Excerpt

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School officials today are under increased scrutiny when it comes to school safety. As tragic mass shootings continue to be all-too-common, school superintendents must prepare for and prevent the unthinkable.

Many stakeholders rightfully expect that the schools in their communities are safe and that students, teachers, and staff are protected. School employees, students, elected officials, and the general public all understand the need for safety and are looking to school superintendents to take the lead.

Before diving into solutions and policies, it’s important that as a school superintendent, you follow a clearly identified process for creating a school safety plan. From the sequence of steps required to the partners involved in its creation, the school safety plan provides a clear roadmap for protecting your schools and providing a detailed, step-by-step guide that can be shared with all interested parties.

In this eGuide, we’ll take you through the reasons for creating a plan, the components, and the process.

Why A School Safety Plan is Necessary

Beyond the obvious need to provide preventative measures to combat school threats, the plan is necessary for many reasons including the correlation of safety with academic success, state and federal requirements and guidance. In addition, many professional education-related agencies have weighed in on the need and importance.

Perceptions of Safety Influence Academic Performance and Attendance

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that 5.6 percent of high schoolers didn’t go to school because they did not feel safe. Bullying, often a precursor to violent acts, is one of the most-cited safety issues, with the CDC showing that 45 percent of middle school students and 20.2 percent of high school students reported being bullied.

Learning outcomes are directly correlated to school safety. A 2016 report showed that third-graders who reported being victimized scored lower in mathematics, reading and science. Furthermore, a longitudinal study by the Research Alliance for New York City Schools found that increases in school safety were closely correlated with improved academic performance.

State-Level Mandates Increasing

In early 2019, the Education Commission of the States released a comprehensive report on state mandates and requirements regarding school safety. The study assessed school safety, including whether the following five components are required by law or regulation, who is responsible for completing them, if law enforcement is involved and the frequency at which they are reviewed and updated:

• School safety plans
• School safety audits
• School safety drills
• School resource officers
• Weapons in schools policies and guidelines

Using those guidelines, the report had several important findings, including:

• At least 43 states require a school safety plan. Twenty-nine of those states require law enforcement participation in planning.
• At least 13 states require school safety audits, with 5 requiring law enforcement involvement.
• At least 42 states require drills by law or regulation, though others may require drills through other rules.
• At least 29 states have laws or regulations requiring school resource officers while others are required via other rules. Twenty-eight states require training, either similar to law enforcement officers or specifically for the school role.
• At least 30 states allow school security personnel to carry weapons, eight allow school employees to carry and eleven allow concealed-carry permit holders to possess weapons in schools.

Not sure about local standings? Access your state’s policies regarding school safety or track pending legislation.

Federal Commission Makes Overarching School Safety Recommendations

In 2018, the Federal Commission on School Safety released its final report. The commission focused on three broad categories:

1. Preventing school violence
2. Protecting students and school staff
3. Responding to and recovering from attacks

Here are some of the most salient areas of the commission’s report regarding the creation of your school safety plan:

• Threat assessment. Proactive programs and policies that identify safety threats and address them early can prevent tragedy. Students, employees and others need to understand how and why to report suspicious or concerning behavior. Campaigns such as “If you see something, say something” messaging are important, but there are opportunities to expand this work.
• School discipline. In order for classrooms to be effective learning spaces, teachers need to be able to identify and address disorderly or disruptive behavior. Schools also should consider programs that address and try to correct these behaviors, such as automated behavioral remediation tools.
• Training. School safety training is an important component of school safety plans and should be a required part of employee development and education.
• Building and campus security. The report acknowledges that every school is different and will require a solution that depends on site, location, personnel and resources. It encourages using risk assessments to pinpoint vulnerabilities and site-specific strategies. The report also notes that any safety plan needs to be a layered approach across three areas: entry points, the building envelope and the classroom.
• Active shooter preparedness. Sadly, it is a reality today that schools need to prepare for an active shooter scenario, including training and planning.

The report notes that there are many state and federal resources available to help with school safety planning. Among the notable resources are:

A guide published by the Secret Service on violence prevention planning using a threat assessment model. The guide includes a step-by-step model that includes:

• Building a multidisciplinary threat assessment team.
• Defining concerning behaviors.
• Creating a centralized reporting mechanism.
• Determining the threshold for law enforcement intervention.
• Establishing assessment procedures.
• Developing risk management options.
• Creating safe school climates.
• Training for stakeholders.

A Department of Homeland Security guide to preventing and protecting against gun violence that takes a four-pronged approach to prevention and protection:

• Connect. Building community relationships, especially with law enforcement
• Plan. Prepare for a security event
• Train. Inform employees of the plan and conduct exercises often to test efficacy
• Report. Use the “if you see something…” approach to encourage reporting suspicious activity.

The Safe Schools / Healthy Students (SS/HS) Framework that fosters the development of safe and healthy learning spaces by focusing on mental health promotion and violence prevention. It includes detailed information on how to develop, implement, sustain and expand on a plan using the framework.

Professional organizations urging change

National organizations covering school counselors, psychologists, social workers, school resource officers and principals issued a joint statement recently recommending a framework for school safety. They stress that school safety, climate and learning are interrelated and should be addressed together in order to deliver a comprehensive school safety plan.

The consortium encourages the following best practices to address the three areas simultaneously:

• Build a multidisciplinary, collaborative approach that integrates instruction, school management and support services (behavioral, mental health and social services).
• Foster school-community collaboration with a multi-tiered support system that covers interventions, prevention and wellness.
• Provide more access to school-based mental health services.
• Integrate climate and safety work through crisis prevention, preparedness, response and recovery efforts.
• Balance security measures against those that will work against improving school climate, establishing trust and encouraging preventative reporting.
• Deliver appropriate school discipline that reinforces positive behaviors, aligns with school safety objectives and are clear, consistent and equitable.
• Create services that are needed, appropriate and culturally sensitive.

Mandates, resources, and recommendations from the professional organizations, state and federal jurisdictions, and researchers show that school safety is of primary importance.

Building a School Safety Plan

There are many components, stakeholders and approaches to a school safety plan. While there is no right way to build a plan, it’s important to have the right framework and context when deciding on the right approach for your school district.

Establishing Guiding Principles

The U.S. Department of Education has created the Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools (REMS) Technical Assistance Center to assist school systems with strategy and execution of safety plans. The center offers webinars, online courses and a community of practice to assist school leaders.

REMS suggests a set of six principles to frame the planning. Here’s a closer look.

1. Support from leadership

The commitment to creating a school safety plan is significant. There are many resources necessary – personnel, budget and time. This means providing staff involved with the projects the flexibility and bandwidth to participate fully.

Senior leadership needs to be fully supportive, with a clear understanding of the importance, scope and commitments required to develop and sustain a plan. Leadership needs to be visible and vocal in their support.

Senior leadership also can provide valuable insights, perspective and contributions to the plan itself. For example, senior officials, whether school employees or elected officials, can provide context about district-wide objectives and goals, union contracts, state and local laws and regulations, and legal exposure.

Involving them at the right level and providing regular communication and updates is an important part of the leader’s project management. Leaders who take an active role are going to demonstrate their commitment to and the importance of the work. They can also play a role in communicating broadly to key constituents about the plan’s objectives, components and needs.

2. Continuous assessments at the school level

A cookie-cutter approach is a wrong approach. Each school structure, grounds and location are unique. That’s why a customized, school-specific approach is critical.

The best school safety plans include a process for the continuous assessment, review and revision of each schools’ needs and solutions. The number of possible assessments available is extensive and could include risk, culture and climate, behavioral threats and capacity evaluations. Your team is going to need access to blueprints, floor plans, traffic flows, student behavioral patterns, existing solutions and community landscape, demographics and crime rates to create each school plan.

3. Consideration of broad scope of threats and potential incidents

You should use an all-hazards approach that identifies the potential threats, their likelihood and possible solutions. Too often, the emphasis is on the most common threats, such as fires or weather incidents, and active shooter situations.

That’s too narrow an approach. Instead, a broad spectrum of threats should be considered, including natural disasters, technological hazards (cyber attacks, hazardous materials or infrastructure failures), biological hazards (water contamination, toxic materials or contaminated food) and adversarial hazards (active shooter, missing student or demonstration).

In Keeping Students Safe Every Day, authors Amanda and Amy Klinger argue that emergency operations plans need to be careful not to fall victim to “normalcy bias,” by focusing only on the more likely safety threats both in general and in the moment. Sadly, safety incidents can happen anywhere, to any type of school and in any community. That means considering types of threats that previously may have seemed unlikely, such as mail handling and suspicious packages.

4. Inclusive planning that considers the entire school community

Planning teams need to recognize the needs of all the stakeholders in a school and its community, including:

• Students
• Teachers
• Other staff
• Visitors
• Children and adults with physical, emotional and developmental disabilities
• Children and adults with functional and accessibility needs, such as communication or transportation needs
• Those from diverse cultural, religious, race and ethnicity backgrounds
• People with no or limited English proficiency.

Consider, for example, those who cannot physically complete a command to duck for cover or may not see or hear cues to evacuate a space. Emergency preparedness means being sensitive and responsive to the varied demands and needs of those within a school community.

For planners, this may mean becoming aware of confidential information about students and others, or not being allowed to access this information. Privacy rights need to be protected during the planning process.

5. Consideration of all settings and times

School safety doesn’t just apply to classroom time. Your safety plan needs to incorporate all aspects of the school day: arrival and departure, recess, field trips, after-school activities and special events.

6. A collaborative process

School safety plans should not be mandates. Instead, they should be inclusive and collaborative. Listening to and valuing multiple perspectives is a way to build buy-in and spread messages among unique community groups.

Using Best Practices

When building your school safety plan, consider the following best-practice principles:

• Training. You need to factor in training at all levels – instructional staff, support staff, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, crossing guards, counselors and custodians – on crime prevention, school security procedures, threat assessment and violence prevention.
• Evaluation and improvements. You should consider school safety planning a practice of continuous improvement, with regularly scheduled assessments and reviews.
• Relationships with public safety agencies. To be successful, your plan needs the active involvement of and support from public safety agencies, including law enforcement, fire safety, emergency medical providers, emergency management providers and support agencies.
• Crisis communication planning. During and after a crisis, you need to use a clearly defined protocol for communicating, including who can speak for the district and how such communication will be coordinated with other government and public safety officials.

The Planning and Funding Processes

With a clear understanding of the needs, priorities and principles of your planning process, it’s time to start building the plan. Here are five key phases.

1. Build the team

Your planning team should include district leadership including curriculum, planning, principals and other officials. In addition, the following should be considered for the team:

• School stakeholders
  • Teachers
  • Other school staff
  • Students
  • Parents
• Community partners
  • First responders
  • Emergency managers
  • Public health and mental health providers

During this phase, you want to form a common framework for addressing the work, define roles, assign responsibilities, and set a regular meeting schedule.

2. Identify threats and hazards at the school level

As discussed above, a wide-spectrum approach to threat identification is a prudent approach. In-person site assessments are completed and complemented by assessments of culture, climate and capacity. After these risks have been identified, they need to be prioritized.

3. Determine goals and identify courses of action

This is an important narrative step. It’s where the plan begins to take clearer shape. For each identified and prioritized threat, the plan should include:

• Depict the scenario
• Identify the time available to respond
• Identify the decision points and who will need to make the decisions
• Recommend courses of action
• Assess compliance with applicable laws and regulations

4. Complete the plan

The writing process, reviews, edits and discussions are likely to go through multiple iterations. Approval processes are likely to involve presentations, discussions and sessions with key stakeholders and decision-makers.

Once approved, there is the important task of sharing the plan broadly with various constituencies. It’s important in this phase to have relevant committee members present if possible. For example, parents and law enforcement officials who served on the planning team should be a part of presentations to parents.

5. Implement the plan

Implementation is actually the beginning, not the end, of a process. Implementation involves education, training, purchasing and installation of new technology and exercises or drills. At each step, there should be evaluation, review and revision as needed.