I felt honored to be allowed to serve as the closing keynote for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction at their awesome Building the Heart of successful Schools Conference in Wisconsin Dells last Friday.  The department had an amazing line up of amazing speakers including Dr. William Steele and Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade.  This was my second keynote in Wisconsin in the past four weeks and I feel blessed to have been able to present there on a regular basis over the past decade. 

Wisconsin has been a very progressive state in terms of school safety and has licensed our school crisis planning templates for every K12 school in the state through the Wisconsin Homeland Security Council.   I had a well-attended breakout session on Pattern Matching and Recognition followed by an energized and passionate group for the closing keynote session. 

It has been a very busy week and a half with a school security assessment for an independent school, the first day of a school security assessment for a public school system in North Carolina, several interviews with the Today Show and last Friday’s conference in Wisconsin.  I am tired, but it is that good type of tired that comes from meaningful hard work.  If you truly love what you do, you will never work a day in your life.  I must say that I have been fortunate to love what I do throughout my adult life.

 As I have said many times, I feel truly blessed to be allowed to interact with so many dedicated educators, mental health professionals, public safety officials, architects and other advocates for the children each month. 

While the media may focus intently on mass casualty school shootings, the typical school weapons assault bears little resemblance to these catastrophic and tragic incidents.   And while it is important for us to work diligently to try to prevent and prepare for mass casualty school shootings, we must also work to address the far more common forms of school violence.  Leading school violence experts recognize that the majority of school weapons assaults do not involve fatalities and do not result in mass casualties.  In fact, the majority of school violence incidents involving weapons are carried out with edged weapons and blunt objects rather than with guns.  In fact, most of the school weapons attacks we have worked involve box cutters, razor blades, and relatively small knives.

Evaluating hundreds of these incidents reveals some noticeable and important patterns.  For example, we have noted that the most common denominator for school weapons assaults is the common schoolyard fight.  While the incidents are typically not mass casualty events reported in the national news, most school violence incidents involving weapons occur just before, during or immediately after a fight.  One means to reduce the chances that a school violence incident involving weapons will occur is to work to reduce the number of fights at schools and school events.  If twenty-five fights per year occur at a middle school, the chances that a school violence incident involving a gun, knife, or other weapon will occur increase.  If staff at the school can reduce the number of fights by 80%, the chances of weapons being used in a school violence incident decline markedly.

We feel that it is also very important to remember the negative effect of fights on school climate and culture.  Fights degrade the learning environment by causing distraction and tying up considerable staff time.  While no single strategy will eliminate the threat of school violence, the reduction of triggering behaviors such as fights is one effective part of a comprehensive approach to school violence prevention.

One of the most effective ways to improve school safety is to focus on effective student supervision.  Though a much less expensive approach than security cameras, improving student supervision can protect students from a wide array of hazards ranging from taunting to terrorism.  Student supervision is one of the most effective school safety strategies we have seen.  Whether the danger is from a tornado, gang activity among students or an active shooter, improvements in student supervision at school and on field trips can be a powerful preventive school safety tool and can dramatically speed up emergency protective actions such as lockdown, evacuation, severe weather sheltering or shelter in place for hazardous materials. 

Students who are not being effectively supervised are not only more vulnerable to victimization by others and involvement in accidents, they are also more difficult to move to safety rapidly.  Making an effort to develop and maintain effective student supervision is a powerful school safety strategy.