3 School Events that Require Waivers from Students

How to use digital waivers to protect your students during school events.

As a school administrator or member of your school's PTA, there are many reasons you could organize fun events for students. These could include fundraising events like bake sales, football games, or dances. Not only do these events give students a safe space to have fun, but they can also help them build positive relationships with their peers to create an uplifting student culture.

To keep the outcomes of these events positive, it's vital to have waivers in place to communicate with parents and protect students. Many events, while fun, can have some inherent risks involved for participants. For example, a student could sprain their ankle during a race while running. By having parents sign a race waiver, they and their parents are made aware of those risks before participating.

Activity-based events like races and other physical activities can carry substantial risk for potential harm to participants. Let's get started by discussing how your school can use waivers for these events.

1. Events with physical activities

While physical activity does have some inherent risks for participants, it can also benefit your students. Because regular physical activity can help students exercise more, build teamwork skills, and even improve academic performance and focus, you'll still want to hold these events. However, you should take legal and safety precautions, including creating a waiver.

Some events you may want to create a waiver for include:

• Sporting events
• Field days
• Races or 5Ks
• Tournaments
• Dances

Remember that it is essential to plan to ensure your waiver is up-to-date and accurate. When planning a fun run, for example, 99Pledges recommends teasing out all of the details for the run in the first step of organizing. In this case, you would decide where the run will take place, how long it will be, and what "fun" element you want to incorporate. From there, you can make a note of any risks that could be associated with the event.

Another reason it's crucial to identify these risks early in the planning process because you'll likely need to work with a legal expert when creating waivers. Build enough space in your event timeline to allow a lawyer to review your plans for the event, help you draft a waiver, and review the final document.

2. Off-campus events

Field trips provide enriching learning experiences that students may not otherwise have, allowing them to apply classroom knowledge to real-life situations and gain new perspectives. They can also function as a prize or incentive for students who meet specific goals (like reading a certain number of books) to motivate them to continue working hard.

To reap these benefits responsibly, your school should have parents sign waivers before field trips and other off-campus activities. Waivers help make parents fully aware of the risks associated with the event before sending their child off campus. And if you use digital waivers instead of traditional paper ones, you can make the process easier for the school and parents.

Digital waivers can benefit your school because they:

• Are paperless. Physical papers can get lost in the shuffle when students are taking them to and from school, meaning some students may need to request additional copies or miss the event. With digital waivers, parents can access and submit them from home and won't need to print and deliver them to the school. Plus, shifting to digital waivers could save your school money over time because you won't need to use as much paper.
• Are easy to store and organize. While traditional waivers take up large amounts of space and are difficult to transport, school administrators can store digital waivers on computers. Finding specific waivers is much faster and easier when stored on a digital waiver platform. Instead of thumbing through dozens of paper files, you can search the student's name and quickly pull their waiver.
• Save staff members' time. In addition to making signing more convenient for parents, digital waivers save staff time on administrative tasks. Staff won't need to organize, file, and record submitted waivers because they will flow into your digital waiver software. Tracking who has and hasn't submitted a waiver is also much easier, as staff can quickly search the school's database of waivers.

Whether sending students on a trip to a science museum or giving them a fun day at the zoo to cap off a school fundraiser, consider using a digital waiver to make signing these forms more convenient for parents and save your school time and money.

3. Events with photo opportunities

After working hard to organize a creative fundraising event or field trip for students, you'll likely want to take pictures to share with parents, include them in your yearbook, and upload them to social media. A photo release form can help you get consent to share these images.

Photo release forms are agreements between photographers and subjects requesting consent to use and distribute photos of them. These forms are essential when taking pictures at events where minors are present. Your legal team can help you understand how and when to use photo release forms and work with you to create one.

Once you've created the form with the help of a lawyer, your school can upload them to your digital waiver platform. As Recharity's guide to online waiver software explains, a key benefit of using digital waivers is that parents can complete them before the event. If each student at the event signed a photo release form before attending, photographers could take and share photos without needing to track down students and their parents for permission to use the images.

Organizing fun and educational events exposes students to new perspectives and helps create a positive culture at your school. Digital waivers help schools take care of necessary legal requirements before holding school fundraising events, going on field trips, and allowing students to participate in physical activities. Because waivers increase transparency between schools and parents, they can also improve your relationships with parents and build stronger community ties.

Author Bio

Logan Lewis is the Content Coordinator at Smartwaiver, the leading digital waiver service trusted by thousands of organizations around the world.