Strategic School Safety Leadership: New Independent Guide for School Leaders During Challenging Times
The horrific elementary school shooting in Bend, Oregon, is another heartbreaking reminder of the stakes involved in protecting our schools. Our thoughts are with the victims, their families, educators, and the entire school community. In the aftermath of school tragedies, superintendents, principals, school boards, and safety officials face extraordinary pressures to provide answers, reassure families, […]
Strategic School Safety Leadership and Communications: You Cannot Have One Without the Other
New independent guide examines why communicating school safety is not simply a public relations function, but a fundamental responsibility of effective school leadership. School leaders can make sound safety decisions, follow established emergency procedures, and manage a difficult incident effectively, yet still lose the confidence of parents, employees, and their communities because of poor communications. […]
School Safety Is Leadership: Keeping Safety at the Forefront Every Day
Editor’s introduction: School safety leadership is an ongoing responsibility, not a project administrators can complete and check off a list. In this guest article, Dr. Jim Hanna, Superintendent of Rossville Consolidated School District, shares a superintendent’s perspective on leadership, emergency preparedness, relationships with first responders, exercises, accountability, and maintaining school safety as a daily strategic […]
Strategic School Safety Leadership: Preparing for the “Unknown Unknowns”
School emergency plans are usually built around the knowns. Strategic school security leadership gets tested by the “unknown unknowns.” Schools appropriately plan and train for foreseeable emergencies: fires, severe weather, medical emergencies, threats, violence, evacuations, lockdowns, reunification, and other scenarios. But some of the most difficult situations confronting superintendents and school administrators do not fit […]
Correlation vs. Causation: A Critical Thinking Guide for School Leaders Evaluating School Security Effectiveness Claims
School leaders routinely apply evidence-based decision making in education. The same analytical thinking should guide decisions about panic buttons, weapons detection, other school security technologies, and school safety programs. Can School Security Technology Improve Attendance, School Climate, and Graduation Rates? School leaders are increasingly encountering school security effectiveness claims about school security technology. Some claims […]
Respect the Tactical Service. Evaluate the School Safety Advice and Tech Applicability.
Why School Safety Decisions Must Be Based on Evidence, Not Tactical Résumés In today’s school safety marketplace, it’s increasingly common for vendors to highlight founders’ or executives’ backgrounds in the military or tactical law enforcement. Military service and law enforcement service are honorable professions, and those experiences deserve respect. But when school districts are making […]
A School Safety Vacuum Is Forming—and Vendors Are Rushing to Fill It: The coming food fight over “credible” school safety guidance as existing school safety organizations quickly crumble
The school security field is in the middle of one of the most turbulent shake-ups in its history. Longstanding organizations are disappearing. Experienced professionals are losing jobs, crossing over to be the face for security vendors, or exiting the field. Private-equity and venture-capital money are reshaping organizations. Vendor lobbying influence is intensifying. And public-sector capacity […]
What 2025 Taught Us About School Safety—and Why 2026 Can’t Be Business as Usual
School Safety Year-End Review: 2025 (5 Key Takeaways) 1. The gap between policy and practice remained the #1 risk factorDistricts continued to invest heavily in plans, systems, and vendors—yet too many incidents exposed breakdowns in training, supervision, communications, and decision-making at the point of impact. 2. Technology noise grew louder than operational disciplineAI weapon detection, […]
The Lies We Tell Ourselves — and Our School Communities — About School Safety
There are two big lies we keep telling ourselves — and our school communities — about school safety. The first is: “School safety is our number one top priority.”The second is: “You can’t put a cost on school safety.” Both sound good. Both feel good. And both are false. The Budget Reality School safety is, […]
School safety is not a “plug and play” sport. It’s about fidelity of implementation.
School safety is not a plug and play sport. You can’t just plug in a new security product or piece of technology, walk away, and expect that things will run on autopilot. Why “it’s better than nothing” often isn’t really “better” Too often in recent years, I have heard school officials say, “Well, it’s better […]