The Connecticut State Police may be releasing the first in a series of reports from their investigation of the deadly attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School last December.  At this point, there are indications that a brief summary report will be released to the general public, but the full report may not be released at this time.  Hopefully, this report and future report information will be released by the Connecticut State Police when it is appropriate.  This should help put to rest much of the conspiracy theories and wild speculation that has been so prevalent in this case.  While some of these harmful activities will no doubt continue, we hope that there will be a decrease in these types of insensitive speculation that must be painful for families who have lost loved ones in the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary. 

Just as it must be very painful for survivors of the holocaust to listen to gibberish from holocaust deniers, it must be quite painful for family members who lost loved ones, survivors of the terrible attack, and residents of this peaceful community to bear the burden of those who claim the event never happened or who attempt to profit from the event by presenting on “what really happened at Sandy Hook” before the facts of the case are made public – even though they had no direct role.

Having reporters approach your house with a microphone concealed in a bouquet of flowers to try to trick you into a surprise interview must be a painful experience for a parent who has lost a child in such a brutal manner.  School security consultants rushing to Newtown to capitalize on the event by doing media interviews has also caused distress.  We, as well as many educators and public safety officials in Connecticut, found this practice to be quite disturbing.   As neither the school district nor public safety officials summoned them to the community, people were stunned at this unscrupulous and opportunistic behavior.  One official likened one of these folks to a hyena coming in to feed off the dead.  

Sadly, there is no shortage of individuals who are so focused on making money.  They either do not care or perhaps do not realize what damage they can cause with these callous marketing approaches.   Anyone who is more concerned about getting on the news more than they care about the emotional well-being of the survivors is not student and school-centered.  As with numerous past tragedies, these types of individuals often then try to create an implied narrative that they were called to the scene as responders.  These sad events show just how money obsessed some people can be.   

The Connecticut State Police, local and federal law enforcement officers working this investigation have been under what must be intense pressure while trying to conduct a thorough investigation in a sensitive and responsible manner.   Though there will certainly be unanswered questions, after this report and any subsequent reports, we are hopeful that a more meaningful dialogue about school security can commence as we learn more reliable and accurate information.

The Maine Legislature has directed the Maine Department of Education to examine school security. Safe Havens International feels honored to be selected to assist in the school security assessment project after careful vetting by the Maine Department of Education.  The Safe Havens International team working on this project also been trusted to work on the 2013 White House School Safety Initiative and has completed more than forty school security assessment projects this year.  Safe Havens analysts have also been asked to conduct school security assessments in Nigeria and Kenya as well as in more than 20 states in the past nine months.

Safe Havens analysts will collaborate with a multidisciplinary team of education, architecture, homeland security, and public safety officials to help evaluate climate, culture, and emergency preparedness of Maine schools.  Safe Havens analysts have previously assisted with five statewide school security assessment projects.  Safe Havens is the only organization in the nation to have completed more than one state-level school security assessment process.

Like every school security assessment project, each state government school security assessment project has been a learning experience for us.  Working with state department of education, homeland security, and law enforcement officials on such large-scale school security assessment projects has been incredibly insightful to us all.

The selection of Safe Havens International to assist the Maine Department of Education for this impactful school security assessment project speaks volumes of the reputation our analysts have earned.  I am personally grateful to our dedicated team of school security experts.  I am continually inspired by their efforts to make schools safer and more productive places of learning.

During a very large school security assessment project, we had a series of meetings with a number of public safety agency representatives, education leaders, and representatives of teachers and other categories of school employees to obtain feedback.  One extremely important finding that arose is consistent with what we have heard in many different school security assessments in most regions of the country.  School superintendents, building administrators, teachers, and a variety of public safety officials reported that they have experienced considerable confusion because educators are constantly being told conflicting things by different school security experts and different public safety officials.

One superintendent was concerned that he had repeatedly been told to change lockdown procedures as local police attended different seminars hearing different information from different speakers.  He reported that it was extremely challenging to change lockdown protocols five or six times in a period of one or two years.  If we put ourselves in the shoes of a school superintendent, we can understand how difficult this is.  For example, a school superintendent who complies with the instructions to make these changes may have to:

1. Spend time revising their plans five times in two years.
2. Spend money reprinting 1,800 emergency plans for teachers.
3. Dedicate time to issue the 1,800 plan components to the teachers.
4. Dedicate precious and extremely limited staff time to re-train 1,800 teachers.
5. Experience a loss of confidence of teachers who cannot understand why their leaders and public safety officials cannot make up their minds about life and death matters.

This makes it even more important that school safety, security, and emergency preparedness concepts be carefully vetted before they are implemented.   Our experience has been that these types of situations can often be avoided by:

1. Asking if the suggested approach has been properly evaluated to provide evidence that it will actually work.
2. Carefully vetting new procedures with fire service, emergency management, and law enforcement officials rather than with law enforcement officials alone.
3. Utilization of the problem seeking approach where planning teams conduct a group activity where they use a scenario where the concept has failed as a starting point and the group has to figure out why this could occur.
4. Carefully testing new concepts in a manner that is reflective of how they will actually operate.

Taking the time to vet new school safety concepts is worth the time and energy required.  Thoughtful vetting using these approaches up front can prevent considerable difficulty in the future.

This week, the Indiana School Safety Specialist’s Academy is training more than 500 new School Safety Specialists.  Graduates of the two day live training will also have to complete two additional days of web-based training and a third day of live training this spring before they are certified.  Since its founding in 1999, the Academy has certified more than 2,000 School Safety Specialists and has hosted guest students from a dozen states.  This week’s Basic School Safety Specialists Academy class was the largest in the School Safety Specialists Academies’ long and impressive history.  I have keynoted the School Safety Specialists Academy every year for more than a decade and have always found the audiences to be among the most highly informed conference attendees.  It is a pleasure and an honor to be allowed to present at the Academy again today.

The Indiana School Safety Specialists Academy goes to considerable lengths to select excellent presenters not only nationally, but within the state of Indiana.  Whether the presenter is a practitioner from Indiana or a national level presenter, The Academy staff carefully scrutinizes speaker evaluations to determine which speakers will be allowed to present in future sessions.  Renowned speakers like Dr. Bernie James and Lt. Col. Dave Grossman are also invited back year after year because they have such strong evaluations.  Whether presenting for the Basic Academy or for the advanced sessions, I have always felt challenged because I know attendees want new and proven information on school safety.  It was truly a pleasure to once again have the opportunity to present for this impressive program.    

I delivered a one-hour presentation to summarize our report of findings for the Flemington-Raritan School Board in Flemington, New Jersey last night.  The school security assessments were conducted in September, and the written strategic report of findings and school security assessment site reports for each school in the district were delivered in October.

School security assessments afford us an opportunity to learn from each client and this project was no exception.  The district’s superintendent developed a superb rubric to allow his board to track the district’s progress in implementing the numerous opportunities for improvement identified in the report.  He also assured the board that the district’s leadership team would work to maintain the numerous positive aspects identified in the school security assessment report.  The level of student supervision, connectivity between students and staff, and a close collaboration between the district’s facilities department and building principals were all very impressive.

While on site to deliver the report of findings, I conducted two training sessions for front office staff and building administrators.  It was an absolute pleasure to work with this high-quality, student-centered school district.