A 62-year-old gunman pointed a .380 semi-automatic gun in a Tennessee Principal’s face yesterday. The School Resource Officer (SRO) drew her gun and shielded the Principal’s body with her own. The principal, Melanie Riden, was able to flee the area. The SRO, Sheriff’s Deputy Carolyn Gudger, lured the gunman into the empty high school cafeteria — a more contained […]
Category Archive: School Resource Officers (SROs)
Fear mongering article? America’s real school-safety problem
Good theory, perhaps, but clueless in understanding School Resource Officers (SROs), school security, and so-called “zero tolerance.” This is my take on America’s real school-safety problem, an article posted Sunday on salon.com. The article is mostly a Q&A with Aaron Kupchick, author of “Homeroom Security: School Discipline in an Age of Fear.” He spent two years researching “zero […]
School Safety Leader: Marie Waldrop
A school principal is often referred to as the “captain” of his or her ship. When a principal is new, sometimes you hear it said, “There is a new sheriff in town.” But rarely do you find the principal (new or a veteran administrator) actually is also really a deputy sheriff. Unless, of course, Marie Waldrop […]
Law Enforcement and Educators Partner to Sustain S.C. School Safety
Yesterday I shared how the South Carolina U.S. Attorney’s Office has taken a leadership role in promoting school safety annually for the past 19 years. Kevin McDonald, the Acting U.S. Attorney and First Assistant U.S. Attorney in that office, shares his perspective on the importance of federal, state, and local partnerships not only in putting together statewide training each […]
Justice Dept Takes on School Safety in South Carolina
When you think of the United States Attorney’s Office, you think of serious crimes, indictments, and big-time jail sentences. You certainly don’t think of school safety. Not so in South Carolina. For the past 19 years, the South Carolina U.S. Attorney’s Office has taken a strong leadership role in promoting safe schools, school violence prevention, and school crisis […]
What Does a Fireman Know About Being A School Board Member?
If the fireman is Reno Contipelli, he knows a lot about school boards. And he never stops learning about school safety and taking those lessons back to his school-community. Reno is a professional firefighter and dedicated 17-year school board member for Cuyahoga Heights Schools in Northeast Ohio. He also heads up the board’s school safety committee. Reno […]
School Safety Interview: Board Member Marianne Jasen, NSBA Chicago Convention
As a presenter at the annual National School Boards Association (NSBA) conventions, I have the great fortune of meeting many of our nation’s school board members, superintendents, and education support organizations. This year, at NSBA’s Chicago convention, we spoke a lot about the importance of keeping school safety on the front burner during tough financial times. A […]
Tying Educators’ Hands In School Safety Efforts
Chuck Hibbert is a national school safety consultant (including for my company) and 21-year-veteran school district administrator over school security and school police services for a 15,000 student district in Indiana. Chuck takes issue with ““Taking Safety Too Far: The Ill-Defined Role Police Play in Schools,” February 24th commentary article in Education Week by authors and civil rights advocates Johanna Wald […]
Anti-School Police Commentary Paints False School Safety Picture
In ““Taking Safety Too Far: The Ill-Defined Role Police Play in Schools,” a February 24th commentary article in Education Week, authors and civil rights advocates Johanna Wald and Lisa Thurau presented what I believe to be a very skewed misrepresentation of school resource officers (SROs), school police, and administrators. I responded with a letter to the editor […]
School Police Departments and SRO Programs: An Analysis
Three veteran school police and security administrators, in independent interviews this past week, each revealed three common threads of critical elements for successful school police and/or School Resource Officer (SRO) programs: Selecting the right officer: The officer must want to work in schools. There must be a “good fit” for the officer and the school. The […]