Five Steps to Securing Schools

Whenever I attend education-focused conferences, educators, school administrators, school board members, and parents ask me some variation of the question, “My school/district is not taking school safety seriously. What can I do to make my school(s) more secure?” Let’s be honest. It’s a question educators and parents would rather not think about. However, they hope somebody is doing something at their school. As has been said ad nauseam, hope is not a strategy.

Over the past several months I've had an opportunity to share practical steps to improve the security of our nation's schools with groups around the country.

Lessons Learned from Tragedy

A little over six and a half years ago, my world changed forever.  On February 14th, 2018, at 2:20 PM a gunman walked on to the campus of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, through an unlocked gate, through an unlocked door, past school security personnel and began an indiscriminate and evil attack that would last less than six minutes.  In that short time, seventeen were killed. Seventeen injured. Lives lost. Families destroyed. A devastated school. A community forever changed.  

My 14-year-old daughter Alaina was sitting in her freshman English classroom, and within seconds, the shooter began firing into her classroom, immediately killing one of her classmates.  He then moved down the hallway toward's another classroom, but not satisfied with the initial carnage, he returned to Alaina’s classroom for a second attempt. In the chaos, the dust and smoke and sheer panic, any places of refuge in that classroom were not immediately apparent.  Alaina and one of her classmates instinctively moved toward their teacher, hoping to find safety.  They moved toward the teacher's desk, but there wasn’t enough room.  The shooter began firing again, killing Alaina and the classmate next to her.

That afternoon was chaos. Students and teachers reacted to a threat they weren't prepared to face. They had been trained on how to evacuate the building in the case of smoke or fire, but none had been trained for this. They didn't know what to do. They didn't know how to seek cover or concealment. They didn't know the safe areas in the classroom.

From these tragedies, however, comes a roadmap for prevention and protection, guided by work done by numerous researchers, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission (MSD Commission), the United States Secret Service and many others, safer schools are possible. In just six years, we have measurably improved the way we protect schools in Florida, but we are not done.

These steps are based on the recommendations of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission's two reports on the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. These are recommendations based on lessons learned at great cost to the families that lost loved ones that day. These are lessons learned from the failures that contributed to the tragedy.

Five Steps for Improving School Safety

Fostering a community culture of awareness and reporting can help identify and mitigate potential threats early. By taking these steps, schools can create a secure environment conducive to learning and security.

1. Prevention (Early Prevention)

The 2019 U.S. Secret Service report, 'Protecting America’s Schools: A U.S. SECRET SERVICE ANALYSIS OF TARGETED SCHOOL VIOLENCE', showed that 94% of school attackers had, “displayed concerning behaviors at school”.  In this report, which looked at 41 school attacks, almost 90% of attackers communicated their intentions or shared plans about their attack with others prior to the attack. These statistics correlate with other targeted violence research studies and later research by the Secret Service looking specifically at averted school attacks.   

In the news just a few months ago, the story of a 17-year old student from Maryland who wrote a 129 page manifesto. She planned to target her high school and an elementary school because “little kids make easier targets.”  Fortunately, a tipster alerted police to the manifesto and an investigation led to an arrest before she could attack.  After reading the news reports about the averted attack, I spoke to the Secret Service, and their response surprised me. They told me the school district “got lucky”. They had no formal threat management program, but thankfully information was shared with law enforcement. And thankfully, law enforcement opened an investigation, made an arrest and averted a tragedy.  

So how do we make prevention more robust?  We talk about changing culture.  The U.S. Secret Service promotes a prevention technique called Behavioral Threat Assessment & Management.  It’s how they protect the President.  In Florida, we call this our Harm Prevention and Threat Management Model, to emphasize that we manage potential and actual threats, rather than simply assessing them. Let's get into what threat management looks like and how it works.

Behavioral Threat Management requires a multi-disciplinary team that receives information about potential threats and concerning student behaviors and works together to act on warnings and prevent school violence.  It’s a repeatable method of violence prevention that has shown incredible success in averting school attacks.

The goal of all school safety efforts is to prevent violence or harm to members of the school community. Threat management uses a methodology that identifies students exhibiting threatening or other concerning behavior, gathers information to assess the risk of harm to themselves or others, and identifies appropriate interventions to prevent violence and promote successful outcomes. The process applies a non-punitive assessment to distinguish between innocuous and serious situations. The aim of the threat management process is to intervene at the earliest stage to provide assistance to students and to alter or disrupt concerning behavior for the benefit of the student and school.

Threat management is a complex topic and one that would require more time than we have on these pages to fully explore, but the Florida Department of Education shared a presentation on the Florida Harm Prevention and Threat Management model at the July MSD Commission meeting. The Department also maintains a Threat Management manual for educators, which contains great detail on how and why we have implemented threat management in Florida schools.   

2. Enhanced Physical Security

The first step is straightforward, so much so that it’s often overlooked—improve the physical security of our school buildings. This can include installing secure doors, reinforced locks, weapons detection and surveillance cameras. However, the simple act of securing gates, requiring classroom doors to be locked during instruction times are simple, cost efficient methods of protecting our schools.  These measures serve as both deterrents and protective barriers. You'd think it would go without saying, but don’t allow staff to bypass physical security measures. In reality, this proves to be far more difficult than you might imagine. In Florida we still struggle with teachers and students propping doors open, staff leaving doors and gates open, but these are opportunities to refocus on school safety culture and improve training.  Another easy win is to mark the safest areas in each classroom.

Even after improving physical security, many school attacks are perpetrated by “insiders”, students and even former students that know the physical layout of the school, and may be familiar with security protocols.  Because they are insiders, they may have permission to be on the campus. In this case, physical security measures alone won’t stop a determined attacker.  This is one of the primary reasons for the focus on early prevention through threat management is so critical.

Partner Alliance for Safer Schools (PASS), has done some amazing work to define physical security for schools and have created both guidelines and a checklist that anyone interested or responsible for school security can utilize to begin improving the safety of their institutions.

3. Robust Emergency Preparedness

Training and drills for both students and staff are crucial for effective emergency preparedness. The MSD Commission as well as organizations like PASS recommend regular active assailant drills and emergency response training, ensuring that everyone knows how to act swiftly and safely in a crisis. Research and best practices show that active shooter drills are effective, if planned and implemented according to the development level of the participating students. When done correctly active assailant drills, just like fire drills, do not traumatize students or staff.  Active assailant drills should help to train both students and staff on where the safe areas in the school are located and what they should do in the event of a lockdown due to an active assailant on campus.

Emergency drills play a vital role in overall emergency preparedness and can reassure students, staff and parents that school security is a priority. As I think back to February 14, 2018, I wish that Alaina's school had not only prepared students and staff for the unthinkable, it might have made all the difference if she had known what to do and where to go to find safety in her classroom.

As for parents that fight practical steps to secure schools and instead call only for more gun control, do not let their activism derail the practical and effective steps you can take to secure your school(s).  Most parents just want to know everything that is being done to protect their children.

4. Improved Communications

A unified communication system is vital in emergencies. Schools should have the capability to instantly communicate with all teachers, students, law enforcement, and emergency services. During the Parkland tragedy, law enforcement radios failed and they had to revert to hand signals as they cleared the building, delaying the extraction of wounded students needing medical treatment. 

This communication system should also support anonymous reporting of threats, and support proactive interventions. Student reporting apps like Fortify Florida (FortifyFL), SaferWatch, SafeUT, Safe2Tell are vital in allowing students and staff to report unsafe conditions or concerning behaviors. Anonymous reporting apps coupled with a school based threat management team, is the best option for preventing violence in the first place.

Improving communications is not just getting the latest technologies in place; it also means that communications and collaboration with outside agencies, like first responders, must be part of your school security planning. If you're a school administrator, now is the best time to contact local first responders, law enforcement, fire and medical, and engage with them in building your response plan. Don't forget emergency communications with first responders. Can you contact and communicate with first responders regardless of the situation? Can they get vital information from you? Do they understand the layout of the school? Are your buildings easy to identify? Do they understand the layout of the school, including classrooms? Can first responders access your surveillance systems during an emergency? If they can, it will speed up their response and save lives.

One area that is often overlooked in the rush to secure schools is parental notification. In Florida we learned we could utilize existing calling/texting systems already in place to report student absences as a means to report school safety threats to parents. Parental notifications are now required by state law.  It just makes sense that parents should be the ultimate decision makers when it comes to the safety of their children.

5. School Climate and Mental Health

It’s hard not to get caught up in the left’s definitions of things like school climate and mental health.  As a society we are facing unprecedented mental health challenges.  The mental health of students is impacting our schools in ways that are not easily addressed.  And that's not the only complication, the role of mental health staff in schools is being questioned. Just a few of the questions being asked: What is the role of the school in regards to the mental health of students? What is the role of the family? The community? 

It’s safe to say that improving access to mental health support is essential.  Schools need threat management trained mental health counselors to identify and intervene with at-risk students. This support not only helps prevent targeted violence, but can aid in the general well-being of the student body, if these resources are not diverted to other agendas.

Unfortunately, many school-based mental health initiatives go beyond what many parents are comfortable with.  There is no easy answer here.  The important thing for school safety is that troubling behaviors and threats against a school need to be reported to those that can take action. And students and staff need to be protected when communicating these threats. I come back to the work we've done here in Florida. Our School Based Threat Management Teams (SBTMT) include someone with expertise in counseling (Certified School Psychologist, Certified School Social Worker, Certified School Counselor or Licensed Mental Health Professional), whose sole purpose is to help the SBTMT to assess the level of concern and where appropriate help that individual access resources they need to disrupt the pathway to violence.

Securing our schools requires a multi-faceted approach that encompasses prevention, robust physical security, thorough emergency preparedness, improved communication, and mental health support. The tragic events at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and other more recent school attacks, underscore the importance of proactive measures and continuous improvement. By fostering a culture of awareness, implementing behavioral threat management, enhancing physical infrastructure, conducting regular drills, and ensuring effective communication, we can create safer learning environments. It’s imperative that we move beyond hope and take concrete actions to protect our children and ensure their safety in educational settings. In a future post, I'll dive into funding for school security and the resources available.