ACCORDING TO THE (DAYTON OH) JOURNAL-NEWS, School safety needs to go beyond focus on shooters.
Bravo ! Someone gets it.
THE ARTICLE1 BEGINS Active shooters dominate talk about school safety in America, with many area schools adding fortifications or armed response plans. But security experts are encouraging schools to focus on smaller, day-to-day student issues as well, saying these are more common and are sometimes the root cause of the bigger tragedies.
“As a society we have gotten a tunnel vision focus on active shooters,” said Ken Trump, president of the Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services. “There are many potential scenarios such as non-custodial parent concerns, bullying, and other threats that are lower-impact but higher probability of being faced by school administrators. School safety planning requires a balanced and comprehensive approach.”
Trump said more money for non-firearm based security upgrades are overall more effective.
In risk management terms, "probability" vs. "impact" and the infamous "tic-tac-toe" box.
If anyone looks at what went on BEFORE an active shooter incident they usually will find warning signs from the shooter(s).
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has missed the obvious on many occasions and even when it DID catch the warning signs (as in the case of the Marjory Stillman Douglas/Parkland FL shooting), it failed to share the information with local agencies that might have been able to prevent the tragedy.
- This same agency, charged with protecting Americans on U.S. soil, also missed the warning signs that preceded 9-11-2001 and failed to share information within the agency.
The Dayton paper went on
- In the past two years, state education officials have pushed schools to also focus on creating day-to-day positive school climate, by supporting at-risk students, providing mental health services and using school-wide messaging.
“Threat assessment is a reactive process” in handling school safety issues, said Erich Merkle, past president of the Ohio School Psychologists Association. “The best approach is employing positive behavior intervention supports (PBIS) to shift school culture … as the proactive strategy.”
Merkle encourages students and school staff to reach out to students who are disconnected from the school society, who go through major life trauma, or are having academic and behavioral problems. While cautioning against overly broad profiles, Merkle said several student shooters have had those experiences.
Once again, the keys to school safety are
* Encouraging students active on social media to report threats to any student or to the school
* Encouraging students to report bullying, harassment, and other torments to fellow students by students and by non-students
* Observing student behavior in the classroom, in the halls, and on buses
* Training teachers to monitor changes in student’s behavior
It is unfortunate that some level of physical security must be implemented. Measures such as
* Non-students are restricted to office areas and must be escorted if allowed past the entrance area; this means the entrance area must have limited and controlled access to other areas
* Photo IDs for personnel allowed to take students from school – that means MATCHING a driver’s license or similar photo with an on-file photo submitted by at least one parent or guardian; checking a driver’s license photo and address is NOT sufficient – there must be a photo already on file
* Push bar alarmed emergency exits
* Single point of entry with a metal detector
* Vendor entry control (as vendors usually have a separate entrance)
The foregoing are BASIC processes that can, should, be implemented at all schools. Many of the suggestions are no or low cost. Some seem to this scrivener to be “no brainers.”
All of the above does NOT negate the need for fire drills, lock down drills, and any other drills already in place.
It also does not eliminate the presence of a school “resource” officer (SRO) – normally a city or county cop – who has a multi-functional role: to show that cops can be good guys, to help prevent petty crime, and to keep the peace. The selection of an SRO is critical to the position’s success.
FINAL THOUGHT No two schools are alike. Each school’s plan must be developed specifically for that school and its population. Get local authorities involved in the school’s, the students’, and the staff’s safety. If there is a professional Enterprise Risk Management practitioner available, recruit that person, too.
Sources
1. http://tinyurl.com/y9qcx5my
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