School safety experts know one key to students’ security is access to an adult who can intervene when they are in crisis. Kentucky law requires that each student is “well known by at least one adult in a school.” 

NCS has established a daily Care & Connect system and the work of ensuring every kid, every day continues to spread across the district. While each school has made their system unique to their students and some go by different titles (Nelson County has Cardinal Crews, for example), they are built on the same fundamental — building relationships with students.

At its core, the model pairs each student with a Care & Connect leader, who will unite with that student and family over the course of three to four years. That means a sixth-grader entering middle school will have a stable relationship over three years with the same adult. The same when they transition to high school.

Wes Cornett, a school safety consultant with the Kentucky Center for School Safety, said NCS is among the leaders in the field of implementing a purposeful system that builds important relationships between students and adults. 

"Those of us who are in the schools every day, we realize once I build a relationship with a child, I may be more apt to notice if they come to school and they are showing signs of trauma, or they're showing signs of meltdown, or they're showing signs of distress.” Cornett said.