School leaders increasingly tell me that it is “hard to cut through the noise” — a reference to school security vendor marketing sales pitches, materials and spin.

Recently, it has even become difficult to cut through the noise of school safety presenters’ organizational titles and affiliations.

Many school administrators and school safety professionals pondering whether to attend a school safety conference, workshop or webinar look at the topic and then look to see who is presenting the session. If the speaker is not a familiar name, they typically look at their title and organizational affiliation, and if still interested they then pivot to the speaker’s biography.

The changing faces — or at least two faces — of some school safety vendors and presenters

Over the past six months to a year, I have watched with interest as school security vendor-affiliated presenters seem to be tweaking their titles on conference, webinar and other agendas to mask or otherwise downplay their employment or affiliation with a vendor.

A few examples I have seen include:

• Former educators now employed by security vendors who are using their former job titles without mentioning their current vendor job title and vendor affiliation
• Former educators now employed by security vendors adding “Ret.” (retired) after their old education job titles without mentioning their current job title and vendor affiliation
• Presenters employed by vendors using old job titles from positions they have not held for years
• Presenters completely dropping their current vendor job titles and using bio info from their past employment
• School district employees using their school district job titles and positions, but speaking at conferences sponsored or otherwise hosted by vendors who are leading the session to make veiled promotions of their products or services by leveraging the credibility of the school district employees

Sometimes, these masked and misleading labels are humorous to “those who know.” It is particularly odd for people using the “Ret.” (retired) label at the end of their title when it is likely they never actually retired from the organization from which they are using their old job titles. Some may have never even retired at all.

So why do school safety presenters mask their current vendor job titles and use their old job titles from when they were in school districts? To try to give themselves more credibility in the eyes of their presentation attendees and/or their sales targets (educators) by stating or implying, “I’m one of you” or “I was one of you.”

While it may very well be true that they were “one of you,” they often are not “one of you” now. They’re employees or agents of school safety vendors. Apparently some are not very proud of it, unless of course they’re speaking an audience of other security vendors where they are then happy to reclaim their current title and affiliation.

Credible and ethical school safety presenters openly and consistently provide their current job title and organizational affiliation, and then share the various lens’ they look through (which includes previous employment) to set the stage for presentation attendees.

School leaders need to do their due diligence and be educated consumers

As school leaders, you may have been skeptical of vendor salespersons in the past.  It is normal and appropriate to be skeptical of marketing pitches and claims. Most of us expect some level of sales spin, but it is getting increasingly hard for the well-intended educator to see who the real wizard is that is behind the curtain pushing the “smoke and mirrors” buttons.

But when we reach a point that we have to look twice and start a Google search to determine whether the presenter before us has other hidden job titles and affiliations before they even open their mouth to present a session, it says a lot about the current state of the school security field.

Those statements — or lack of statements via masked and misleading titles — in some cases are rather sad, in fact.

If you can’t trust the school security presenter in front of you to be fully transparent with their current job title and organizational affiliation, how can you trust anything else they tell you?

There are many highly qualified, competent and knowledgable school safety presenters. But the burden increasingly rests with the consumer – the school leader or school safety professional – to do their due diligence and be educated consumers and critical thinkers.

Dr. Kenneth S. Trump is President of National School Safety and Security Services  

National School Safety and Security Services

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