In cooperation with the Illinois Principal’s Association and the Education Leaders Network, Safe Havens International has released another free webinar titled Potentially Dangerous Lockdown Concepts.  There has been a great deal of discussion about school lockdown procedures in recent years. 

Safe Havens Video has produced a number of Ask Safe Havens video podcasts as free resources to help improve school lockdown procedures.  We have also posted a number of blogs, written articles and columns on the topic for other publications and of course, have been teaching advanced lockdown concepts at conferences around the nation on a regular basis.  We hope this information will help you improve the lockdown procedures and their implementation.

Safe Havens analysts have been rather busy keynoting dozens of school safety conferences around the nation. Our analysts have keynoted conferences on a variety of topics including school security conferences for architects, engineers, and school planners. This week was truly a great experience for me. I felt truly honored to present a keynote and two breakout sessions for the Kentucky Center for School Safety on Monday. They had a great turnout with a number of very relevant sessions and highly regarded speakers to provide Kentucky educators and law enforcement officers with current information on school security.

Yesterday, I keynoted for the first time at Texas Tech University in Lubbock where we had a very diverse group of architects, engineers, school administrators, and law enforcement officials. The conference was put together by Parkhill, Smith & Cooper, a large and highly respected firm of architects and engineers that build schools across the nation as well as in Europe, Asia and the Pacific Rim. 

This is the fourth conference focused on school security design issues I have keynoted this year and I have another keynote for the CEFPI conference the Monday after next in North Carolina. Discussing how to incorporate security and emergency preparedness strategies into 21st century design schools and other challenging but productive topics made for a great day.

I have been in a different city almost every day for the past seven days; the great people I have been privileged to meet make the constant travel more than worthwhile. I still have not had a single day off since Christmas day and it can be tough for all of our staff to keep up with our travel schedules. The amazing people you meet along the way make it all worthwhile. It is a constant inspiration to me to meet so many bright, dedicated and highly motivated advocates for school safety whether I am presenting in Florida, Connecticut, New York, Minnesota, Indiana, Kentucky, or Texas.

Safe Havens International has been selected to perform several dozen school security assessments impacting more than 400 hundred public, parochial and independent schools in more than two dozen states this year.  Our analysts have helped conduct school security assessments for more than 5,000 K-12 school facilities over the years and feel honored to be selected for this latest project in Farmington, New Mexico.  With requests coming in to help conduct school security assessments for schools across the nation as well as in the Middle East, our analysts are working seven days a week to assist school and public safety officials.

Our approach of evaluating school safety, security, climate, culture and emergency preparedness with a comprehensive approach affords a much broader depth than assessments focused solely on security technologies and policies.  The revenues raised by our for fee projects help us provide a wide variety of free school security, safety and emergency preparedness resources.  Safe Havens now has more than 30 free school safety training videos on our website along with a free e-book, free webinars, topical papers, checklists and other school security resources.

We consider it an honor every time we are selected for these types of projects.  The fact that Safe Havens has an award rate above 80% for bids we submit reaffirms the value that our dedicated personnel bring to these projects.  We look forward to conducting this school security assessment.