School safety training should reach more frontline educators. School safety, security, and emergency preparedness training focused on behaviors, human factors, and the fundamental foundational school safety best practices. School leaders deserve a choice with independent K-12 training, workshops, tabletop exercises and experienced speakers.
School safety training has become too predictable.
Attend enough national, state, and regional school safety conferences and you begin seeing the same speakers, the same organizations, and often the same presentations making the rounds year after year.
School safety and education conferences have also become increasingly populated by speakers sponsored by, affiliated with, or otherwise connected to security product and technology vendors. Some organizations contract with one entity to provide multiple interconnected speakers. Others allow vendors to sponsor keynotes, workshops, or other speaking opportunities.
The result? School leaders can find themselves hearing the same voices, delivering the same messages, within the same professional networks.
One veteran school safety professional who regularly attends state and national conferences recently described it simply: They have heard the same canned presentations from many of the same people for five years or more.
School leaders have options.
School Safety Training Should Be About More Than Security Products and Technology
Technology has a legitimate place in comprehensive school safety. But cameras, weapons detection systems, panic buttons, access control, artificial intelligence, and the latest security products should not define school safety professional development.
The toughest school safety challenges are frequently human challenges: Leadership, judgment, behavior, supervision, situational awareness, communication, teamwork, culture, relationships, partnerships, and emergency decision-making.
These issues may not come with a product demonstration or exhibit booth, but they are the foundation of what superintendents, principals, school safety administrators, teachers, and support staff deal with every day.
School safety training should help people perform better when they return to school Monday morning.
Vendor Influence and Pay-to-Play Training Deserve Scrutiny
Vendor participation at conferences is not inherently bad. Vendors can provide useful technical expertise, and sponsorship often helps make conferences financially possible. But the lines and locations of vendors should be separated from professional educational content.
The problem arises when the lines between education and marketing become blurred.
I have previously written about school safety conferences becoming increasingly vendor-driven and the shift toward local training, as well as the changing tactics security vendors use to weave products into broader school safety discussions. I have also examined how vendor influence can extend into school safety nonprofits, guidelines, and professional networks.
School leaders should know who is educating them, who is paying whom, and whether commercial interests may be influencing the recommendations they hear.
Professional development should educate school leaders, not quietly move them through a sales funnel.
Move More School Safety Training Closer to Schools
There is another question worth asking: Who actually receives the training?
Sending a handful of administrators or school safety personnel to a national conference can provide useful exposure to new ideas. And there are still a few credible national conferences, although they seem to dwindling.
Some state and regional educational associations, as well as state associations for school leaders, are also going back to doing the heavier lift of contracting directly with speakers who have not been regulars on the vendor-influenced speakers networks.
But the people making safety decisions every day include principals, assistant principals, deans, safety and security officers, campus supervisors, teachers, secretaries, custodians, transportation employees, coaches, paraprofessionals, and other support staff. Most of them will never attend a national school safety conference.
That is why more school safety professional development should move to the local school district and regional levels.
District-based training can reach larger numbers of frontline employees, address actual local conditions, and allow multidisciplinary teams to learn together. Regional programs can bring neighboring districts together, spread costs, and expose more educators and school safety professionals to meaningful training without the travel expenses associated with national conferences.
Most importantly, local and regional training can move professional development from exposure to implementation. Instead of sending two people away to hear a presentation, bring meaningful training to 100, 500, or more of the people responsible for putting school safety into practice.
Bring the training to the people doing the work.
What Should School Safety Training Focus On?
Effective K-12 school safety training should strengthen the fundamentals that people need before, during, and after an emergency:
• Strategic school safety leadership
• Human factors and behavior-based school safety
• Active supervision and situational awareness
• Effective school safety teams and a culture of safety
• Practical security and emergency preparedness
• Tabletop exercises and scenario-based decision-making
• Communicating school safety effectively with staff, students, parents, and the community
• Leading through ambiguity, uncertainty, anxiety, and rapidly unfolding events
These fundamentals remain relevant regardless of which security technology happens to be receiving attention this year.
School Safety Speaker Experience and Independence Matter
School leaders deserve presenters who understand not only what policies say should happen, but what actually happens when plans collide with people, politics, limited resources, uncertainty, and real-world events.
That is why we have expanded our school safety, security, and emergency preparedness training programs and created a new School Safety Speakers Bureau.
Our speakers are career school safety professionals and educational safety leaders with decades of hands-on experience. Programs include keynotes, workshops, tabletop exercises, leadership programs, and customized professional development for school districts, regional organizations, associations, and other education groups.
The focus is practical, research- and evidence-based, cost-conscious, and grounded in the realities school leaders and frontline employees face every day.
And our speakers are independent and non-vendor-affiliated. We do not receive compensation from security product and technology vendors to promote their products.
That independence matters.
School Leaders Have Options and Quality Choices for School Safety Speakers
National associations have options. State and regional education organizations have options. Local school districts have options.
The same is true for superintendents, school boards, principals, school safety administrators, teachers, and support staff who are hungry for meaningful professional development.
School safety will continue to change. Technologies will evolve. New threats will emerge. Yesterday’s assumptions will be challenged by tomorrow’s uncertainties.
But the fundamentals remain remarkably consistent: Strong leadership. Good judgment. Active supervision. Situational awareness. Clear communication. Functional teams. Prepared people.
The next time your district or organization plans school safety training, ask: Do we really need another version of the same presentation from the same circuit of speakers?
Or is it time to bring different voices, perspectives, and experiences into the room and bring the training closer to the people doing the work?
School leaders have options. Education associations have choices. Do they have the courage to bring in new speakers and new ideas?
Explore our updated school safety training programs and School Safety Speakers Bureau.
Dr. Kenneth S. Trump
President, National School Safety and Security Services
Dr. Kenneth S. Trump is President of National School Safety and Security Services, an independent, non-product-affiliated school safety consulting firm. With more than 40 years of experience in PreK–12 school safety, security, and emergency preparedness, he provides independent analysis and strategic guidance to school leaders nationwide.