The April 16 Virginia Tech massacre has prompted education institutions across the nation to examine their security and preparedness procedures. Many schools are focusing on strengthening strategic approaches to ensure the safety of students, faculty and staff. According to the National School Safety Center, university and college campuses are more vulnerable to violent attacks because they are designed to be openly accessible for students.
The National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) recently reported that 52 percent of students report seeing bullying at least once a week. The NCPC also states that one in every four children who bully will have a criminal record before the age of 30.
It is imperative that we protect our children so that events similar to what took place at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech are not repeated. Cox corporate security would like to provide you and your family with school safety information to reduce the many threats to child safety at school.
What can you do to help?
The National School Safety and Security Services suggests 10 practical things that parents can do to assess school security and crisis preparedness at your child’s school:
Have an open dialogue about school safety with your child. Students often know where gaps in security exist. Ask them to tell you where they feel most and least safe and why? Together, come up with solutions to what can be done to improve their safety. Share your discussion and strategy with school officials.
Identify comfort levels and methods for reporting safety concerns. Find out if your child has at least one adult they would feel comfortable reporting safety concerns to at school. Proactively explore if there are other methods (hotlines, websites, email, etc.) for students to report their concerns. Parents should also feel comfortable in addressing safety concerns with school administrators. Stay involved!
Examine school access. Ask if there are a reduced number of doors that can be accessed from the outside (while still allowing children to exit from the inside in an emergency). Do faculty and staff greet visitors, challenge strangers and know who is in their school?
Encourage students living on campus to have conversations with residence hall staff to ensure that sign-in procedures, visitor identification badges, etc. are enforced.
Find out if your student’s school has policies and procedures on security and emergency preparedness. Does the administration have written security, crisis preparedness planning, and overall school safety policies and procedures? If so, stay apprised of how often and when they are communicated.
Determine if your school has a school safety committee to develop an overall plan for prevention, intervention, and security issues. Retain a copy of these plans. Make sure that they are balanced and not just prevention-only or security-only in scope. Find out if the school has a crisis team, who its members are, and how often they meet to discuss emergency planning. If there are written emergency/crisis guidelines, identify if they are reviewed at least once a year. (Note: Many schools have one team to address both overall safety planning and crisis preparedness.)
Inquire whether school officials use internal security specialists and outside public safety resources to develop safety plans and crisis guidelines. Ascertain whether school administrators actively involve internal school security specialists in developing safety plans and crisis guidelines. It’s very necessary for school officials to have meaningful, working relationships with police, fire and other public safety agencies serving their schools.
Ask if school emergency/crisis guidelines are tested and exercised. Do school officials test and exercise written crisis guidelines? For example, if they have a lockdown procedure, they should also conduct periodic drills to practice them. If they cannot carry out full-scale exercises of emergency plans—which are often difficult to do—at the very least they should enact tabletop exercises to test written plans.
Determine whether school employees, including support staff, have received training on school security and crisis preparedness issues. All school employees, including but not limited to administrative professionals and building services staff, need to receive regular, on-going training on security and emergency strategies by local, state and/or national specialists. Qualified and experienced instructors need to be knowledgeable of student-specific safety issues (e.g. K-12, special needs, universities, colleges, etc.).
Find out if school management uses outside resources and sources in their ongoing school safety assessments. School authorities need to subscribe to current publications that address security issues. In addition, they should be attending conferences and programs on school safety. Staying engaged with these mediums will help when it’s time to review their security measures, crisis guidelines and safety plans with recommendations by school safety experts.
Honestly evaluate whether you, as a parent, are doing your part in making schools safe. Parents have a critical part to play in minimizing threat risks at their child’s school. Begin by supporting educators and administrators with safety initiatives by asking the above questions in a respectful, non-blaming manner. Recognize that by talking with your child about personal safety considerations, drug and violence prevention issues, and related topics early and regularly at home sets an important tone with keeping the lines of communication open. If you need to seek professional help for your child, do so in a timely manner.
For additional information regarding school safety, please visit these websites:
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