Steve Temming: Building Sustainable School Safety Programs with PublicSchoolWORKS
Editor’s note: This profile is part of a series highlighting the men and women who create today’s education technology companies.
By Kenna McHugh
Steve Temming, CEO of PublicSchoolWORKS, built his company from first-hand experience as a school administrator in Cincinnati Public Schools. Frustrated by the many administrative burdens of running a school district—especially around safety and regulatory compliance—Temming set out to create practical, web-based tools that would relieve administrators of time-consuming, repetitive tasks and enable a proactive approach to school safety.
Temming recalls administrators describing compliance and safety as “the big gray cloud over their heads.” After leaving Cincinnati Public Schools, he began developing a suite of software-as-a-service applications designed to manage the business and safety responsibilities that district leaders juggle every day. The late 1990s emergence of government programs that expanded internet access to schools made web-based software solutions viable, allowing Temming to scale his ideas beyond a single district.
“School administrators typically don’t have the breadth of resources they need, especially when it comes to safety and regulatory compliance,” Temming says. Districts often lack both the time and the specialized expertise needed to prioritize and implement effective safety programs. That gap can leave schools reacting to incidents rather than preventing them.
PublicSchoolWORKS aims to change that by combining purpose-built technology with hands-on client support. The company’s products cover crisis prevention and preparedness, regulatory compliance, accident and injury reporting, staff safety training, and mechanisms for reporting toxic workplace behavior or student safety concerns. The goal is to make school safety consistent and sustainable across an entire district without placing an additional burden on administrators.
Temming’s role as CEO centers on keeping that vision alive across the organization. He coordinates R&D, client services, and product teams to ensure the company stays current with evolving legislation and best practices. A dedicated team monitors new safety laws and guidelines, breaking them into practical components that the software can automate. This approach helps districts meet both the letter and the intent of regulations while reducing manual work.
Customer support is a core part of the PublicSchoolWORKS model. Temming remembers vendors who would drop off software and leave administrators to figure it out on their own. Because school leaders rarely have time to learn unfamiliar systems, PublicSchoolWORKS’ Client Services team personally guides districts through setup, customization, and rollout. That hands-on assistance helps ensure adoption and long-term effectiveness.
One example comes from a pilot with Wayzata Public Schools. District nurses and administrators tried the Student Accident Management System to replace a manual, paper-based incident reporting process. Previously, staff often had to work on weekends to clear backlogs, and similar incidents could go unnoticed, preventing the development of effective prevention plans. The online system centralized incident records, streamlined reporting and investigations, and highlighted recurring hazards so prevention efforts could be targeted. As a result, the district saved time and money, improved tracking, and reduced repeated incidents, deciding to continue using the system.
Temming emphasizes that the ultimate mission is to enable staff and students to focus on instruction and learning with greater peace of mind. Classroom safety affects attendance, teacher focus, student engagement, and ultimately academic outcomes. By providing tools for prevention, reporting, training, and community reporting, PublicSchoolWORKS helps districts create safer learning environments that support both educators and students.
Implementation can seem daunting at first. Rolling out new training modules, changing procedures for accident reporting, or introducing technology-based workflows can feel cumbersome to already busy administrators. Temming addresses this resistance by meeting district leaders where they are: demonstrating systems in person, simplifying setup, and showing clear, measurable benefits. He describes one principal who initially resisted technology but, after a personal demonstration and a short trial, told him she could not imagine functioning without the system.
That kind of feedback reinforces the company’s approach: make safety programs effective, easy to adopt, and sustainable year after year. By combining automated delivery of best practices with personalized client support, PublicSchoolWORKS reduces the administrative burden of safety and compliance so districts can focus on education.
About the Author
Kenna McHugh is a staff writer at The Learning Counsel. Her work includes writing curriculum for K–12 programs, covering education technology, and assisting students through tutoring and instructional development.