President's Message - Summer 2012

Welcome to the Southern California Schools Risk Management (SCSRM) web site. I hope you will find it helpful and useful. As the newly elected president of the JPA (Joint Powers Authority), it is my pleasure to serve our member districts. I am joined by the rest of the nine-member Executive Committee, and a Board of Directors including one representative from every one of our member school districts.

A JPA is a collective group of like public entities that pool their resources to benefit all by spreading the cost or risk among its members. SCSRM provides insurance and loss control services to each of our thirty-one member school districts. These programs include: Workers Compensation, Property, Liability, and Auto insurance, as well as several other programs directed at specific school losses. We are school people, addressing school issues, while providing school solutions. This model allows us to attack our issues head-on with specific knowledge and expertise. The narrow focus allows us to keep rates low, since we are not offering one-size-fits-all remedies to a variety of unrelated business problems.

Our Loss Control Department consists of six field representatives that are trained risk managers who make themselves available to all our members for onsite assistance and consultation. They are led by “Safety Bill” Clayton who provides oversight to the Risk Management and Workers Compensation staff. This group shares many core, and also offers individual skills that make this a power-house group of people. The result has been a consistent improvement in lessening injuries and property losses. The services of this group come to members at no additional cost. Their purpose is to reduce the potential exposure to risk and losses for all members by providing education and direct services. Many of these services would come at a high price, when purchased individually (examples: ergonomic evaluations, indoor air quality testing, site inspections, OSHA compliance programs and training).

For those of you who are members, we hope you know and appreciate these things. For you who might consider joining SCSRM, we welcome your interest.