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 decisions about school security consultants and technologies—particularly high-stakes actions and tools that can trigger lockdowns, police responses, or major operational disruptions—the most important questions are not about tactical résumés.
They are about evidence, performance, and real-world fit in a K–12 school environment.
Schools Are Not Military or Law-Enforcement Settings
This distinction matters.
Schools are not military installations.
They are not tactical law-enforcement environments.
They are complex educational ecosystems shaped by:
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- Student behavior and development
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- Daily supervision and staffing realities
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- School culture and climate
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- Legal and policy constraints unique to education
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- Human decision-making under stress in child-oriented contexts
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- Communication with parents, students, and communities
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- The cumulative impact of trauma, false alarms, drills, and disruptions to instruction
These realities require a very different lens than only combat operations or tactical response work.
Where Experience Helps—and Where It Doesn’t in School Safety
Military and tactical law enforcement experience can bring valuable perspectives:
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- Discipline and mission focus
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- Operational structure
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- Risk awareness
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- Crisis response mindset
Those strengths should be acknowledged.
But those experiences do not, by themselves, answer the most critical questions school leaders must ask when evaluating safety consulting guidance or school security technology, including:
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- How accurate is the advice or tools in real school environments?
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- What are the documented limitations and blind spots?
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- How often does a technology generate false alerts or missed detections?
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- How does the recommended consulting action or tech integrate with daily school operations—not just emergencies?
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- What are the legal, liability, and standard-of-care implications?
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- How does it affect staff workload, student well-being, and instructional time?
These are not tactical biography questions.
They are performance and governance questions.
The Risk of Tactical Credential-Driven School Safety Decision Making
When tactical background marketing and branding overshadow evidence, districts risk drifting into tactical credential-based trust rather than evidence-based decision making.
That’s not just a procurement issue—it’s a risk-management issue.
In school safety, good intentions are not enough.
Impressive and stellar tactical résumés are not safeguards.
And technology must be evaluated on what it does, how it performs, and how it behaves under real conditions in schools.
Respect and Rigorous School Safety Policy and Practice Can Coexist
Honoring military and law-enforcement service and demanding rigorous evaluation are not mutually exclusive.
In fact, responsible leadership requires both.
School boards and administrators serve students, staff, and communities—not marketing narratives. Their responsibility is to ensure that school safety decisions are grounded in:
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- Transparent performance data
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- Clear understanding of system limitations
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- Independent validation where possible
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- Alignment with how schools actually function
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- Defensible decision-making processes
The Bottom Line
The standard for school safety decision-making should never be who built around the elite prior tactical titles or roles of those behind the school security consulting or security products.
It should always be how the school safety consulting guidance or product performs in child-oriented educational contexts, what risks they introduce, and whether they genuinely strengthen school safety without unintended consequences.
Respect the service.
Evaluate the applicability of the consulting guidance and tech.
Dr. Kenneth S. Trump is President of National School Safety and Security Services
National School Safety and Security Services
Experts You Can Trust!
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These are excellent insights and an invaluable perspective for those of us on the law enforcement side of the house. I am the new Kentucky State School Security Marshal. My background is the typical tactical and training background you mentioned. My wife was a school teacher for over 15 years. She now heads up our Instructional Design Section at our primary state police training academy (my office is within that academy). She’s helped a lot. But, you’ve helped me tremendously with the Podcast you did with Brian Marren and Greg Williams. I would love to talk to you sometime. Thank you for what you do!