When school leaders think about school safety, they often think about administrators, school resource officers, security personnel, emergency plans, cameras, access control systems, and other security measures.
They should also be thinking about the school secretary sitting in the main office.
School secretaries and other office support staff are on the frontlines of school safety every day. Yet in my more than four decades of working with schools across the country, I have consistently found them to be among the staff members most likely to be overlooked when it comes to school safety training, emergency planning, crisis teams, and security decision-making.
Secretaries screen visitors and decide whether to unlock secured entrances. They deal with angry and frustrated parents. They manage custody restrictions and student release. They receive contractors and deliveries. They answer threatening phone calls, including bomb threats and swatting calls. They assist students in distress. When a nurse is unavailable, they may suddenly find themselves responding to a medical emergency.
And they often do several of these things at once. Some do it as the solo school secretary the entire school day.
Technology Does Not Make the Decisions: People Do!
Schools have invested heavily in cameras, secured vestibules, visitor management systems, intercoms, electronic access controls, and other security technology. But someone still has to decide whether to push the button and unlock the door.
Someone has to recognize when a familiar parent is behaving differently. Someone has to know what questions to ask an unfamiliar visitor. Someone has to know what to do when a caller says there is a bomb in the building or claims a person with a gun is inside the school.
The technology may provide information. People still have to interpret it and act.
That is why school secretaries need more than instructions on how to operate visitor management technology. They need practical school safety training.
Train Them. Include Them. Listen to Them.
School secretaries and appropriate office support staff should receive training in areas including visitor management, verbal de-escalation, bomb and other threatening calls, emergency communications, CPR, AED use, first aid, and crisis response.
They should be represented on school safety and crisis teams. They should participate in drills, tabletop exercises, and after-action discussions.
And when schools renovate main offices, build security vestibules, or change visitor procedures, the people who actually work there should have a seat at the table.
They know how visitors really enter. They know where parents congregate. They know which procedures regularly break down. They know what happens when the principal is unavailable, the nurse is out, three parents are waiting, a student needs help, and the telephone is ringing.
That operational knowledge is a school safety asset.
A New Resource for School Leaders
Our new resource, School Security Leadership Starts in the Main Office: School Secretaries on the Frontlines of School Safety, takes a closer look at these responsibilities and provides practical questions school leaders can use to evaluate how well they are preparing and supporting their main-office staff.
It addresses access control and visitor management, angry and frustrated visitors, custody and student-release issues, bomb threats and swatting, verbal de-escalation, emergency medical response, office design, crisis teams, and scenario-based training.
The bottom line is simple: School secretaries are already performing critical school safety functions. The question is whether we are training, including, and supporting them accordingly.
Learn more from our full School Secretaries and School Safety resource
Dr. Kenneth S. Trump is President of National School Safety and Security Services
National School Safety and Security Services
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