As California legislation and technology continue to evolve, school administrators must contemplate the precise mix of equipment, training, policies, and procedures to keep students and staff safe.

The first step to selecting and implementing a modern school security solution is for California school administrators to assess the gaps in current monitoring procedures.

One should begin to ask, “Can our school’s monitoring practice accurately identify students in need?”

Yesterday’s narrow approach with lockdowns and drills has prompted a present-day strategy in leveraging technological advances in school safety that help school admins:

• Identify the variations within their ecosystem of learning and behavior.
• Evaluate how effective/ineffective their school security plan has become and how those drills impact the overall confidence, fear, and behavioral responses.
• Learn what makes a powerful monitoring system and how to measure those results without an actual school security situation occurring.

As a school administrator, you’re tasked with these important school security roles in addition to onboarding your staff with any new methods. Fortunately, there is an all-in-one solution that enables both you and your staff to not only evolve with California school security laws and the demand for modernization but also stay one step ahead through social and behavioral prevention and intervention practices.

Modern School Security That Strengthens Your Current Safety Plan

Preventing breaches in security plans, in addition to mitigating active school security threats—without performing a total security plan overhaul—is an easily achievable goal for your school district.

What is the key to reaching such California school security solutions? Focus on the value of social-emotional learning while understanding your student’s overall wellbeing.

School administrators are increasingly aware of the benefits of digital monitoring. However, many are not privy to the accuracy and effectiveness that occurs when their security plan is upgraded to help pinpoint students’ learning and behavior needs.

Understanding How to Modernize Your School Security Technology

The first step includes the implementation of an all-in-one digital monitoring solution that helps identify risks that would have gone unnoticed and doesn’t leave your staff—or emergency personnel—in the dark.

Smart ID Card and Visitor Management technologies benefit your entire school district and provide your staff with the tools to:

• Connect with social-emotional issues.
• Gain real-time knowledge of school population/visitors.
• Measure results.

Smart Card Readers and IDs: An Upgrade That California School Security Can’t Afford to Go Without

Imagine building your students’ accountability while shaping an atmosphere in which each of your pupils can focus on academics, eliminate distractions, and increase overall classroom productivity within your entire school district.

As a school administrator, you have the challenging task of overseeing the continuity of staff and parent connections. When you incorporate smart card readers within your student and staff management strategy, all stakeholders benefit and have an accelerated opportunity to work together.

Recent research has revealed how school districts have experienced a 33% increase in attendance in a short amount of time, as a consequence of implementing smart card readers.

Gain Real-time Data: Know Who’s At Risk

Smart card readers optimize data-driven decisions and provide daily reports to leverage early intervention and quickly identify at-risk students.

Gain Stability and Positive Community Awareness

The opportunity to be recognized as a safe and innovative school occurs by building community trust and driving attendance and registration rates.

As a result, you are empowering your school—and district—to foster staff and parent awareness of student behavior and the right solution for students on an individual basis.

Taking a Step Beyond the California AB 3205: Digitally Monitor Your Locked Doors

Alongside secure door access, smart card readers enable:

• Data review by Administrators in real-time
• Student population insights

An extended benefit of targeting an all-in-one smart card reader solution includes remote software monitoring and automatic upgrades, which ensures that your school always has the latest software updates.

Modern Prevention and Intervention: An Eagle-Eye Approach to Behavior Management

Ahead of current and upcoming California Assembly Bill amendments, multiple California school districts have already begun to invest in modernization projects and digital monitoring solutions for prevention and intervention that exceeds the use of armed guards, locked doors, and cameras.

What has encouraged these California school districts to take a sharp look at their monitoring practices, concerning the social, emotional, and mental wellbeing of their students?

According to the CDC’s nationwide Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS):

• Nearly 9% of high school students had been in a physical fight on school property one or more times during the twelve months before the survey.
• Approximately 6% of students had been threatened or injured with a weapon (for example, a gun, knife, or club) on school property one or more times during the twelve months before the survey.
• About 7% of students had been absent at least one day during the thirty days before the survey because they felt they would be unsafe at school or on their way to or from school.

“No one factor in isolation causes school violence,” the CDC reports. “Preventing school violence requires addressing factors at all levels of the social ecology—the individual, relational, community, and societal levels.”

Additionally, numerous school psychologist reports explain how young people are not able to process their emotions or understand their mental illness, which can lead to extreme actions, such as self-harm, suicide, and violence to others.

How can your school help identify such at-risk students?

Identifying Risks That Would Otherwise Go Unnoticed

As a school administrator, you have the power to prevent and intervene in bullying and active shooting events with behavior monitoring solutions that provide real-time data, automated referrals, and reward systems to help reinforce good behavior.

Simple technology is not always simply understood, however.

The good news is that California school security technology can be actualized in easy-to-understand, real-time context through the ScholarChip’s ABE (Alternative Behavior Educator) solution, which is the highest level of prevention and intervention and stems from the technology’s ability to teach better behavior and monitor each student’s progress. Administrators and teachers receive powerful data-driven reports that:

• Quickly flag at-risk students.
• Help monitor and chronicle progress throughout the student’s school career.
• Supports decision-making tasks.
• Incorporates the complete spectrum of behavior and integrates student rewards, interventions, and tracking with PowerSchool®.

As a school administrator, the Alternative Behavior Educator helps you meet your core objective of efficiency by eliminating administrative tasks through automating referrals from students that exhibit negative behavior or from truancy, as examples.

Ultimately, the ABE helps youth receive support (prevention/intervention) before situations occur.

Boost Your Learning Environment: Optimize Your Visitor Management and Student’s Lockdown Procedures

Overall, it’s critical to recognize and understand the people, places, and things that make up your diverse K-12 ecosystem and learning environment.

Nationwide statistical data and results from studies conducted by school psychologists have illustrated how surprise lockdown procedures instill fear and panic, which is not conducive to a productive learning environment.

Students should be safe—and feel safe.

A profound benefit to the smart card reader technology includes a visitor management system. The best visitor management system uses:

• Automated driver’s license scanning
• Comprehensive sex offender information
• Up-to-date and accurate data

Moreover, a solid visitor management system will seamlessly integrate with your SIS, so visitors are connected to student data, which makes managing and processing visitors easy and efficient.

This year and beyond, you can help your California school security plan leverage the modern monitoring systems that take California safety legislation into account and complement your exact lockdown procedures, while cultivating a positive learning ecosystem.

A Modern California School Security Plan = A Confident Ecosystem

While numerous gun violence and school safety bills remain a topic for debate, it is important to note that all the California school security modernization bills—and funding opportunities—are consistently expanding and being passed without much opposition. Therefore, the ease of integration and all-in-one solutions for California school security is one that you can count on for years to come.

As the focus turns to a more modernized, positive approach of prevention and intervention, school security threats and violence will continue to decline through the efforts of digital monitoring systems that enable your staff training and security plans to work effectively.

ScholarChip’s overall technologies in school safety systems converge and integrate all of your California school security needs and evolve with new legislations and technology advancements—one scalable approach for the best results.

Are you ready to take charge of your school’s environment, security, population, performance, and staff productivity? Schedule a 1-on-1 walkthrough with one of our specialists today!