Safe Havens analysts have assisted state and federal government agencies develop numerous school crisis planning and school safety resources.  Safe Havens International was selected to help the South Dakota Department of Homeland Security develop new crisis planning templates for K12 schools in the state.  Four of our analysts assisted on this project.

I will be presenting a session on evidence-based approaches to school crisis planning for the department today in Pierre. I will then keynote the South Dakota School Superintendent’s annual conference in Pierre this afternoon.

Safe Havens analysts have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to present many times in South Dakota and feel honored to once again work to help make South Dakota Schools safer.

Many school districts and non-public schools are under pressure from parents to conduct school security audits before the coming school year. While this is understandable, conducting school security audits when school is not in session is significantly less effective and can result in increased exposure to civil liability.

Safe Havens analysts have assisted with various types of school security audits for more than 5,000 school facilities across the United States. We have consistently found that school security audits conducted when schools are vacant reveal far fewer safety, security and emergency concerns and do not represent an accurate assessment.

While there are instances where school security audits must be conducted during the summer months, the approach should be avoided when possible. While many people are focused on physical features of schools, numerous tragedies have shown that the effectiveness of school security, safety and emergency preparedness measures are heavily influenced by what staff and students do during the school day.

For example, numerous school districts have settled or lost major lawsuits after implementation of some of the most intensive physical security technologies failed to prevent shootings and other major incidents during the school day. Typically, these cases involve gaps in security that are created by human practices that cannot be detected when school is not in session. For example, one large school district settled a lawsuit that was filed after a student was shot and killed by another student who was dangerously mentally ill. During the litigation, it was revealed that the district had been awarded more than $40 million in federal grant money to improve school security and emergency preparedness. The district had invested heavily in school security technology but had not addressed the issues that led to the shooting. For example, student supervision at the school was a significant factor in the shooting as both students involved were out of class for approximately two hours while the killer attempted to locate and shoot the victim.

It is extremely common to see costly security technology improvements in schools fail because they have been made without adequately assessing how students, staff and visitors interact.

I had the pleasure of keynoting the Council for Educational Facilities Planners International (CEFPI) Safe Schools Symposium – Best Practices for Your School in Raleigh, North Carolina this week.  Architects, school planners, engineers and education leaders from as far away as Alaska attended the conference.  We had an excellent group of attendees and it was an absolute pleasure to get to interact with so many talented professionals from the various disciplines.  School safety is a major issue and incorporating school safety and security into new school construction as well as renovation projects is a critical aspect.  Many of the architects expressed concerns relating to school clients who are moving hastily to remove glass from their new school projects due to fear of gunmen.  While this approach may make people feel better in the conceptual phase, school safety experts generally agree that this can increase danger.  When we review the research on crime prevention through environmental design and listen to experienced school safety directors, it becomes apparent that this approach can have the opposite effect of increasing school safety challenges rather than reducing them.

This is the fifth school design conference I have keynoted this year and I have heard the same feedback at all five events.  School officials are very concerned about school safety and are asking architects to make changes to school plans.  Sometimes this will have a positive effect on school safety and in other cases, things may not go so well.  The strong reactions since the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School have made most people far more focused on school safety than in the past.

We urge our clients to be thoughtful and to evaluate the research when making school safety decisions.  It is very easy to create a harsh institutional climate while reducing the ability of students and staff to detect danger when our desire to create safe schools becomes out of balance with our actual levels of risk.