nonprofit dedicated to ending child sexual abuse, since September as part of the Franklin Regional Council of Governments’ Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP). Together, the district and Enough Abuse have been reviewing the school’s policies and physical spaces, and are preparing an action plan, which was presented to the School Committee on Wednesday.

In recent months, a civil complaint was filed against a former Mohawk Trail employee for allegedly sexually assaulting a student from 2016 to 2019, and the Berkshire County district attorney’s office investigated a relationship between the former Mohawk Trail school resource officer and an 18-year-old student that determined they “were involved in a relationship beyond that of a teacher/student.”

“We’re gonna move forward. There are things we can do to be better and make things stronger, better, for our kids, for our families, for our community,” Enough Abuse Executive Director Jetta Bernier said. “I think it’s time to turn the corner and look forward to a strong, vibrant child protection program within the Mohawk Trail Regional School District.”

Bernier said if the district embraces the Safety STARS (Screening, Training, Assessing, Responding, Securing) program offered by Enough Abuse, it can keep students safe.

The plan for Mohawk Trail includes creating a new code of conduct for both students and staff that outlines inappropriate behaviors, implementing new screening practices for new hires, and providing training for students and staff.

Bernier said staff screenings need to include more than just Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) background checks. Potential hires should sign liability waivers allowing the school district to contact former employers and ask specifically if that job candidate has ever been investigated for having an inappropriate relationship with a student.

The new codes of conduct and screening practices will be reviewed by the district’s legal counsel, then brought to the School Committee for approval in August.

At the end of the summer, all staff at the Mohawk Trail and Hawlemont Regional school districts will complete the Enough Abuse training on recognizing inappropriate behaviors and how to report them. In the fall, Bernier and Kat Allen, the Communities That Care Coalition coordinator with FRCOG, will give a presentation to students on the code of conduct.

Enough Abuse and FRCOG are also working with the Greenfield, Frontier Regional and Pioneer Valley Regional school districts to implement similar prevention programs, according to Bernier.

The work came after FRCOG found the Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Survey — which surveys high school students across the state annually about a variety of health and safety topics, such as drug abuse, dietary behaviors and sexual activity — found increasing levels of dating and sexual violence among Franklin County youths.

“In 2023, we realized there was a big increase in dating violence,” Allen said. “This is just a pattern that happened somewhere between 2016 and 2023. We saw this big increase, and in some cases doubling of the rates of students reporting this kind of abuse.”

Bernier noted that 1 in 8.5 children in the U.S. experience inappropriate behavior. Not all of this abuse is physical or sexual; some includes inappropriate messaging, exposure of genitals and other grooming behaviors.

“These are not great statistics, but I think it gives us a sense that if we can educate people about those boundary-violating behaviors and interrupt them early on, we can really prevent a lot moving forward,” Bernier said.

Superintendent Sheryl Stanton said this is just the beginning of Mohawk Trail’s work to prevent child sexual abuse. On Thursday, she noted the school district is working with a web developer to create an in-house messaging system that would allow students and teachers to communicate, and all messages would be recorded and archived.

The district will continue to work with Enough Abuse and FRCOG as additional training and tools become available.

“This will grow over the school year,” Stanton said. “Our children, at the end of the day, if they’re not safe, they can’t learn.”

Reach Madison Schofield at 413-930-4579 or mschofield@recorder.com.