He is most free from danger, who, even when safe, is on his guard. Publilius Syrus (85 BC- 43BC) Latin Writer, 1st Century BC Ken Trump
Blog Archives
School Crisis Recovery: Caring for the Caretakers
Educators generally do a great job in preparing for the mental health recovery of students following a crisis. They typically do not prepare enough for their own recovery. In the past five years, I worked with educators after a high-profile school stabbing, a school shooting and student-shooter suicide, and a gang-related student killing in a community where safety concerns spilled over […]
Engaging Students in School Safety
Students in Miami-Dade County Schools are organizing school safety summits in the aftermath of a fatal stabbing at Coral Gables Senior High this past September. (Details at Miami Herald’s January 12th story, Miami-Dade students organize to end violence in schools) While I was working with an Indiana school district on an emergency planning assessment today, […]
Three Ways to Make Your School Safer Today
Many things we can do to make our schools safer require more time than money. Three ways to make your school safer today include: 1) Ask students about safety at their school. Where do they feel most safe? Least safe? Why? What would they do to make their schools more safe? 2) Identify comfort levels and […]
Parents Want to Know About School Safety
Most parents “don’t know what they don’t know” about school safety. And too often, no one is rushing to tell them. The safety of their child at school is the only thing more important to parents than their child’s academic achievement. We are doing many good things in our schools to keep kids safe. But too often, school leaders are […]
School Safety News: The Week in Review (Jan 4-8, 2010)
Highlights of school safety, security, and crisis incidents and issues around the nation for the week of January 4-8, 2010: Cocoa, FL: Student Arrested After Police Find AK-47 In Car A 17-year-old male high school student was arrested after police reportedly found an AK-47 assault rifle and two magazines with ammunition in a car parked […]
School Safety Requires a Mindset, Not Mechanical, Change
A school shooting or other high-profile violence incident occurs in a school-community. Within hours, parents and others call for more surveillance cameras, metal detectors, and other physical security equipment. Parents understandably want a “guarantee” that threats to school safety will not happen a second time at their school. Most educators realize, however, they cannot honestly provide such a guarantee. Yet it […]
The State of School Security Ten Years Post-Columbine
School Security Blog debuts this first week in January of 2010. We will quickly delve deeper together into the many facets of school safety, security, and emergency planning. But first we need to reflect on the state of school security. We can’t move forward without having a feel for where we have been and where we are today. So we begin with posts […]
School Security Blog: A New Community for Safe Schools
Parents will forgive educators if their test scores go down. They are much less forgiving if something happens to their child at school which could have been prevented. As a superintendent once said to me, “If I mess up with school safety, it will be my career-ender.” The good news is we can prevent school […]
Nuts and Bolts Fundamentals Missing in Many School Safety and Crisis Plans
Missing nuts-and-bolts fundamentals in school security and emergency planning come back to haunt us when a crisis or high-profile security incident occurs. We can prevent many situations with the proper training and time allocated to doing the leg work critical to meaningful school safety and crisis planning. Want to stump a school crisis team? You don’t need to ask complex questions. Instead: […]