The attendance office sees a pattern of absences. The nurse notices increasingly frequent visits. A teacher sees a student struggling to stay awake. Front-office staff notice changes in pickup or dismissal.Individually, each may have only one piece of the story. Administrators may be positioned to see the pattern they create together.Your advantage is the wider view. A concerning pattern may exist across school systems before any one person recognizes it.WHERE THIS SHOWS UP IN YOUR WORKIn Your DataLook for patterns that become visible across school systems—not just within one classroom.◆ Chronic absence or frequent tardiness that follows a pattern ◆ Unexplained enrollment gaps or unusual withdrawal and re-enrollment ◆ Repeated early dismissals or changing pickup arrangements ◆ Frequent changes to addresses or emergency contacts ◆ Sudden changes in grades, engagement, or discipline ◆ Concerns or complaints that repeatedly involve the same classroom, activity, route, employee, or other point of contactIn Your BuildingSome information never appears on a dashboard.◆ A change in who regularly picks up or accompanies a student ◆ Another person routinely speaking for the student or controlling their communication ◆ A student who is consistently exhausted or whose basic needs appear unmet ◆ Possessions, money, or a second phone that raise questions when considered alongside other changes ◆ A student whose answers about their schedule, living situation, or whereabouts seem unusually rehearsed or inconsistent ◆ A school-connected adult repeatedly seeking unusual access, privacy, or one-on-one time with a particular student

No. Your role is not to investigate or determine whether trafficking occurred. A concern may require action long before anyone can name exactly what is happening.Focus on what was observed or shared, whether there is an immediate safety concern, what reporting requirements apply, and who needs to coordinate the school's response.Asking enough to understand an immediate safety issue is not the same as conducting an investigation.Recognizing and responding to concerns early may create an opportunity to interrupt grooming, exploitation, or escalating control before trafficking occurs.YOUR ROLENotice. Respond. SupportRecognize the concern.Pay attention to what was observed, disclosed, or documented.Listen without pressing.Get enough information to understand the concern and immediate safety needs, not to build a case.Address immediate safety.Consider what needs to happen before the student leaves your office, building, or school grounds.Follow reporting procedures.Don't wait until you can determine exactly what happened.Make sure the handoff happens.Know who is coordinating the response and who will stay connected to the student afterward.NOT YOUR ROLEInvestigate. Prove. Build the CaseProve trafficking occurred.You do not need certainty or evidence before responding to a concern.Conduct your own investigation.Leave fact-finding and investigative interviews to the appropriate professionals.Press for details.Avoid asking a student to provide more information than is needed to understand immediate safety and reporting needs.Confront the person of concern.Doing so could increase risk to the student or interfere with an appropriate responsePromise secrecy.Be transparent about what you may need to share and with whom.Hand it off and walk away.Making a report or referral does not end the school’s role in supporting the student.

Students will rarely identify their own situation as “human trafficking.” They may not recognize what is happening as exploitation, may use very different language to describe it, or may have complicated feelings about the person or situation involved.A STUDENT MAY:◆ Describe the person as a boyfriend, girlfriend, friend, employer, or someone who “takes care of me” rather than someone who is exploiting them.◆ Describe the situation as a choice, relationship, job, opportunity, or family responsibility even when another person is exercising significant control.◆ Care about, love, depend on, defend, or feel loyal to the person involved. Exploitation and genuine attachment can exist at the same time.◆ Feel that they owe the person something because that person provides money, housing, transportation, gifts, protection, attention, or a sense of belonging.◆ Fear what could happen if they tell someone—to themselves, someone they care about, their family, or the person involved.◆ Worry about what adults will do with the information, including punishment, being removed from home, police involvement, getting someone they care about in trouble, or losing the relationship.◆ Minimize or normalize what is happening because it developed gradually or has become part of everyday life.◆ Return to or remain connected with the person or situation, even after concerns have been identified. This does not mean the concern was unfounded.Don't make support depend on a student identifying as a victim or using the word “trafficking.” How seriously you take a concern, and how you respond, should not depend on whether a student uses the “right” language, identifies as a victim, is ready to leave the situation, or responds in the way adults might expect.

No. A required report may begin an external response, but it does not automatically address what the student needs to safely and successfully navigate the school day. The school's role continues after the report is made.ADMINISTRATORS SHOULD MAKE SURE SOMEONE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR:◆ Immediate safety — Is there anything that needs to change today related to dismissal, transportation, building access, schedule, or contact with another person?◆ A consistent point of contact — Does the student know which trusted adult they can go to without having to explain the situation again?◆ Attendance and academics — Are absences, missed work, exhaustion, appointments, or disruptions being addressed as support needs rather than automatically becoming additional consequences?◆ Re-entry — If the student has been missing, absent for an extended period, or out of placement, who helps them return without requiring them to repeatedly explain what happened?◆ Information sharing — Who actually needs to know, and how can information be kept from spreading unnecessarily throughout the school?◆ Coordination with outside partners — Who is the school contact for DSS/CPS, the Regional Navigator, law enforcement, victim services, or other partners involved in the response?◆ Ongoing follow-up — Who checks back in tomorrow, next week, and as circumstances change?REPORT → SAFETY → SUPPORT → FOLLOW-THROUGHA successful handoff isn't “we made the report.” It's knowing who is responsible for the student's school-based safety, support, and follow-up after the report leaves your hands.

A concern may involve a school employee, coach, volunteer, contractor, transportation provider, peer, or another person with legitimate access to students. Their connection to the school may provide access to students, school spaces, schedules, transportation, activities, technology, or positions of trust.WHAT DOES THEIR ROLE GIVE THEM ACCESS TO?◆ Access to the student — Does this person currently have opportunities for private or unsupervised contact with the student through classes, athletics, transportation, activities, tutoring, mentoring, or other school functions?◆ Access to other students — Does their role provide similar access to other students who may need to be considered in the school's response?◆ Building and activity access — Does anything need to be addressed regarding school grounds, events, practices, transportation, dismissal, or extracurricular activities while the concern is being handled?◆ Patterns already known to the school — Have there been previous complaints, boundary concerns, unusual requests for one-on-one access, or seemingly minor incidents involving the same person?◆ Personnel and administrative procedures — What district procedures apply when the concern involves an employee, contractor, volunteer, coach, or other school-connected individual?◆ Information sharing — Who needs the information to carry out the response, and who does not need details simply because the person is part of the school community?◆ Potential impact on the student — Could changing schedules, removing someone from an activity, contacting particular people, or taking another visible action unintentionally identify the student or create additional risk?Consider Access, not just identity A person's connection to the school may create opportunities for access, authority, trust, or contact with multiple students. Follow applicable reporting and school/district procedures rather than confronting the person, conducting your own investigation, or waiting to see whether another concern emerges.DON'T REVIEW THE CONCERN IN ISOLATIONA concern involving one student may be the first time you are seeing it—but not the first time information involving the same person has surfaced within the school or district.When appropriate under your procedures, consider whether relevant information may already exist across other students, prior school years, departments, activities, transportation routes, programs, or schools within the district.What was previously documented as a boundary concern, transportation issue, communication complaint, policy violation, or unusual request for access may look different when considered alongside new information.◆ Has this person or concern surfaced before—even if it was described differently?◆ Could another school, department, program, or prior school year hold relevant information?◆ Does this person's role provide access to other students who may also need to be considered?Connecting existing information should strengthen the response—not delay it. Do not wait to identify a pattern or find corroborating information before making a required report or addressing an immediate safety concern.

Trafficking, exploitation, grooming, and recruitment can occur peer-to-peer. A student may recruit, introduce, connect, pressure, groom, transport, advertise, or facilitate the exploitation of another student. In some situations, the student doing the recruiting may also be experiencing exploitation, coercion, threats, or pressure from someone else.For administrators and district leaders, a peer-to-peer concern requires looking beyond a typical student conflict or disciplinary incident and considering what may be happening around both students.IMPORTANT QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER◆ How did the connection begin? — Did one student introduce another to a person, relationship, job, party, place to stay, opportunity, or way to make money?◆ Is recruitment occurring within the school environment? — Consider whether students are being approached or connected through classrooms, lunch, athletics, extracurricular activities, transportation, bathrooms, school events, or other places where students routinely interact.◆ Is technology part of the connection? — School-issued devices, messaging platforms, social media, group chats, shared accounts, or other digital spaces may be used to make introductions, maintain contact, share images, arrange meetings, exert pressure, or facilitate exploitation.◆ Are other students being approached or connected? — A concern involving two students may reveal a broader pattern of introductions, recruitment, or exploitation involving additional students.◆ Is there a power or control dynamic? — Look beyond age alone. Consider social status, money, housing, transportation, substances, threats, intimate relationships, access to older individuals, or other factors that may create dependency or leverage.◆ Could the student causing concern also be experiencing exploitation? — A student who appears to be recruiting or facilitating access to other students may themselves be acting under coercion, threats, pressure, or direction from another person.◆ What continued access exists at school? — Shared classes, transportation, teams, activities, lunch periods, friend groups, or school-connected digital spaces may create ongoing contact that needs to be considered in safety planning.Don't Assume "Peer-to-Peer" Means Equal PowerStudents may be close in age and still have very different levels of control, vulnerability, information, resources, or connection to other people involved. A peer relationship does not rule out grooming, recruitment, coercion, or exploitation.LOOK BEYOND DISCIPLINE When one student appears to be recruiting, facilitating, or exploiting another, the immediate behavior may violate school rules—but discipline alone may miss what is driving it.Before viewing the situation only through a disciplinary lens, consider:◆ Could either student be under pressure or direction from someone else?◆ Could additional students have been approached, recruited, or connected?◆ Does the information raise a reporting or immediate safety concern?◆ What school-based contact or access may need to be addressed while the appropriate response occurs?A student can cause harm and still need protection. Recognizing that possibility does not minimize the impact on another student—it helps leadership respond to the full situation rather than stopping at the behavior visible at school.