Campus Safety Voices

Being proactive with a unified approach to school security and safety is critical to preventing and responding to incidents. However, historically most school districts have taken the exact opposite approach. Traditionally, they’ve waited to address their pressing safety and security vulnerabilities until after a major incident has occurred, according to Michael Garcia, HID Global’s safe schools national end user director. 

“Force protection, defense in depth, qualitative third party, independent verification and validation -- the necessary things for a risk assessment -- were never on the school budget,” says Garcia. “So, they could never be planned for, they were always reactively financed.”

What followed would usually be a piecemeal approach to school security upgrades. Cameras would be installed at one time, intrusion sensors would be installed at another, locks would be installed on classroom doors the following year, and so on. Although the installation of this equipment was a significant improvement over what was protecting the campus before, the systems that were implemented often wouldn’t communicate or integrate with each other.   

Another challenge with the traditional way of handling school security, especially as it applied to access control, was that very often first responders would have difficulty accessing the scene of an emergency because they didn’t have the right keys or access control credentials.

To be fair, it’s understandable why the reactive approach to school safety had traditionally been school districts’ modus operandi. K-12 campus protection is a relatively new field, and the recent changes to it seem to have come at lightning speed. What’s more, the vast majority of school board members don’t volunteer for their positions to become security experts. The same goes for administrators and educators, who have been trained to focus on academics, not active shooter response.

However, Garcia says all of this must change. Mental health, behavioral interventions, mitigation efforts, risk assessors, people, processes, and security technologies must all work together as an “orchestra” with one conductor. Doing so will help prevent school security incidents from happening in the first place, mitigate them when they do occur, and ensure first responders will be able to quickly and appropriately respond.

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Inclusivity is the practice of providing equal access to opportunities and resources for those who might otherwise be marginalized. An inclusive school safety plan accounts for everyone’s individual needs and abilities — including students and staff — when and if a school is faced with an emergency.

We spoke with Dr. Roderick Sams, a former educator and administrator of 20+ years, about ways schools and districts can create a more inclusive safety plan by:

1. Removing language barriers (0:01)
2. Improving accessibility (04:36)
3. Ensuring emergency alerts are multisensory (08:56)

Sams also spoke about the importance of an overall inclusive campus culture that listens to student and staff voices and accepts and accommodates differences, which has proven to reduce violence (16:15).

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In the three months following the start of the Israel-Hamas war, anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. increased by 360% compared to the same period one year prior. Anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian incidents increased by 178%.

Some of these incidents occurred on K-12 and college campuses. In Georgia, a middle school teacher was fired for allegedly threatening physical harm to a 13-year-old girl. In Indiana, a woman was arrested for intentionally crashing her vehicle into a school because she thought it was an "Israel school." On Feb. 19, anti-Semitic incidents on U.S. college campuses since the start of the war passed 1,000.

Educational campuses have also made recent headlines for protests and administrators' handling of them. Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups have sued their schools, claiming they haven't protected them from hate crimes or have violated their First Amendment rights by having the groups suspended.

All of these hate crimes and clashes raise many questions, including:

• What have K-12 and college leaders done right and what have they done wrong in how they respond to these incidents?
• How can they better mitigate and respond to them in the future?

To answer these questions, Campus Safety spoke with Jason Russell, former Secret Service agent and founder and president of Secure Environment Consultants.

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Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation on college campuses are at an all-time high. More than 60% meet the criteria for at least one mental health problem -- a nearly 50% increase since 2013.

College students are also seeking support at an unprecedented rate, openly discussing their struggles with professionals to formulate a game plan for improving their well-being and overall educational experience. Although student affairs offices are overwhelmed with the influx, many are working to find creative ways to properly support students seeking resources -- including the University of California San Diego's Student Affairs Case Management Services (SACM).

SACM is the winner of the Clery Center's Campus Safety Impact Award, an inaugural award that recognizes higher education programs or initiatives that demonstrate innovation, collaboration, and equity in improving campus safety.

Hear from SACM's director, Andrew Hua, about how the group has been able to quintuple its case management team in just three years, as well as the challenges that came with it and how they continue to evolve to meet students' needs.

Hua also discusses:

• How the team has addressed spikes in student caseloads (06:04)
• How the team has created a path for students to become part of the staff (14:45Tips for garnering support from leadership for student well-being initiatives (16:43)
• SACM's signature training program, which has trained over 1,200 faculty, staff, and student leaders to recognize signs of distress (22:10)
• Notable statistics, including student testimonials, that highlight SACM's impact (24:26)
• Tips for schools overwhelmed with student needs' caseloads (27:36)

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On March 15, 2022, 16-year-old Shawn Dwight Tolbert was fatally shot following an altercation between two groups of teens in the parking lot at Eisenhower High School in Yakima, Washington.

As with all campus incidents, the district did a full after-action review of the shooting and the school's response. It was determined a security monitor gave incorrect information regarding the location of the incident, sending police, EMS, district security, and school administration to the south parking lot when the incident occurred in the east parking lot. This caused delays in providing medical services and in apprehending the shooter.

In this interview, Stacey Locke, Deputy Superintendent of the Yakima School District, discusses the school's error in its response (00:27) and how the district has since fixed its emergency response plans to prevent similar mistakes from occurring in future incidents (08:00).

Locke also shared:

• The school's many successes in its response (11:11)
• How she encourages her district employees to create a culture of safety through a layered approach (13:16)
• How purchasing wearable incident response badges for staff following the incident has helped in other emergencies (16:56)
• Recommendations for schools or districts considering adopting similar location-enabled technology (20:57)

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On Nov. 30, 2021, a student at Michigan's Oxford High School shot and killed four classmates and wounded six other people. Several weeks ago, independent investigators released a 572-page report outlining both successes and failures in the school's response before, during, and after the incident.

In this interview with Campus Safety, Jill Lemond, who was Oxford Community School's assistant superintendent of student services at the time of the tragedy and later became the assistant superintendent of safety and school operations, shares lessons learned from the incident (06:19) and changes the district has made since (08:51).

She also shares:

• Overall advice for school gun violence deterrence (00:01)
• Recovery advice for schools that may experience a similar incident in the future (10:15)
• What parents can do to prevent school violence (15:13)
• What students can do to prevent school violence (19:14)

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Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) refers to the integration of architectural design and environmental factors to reduce criminal activity. Many strategies can be used to deter crime but perhaps the three most common, effective, and practical ones are natural surveillance and visibility (00:01), lighting (04:53), and wayfinding (09:22).

Paul Timm, currently Allegion's Director of Education Safety at Allegion and formerly Facility Engineering Associates' (FEA) Vice President of Physical Security Services, discusses the fundamentals of these three CPTED principles and how they can and should be applied on school campuses. 

Timm also shares CPTED successes and failures he's encountered as both a security professional conducting school site assessments and a parent, as well as:

• Where schools that are looking to improve CPTED should start (14:56)
• Best practices for CPTED during after-school events, particularly at night (16:23)
• Advice on accessing grant funding to improve CPTED (19:02)

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In a March 2022 survey, paraprofessionals, school counselors, instructional aides, and school resource officers (SROs) reported the highest rates of student physical violence (22%), while 18% of school psychologists and social workers, 15% of administrators, and 14% of teachers reported at least one violent incident by a student during the pandemic.

In this interview, Dr. Marisa Randazzo, executive director of threat management at Ontic, shares her thoughts on the most effective ways to address violence in schools as well as how current students -- the next generation of thought leaders -- will have the ability to change the overall culture of workplace safety. 

Dr. Randazzo also discussed:

• What school employees can do to de-escalate concerning behavior (10:25)
• Free de-escalation resources for violence prevention in schools (12:19)
• What technologies and tools are available to support school employees in combatting violence (12:39)
• Must-haves in school violence prevention policies and procedures (15:16)

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On Dec. 1, 2013, Kari Hunt was stabbed 29 times by her husband in a Texas motel room while their three children were present. Kari’s nine-year-old daughter dialed 911 four times from the motel room phone but the calls never went through because the motel’s phone system required users to press “9” before dialing outside lines. Kari ultimately died that night, and coroners estimate she lived for 25-30 minutes after the attack. 

On Feb. 16, 2018, Kari's Law was signed into legislation, ensuring anyone can reach a 911 call center directly without an access code. Six weeks later, RAY BAUM's Act went into law, requiring enterprises to fashion their phone systems so each 911 call includes a dispatchable location.

Mark Fletcher, the key author and proponent of Kari's Law and vice president of public safety solutions for 911inform, spoke with Campus Safety about the laws' requirements and the high costs of non-compliance.

Fletcher also shares:

• More on the process of getting Kari’s Law and RAY BAUM’s Act through the legislature with the Hunt family (01:35)
• Three instances where Kari’s Law and RAY BAUM’s Act helped save lives (10:53)
• Who tracks whether an establishment is compliant and who within a school campus is typically involved in ensuring phone systems are compliant (13:52)

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Dr. James Corbin, who is student safety and security coordinator for Hamilton County Schools in Tennessee, was tasked with developing a safety department for his district. Not only did he do so from scratch, but he also grew his department to more than 60 employees in only three years. Additionally, almost all of his employees have stayed with the department… a remarkable feat considering the current tight labor market.

Corbin’s success in developing his district’s safety department is just one of the reasons why he’s been named one of this year’s Campus Safety K-12 Director of the Year finalists. 

Here’s Campus Safety Editor in Chief Robin Hattersley's interview with James Corbin as well as the timestamps of what was specifically covered in the interview: 

• Corbin’s first steps in developing the Hamilton County Schools safety department, and how he determined what was needed, who was needed, and how many officers/staff members were needed: 1:31
• What issues district stakeholders and the community specifically wanted the department to address and how he bridged the gap between the traditional law enforcement world and school safety world: 3:50
• How he was able to recruit and retain so many employees in such a tight labor market: 5:18
• What kind of training department armed officers receive: 6:34
• Advice to other districts who want to develop or expand their safety departments: 9:24

This presentation is brought to you by CampusSafetyMagazine.com (https://www.campussafetymagazine.com/)

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