If a district wants to go independently, that's fine. That's the goal.
Capacity building means eventually not being needed. Saying so out loud is the only way to disarm the reasonable suspicion that any program offering a multi-year relationship is selling dependency.
What independent actually means
A district running SAFER on its own has:
- Its own trained safety planners, more than one, with a bench
- Its own named queue owner and follow-up owners, per school
- Its own consulting clinician, by name, reachable on a school day
- Its own dashboard, its own access controls, and its own answers to the four data questions in Module 1.2
- Its own pre-vetted referral list, rechecked each term. See Module 9.2
- Its own work plan it can run without reading it
- Its own read of the law, or its own counsel's
- Someone who can train the next person
That last one is the actual test.
A district is independent when it can replace a departing counsellor without calling SAFER.
What SAFER keeps doing
The open materials stay open. The toolkit stays current. A district that went independent in 2027 can still read Module 5.2 in 2029 and find it accurate.
✓ Take Action. Whichever year you are in, name the person at your district who could train the next planner. If that name does not exist yet, that is the gap between where you are and independent, and it is a more useful thing to know than any other measure of progress.
