School Security Assessment Projects Nearing Completion
School security assessment projects have been keeping our analysts incredibly busy for the past two years. Our dedicated team of 52 analysts managed to help conduct school safety, security, climate, culture and emergency preparedness assessments for more than 1,000 private, charter, faith-based and independent schools and one statewide school security assessment project in only twenty four months. As we wrap up assessment projects for clients as diverse as the Washington D.C. Public School System, Ketchikan, Alaska Public Schools, Richmond, Virginia Public School System, Bend-LaPine, Oregon Public Schools, Leander, Texas Independent School District and a number of the nation’s finest independent schools. Our analysts finally have the opportunity to begin several large projects that had to be placed on the back burner. Though we are finalists for projects involving nearly two hundred schools, the number of requests for school security assessment projects is finally settling down.
During the past two years, the 52 subject matter experts from Safe Havens International have conducted school security assessments for more than 1,000 K12 schools. During this time, SHI analysts also assisted with a statewide school security assessment for the Maine Department of Education, published a new book Staying Alive – How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters, produced more than two dozen new school safety training videos, and have helped author a number of web courses including the IS360 Active Shooter course for the 2013 White House School Safety Initiative.
Requests for Other School Safety Services Increasing
We are still continuing to see a steady increase in the number of requests for conference keynotes, other types of consulting projects, training programs and requests relating to expert witness services. Our analysts will soon be able to resume work on a number of school safety training videos and web courses as well as to increase the number of free school safety resources for our website. Thanks to the efforts of Morgan Billinger, we are also finally able to release a monthly newsletter in addition to our periodic release of The Safety Net.
Safe Havens has Grown and Improved
The massive surge in requests for school security assessments forced us to further expand not only the number of analysts, but to develop a highly robust web-based school safety assessment tool. We were blessed to have the generous assistance of Human Technologies in this effort. The assessment tool we developed with their assistance makes it much easier for us to develop and tabulate the data our comprehensive school safety assessment process generates.
I am humbled by the number of requests for services that we have received and indebted to our amazing team of subject matter experts. I am amazed that we have grown into what is now the world’s largest school safety center. The contributions our analysts have made to the field of school safety during the past two years are beyond anything I could have envisioned. I am eager to see the contributions our much expanded school safety team will produce in the next two years.