Phase One: Proactive Measures

PREPARATION

  • Low Cost/No Cost Immediately Implementable School Safety Tactics: This document includes a list of options for low cost or no cost tactics that schools can consider as a part of their safety efforts. School leaders and law enforcement officers are essential in determining threat-specific school safety tactics. The below options are listed in no particular order, and are not all inclusive. Schools should apply them in accordance with state or district requirements.
  • Practice Timeline: This practice timeline includes a diagram of a conventional school shooter response timeline vs. a diagram of a coveted sheriff’s school shooter response timeline.
  • MSBA Center for Education Safety: The Missouri School Board Association provides training to help school personnel identify and assist students who may be at risk of becoming a school shooter, create a crisis plan in case a threat ever presented itself, and provide them with resources to educators that they can use when dealing with mental health issues.
  • DHS School Safety Preparedness Resources: The Department of Homeland Security has a plethora of resources for training, exercises, education, and workshops to help school personnel and community members prepare for a violent threat.
    • DHS Exercise Starter Kit: The Department of Homeland Security provides exercise starter kits with the purpose of campus resilience. These kits test emergency plans and strengthen response and recovery procedures through a variety of interactive exercises.
  • Active Shooter Facts and Protocols: The document contains facts that everyone should know about active shooters and provides information about Indiana’s emergency response system. It also includes a comparison to a conventional response team so that school personnel can decide what the best fit is for their school.
  • Graphic User Interface: The GUI system is a sample system for how school building security should be set up and what it should look like.
  • Emergency Response System Operational Summary: The Emergency Response System Operational Summary provides information on a sample plan of steps to take to improve building security. This plan includes detailed information on everything from the technology to implement to the type of door to get that is most secure for protecting a classroom.
  • Indiana Sheriffs' Association School Safety PowerPoint: This PowerPoint by the Indiana Sheriffs' Association goes into detail on the different resources and tools that school safety personnel should be aware of that can significantly strengthen school building security. The presentation also used cases of pervious school shootings as a resource to better know how to improve school security.
  • Ohio School Threat Assessment Training: “Prevention is the missing piece after every attack,” Attorney General Dave Yost said. “And the safety of children across our state depends on us plugging that gap.

    To that end, Yost’s team created the Ohio School Threat Assessment Training, a combination of best practices from leading school-safety experts, including the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center. The Ohio guide helps schools team up with other community members, such as police officers and mental-health advocates, to prevent targeted violence and get help for troubled students.

    In the Ohio School Threat Assessment Training, which runs 10 chapters and about three hours, Ohio and national experts introduce the protocols that have worked for them. Each of the chapters, including the Introduction and Conclusion, runs between eight and 27 minutes in length. A 30-page Reference Guide is also available for download.

  • Low Cost/No Cost Immediately Implementable School Safety Tactics: This document includes a list of options for low cost or no cost tactics that schools can consider as a part of their safety efforts. School leaders and law enforcement officers are essential in determining threat-specific school safety tactics. The below options are listed in no particular order, and are not all inclusive. Schools should apply them in accordance with state or district requirements.
  •  

PREVENTION

Campus/Building Security

  • Isotec Security: Isotec Security is a security system designed to protect entrances and exits. Each entrance and exit monitors who goes in and who comes out. The system used by this company is also used to protect the President, guard the nuclear arsenal, and prevent armed robberies. This highly secure system uses door access control entrances to ensure the safety and wellbeing of everyone both inside and outside of the building.
  • ASR Alert Systems: ASR Alert Systems connects automatically to local law enforcement officers. Approved teacher and school administrators are given an alert key that when pressed sets off alarms throughout the entire school. This technology includes video cameras to allow for law enforcement to locate the threat.
  • Guard 911/School Guard: Guard 911 is an app alert system that approved teachers and school administrators download on their smartphone in order to connect directly with law enforcement as well as notify all staff personnel. Also allows for smaller alert notification to specified school personnel in non-life-threatening emergencies.
  • App-based school alert system: An Indiana lawmaker wants to implement an app-based school alert system that both students and school administrators can use.
  • NetTalon: NetTalon is a company that provides a program called Virtual Command. Virtual Command is an alert system that connects automatically to local law enforcement dispatch centers. Each teacher and school administrator is given an alert key that when pressed sets off alarms throughout the entire school. This technology includes video cameras, motion detectors, and controlled door locking to allow for tracking of a threat, location of a threat, and restriction of threat movements that allow law enforcement to better remove of the threat.

Warning Signs

  • The Columbia Lighthouse Project: The Columbia Lighthouse Project is an initiative with the goal of assessing the risk of students to prevent suicide. They use the Columbia-Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS) to screen students with the intention to allow more teachers to recognize the early signs that often lead students to commit school shootings.
  • Safe2Tell: Safe2Tell is a mobile app that anyone can download onto their smartphone. The company is based out of Colorado and allows all students, teachers and school personnel alike to report anonymously about concerns or threats to their school, community, friends or family. On their online website they also have resources with presentations and training for school personnel, community groups and law enforcement.
  • CSPV at the University of Colorado at Boulder: The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence is a research center that focuses on how to prevent violence. They partner up with various lobbying firms and work with legislators to change policies with the main purpose of making the world a safer place. They have compiled a list of resources on the best programs, practices and policies to prevent violence.
  • Reading Between the Lines: Recognizing Insider References to School Shooters: This document gives the reader insights on how one can spot red flags within a person’s actions that could lead to a possible shooter threat. By examining mannerisms, word use, social interaction, or even Social media posts; anyone can possibly prevent a mass shooting within their community.
  • A Guide to Insider References Used by School Shooters and Other Attackers: This document gives examples of how future killers have used killers of the past as role models. By doing this these future kills can give them selves away in cryptic messaging or action. By noticing these inscriptions one can possibly detect a future school shooters.
  • School Shooters: The Warning Signs: This document gives examples of possible warning signs that can be shown by a possible school shooter. Looking into ones admiration, direct threats, and even just the language used by an individual can show direct or indirect warning signs for a potential violent act. Predicting violence can be a very difficult task, but by knowing the signs is the first step to preventing future shootings.

Example Resources

  • SAMHSA School and Campus Health: The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration provides school administrators with resources to make school safer, prevent bullying, and decrease the amount of underage drinking so that there is a minimized risk of violence.
  • ASCD School Safety Resources: The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development has put together a list of resources for school administrators to keep students safe and help students dealing with mental health issues.
  • NSBA Center for Safe Schools Program: The National School Boards Association provides resources for school personnel to enhance student and school safety. They work with state school board associations to tailor their resources towards the needs of the school that they are assisting. They also host an annual conference to allow school personnel to share knowledge and resources.
  • Safety and Security Guidelines for K-12: Security experts have partnered up to help school administrators pick the best resources for strengthening their building security. They provide a tiered recommendation system so that administrators, no matter what the budget, can prepare for the worst situations in their school. Their system is also tailored to best fit the school that they are working with to ensure that the best methods for that particular school are being followed.
  • Indiana School Safety Guidelines for Emergency Response Systems: The Indiana Department of Homeland Security has compiled a list of their minimum standards and best practices to ensure school safety. When compiling this list, experts from across Indiana were consulted. These experts include the Indiana Sheriffs’ Association, the Indiana Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Indiana Department of Education. These experts encourage these recommendations to be implemented in every school, not just across Indian, but across the entire country. These safety guidelines ensure that schools are using the best practices and assist schools is directing their funding towards safety and security.
  • Twenty Simple Strategies to Safer and More Effective Schools: This document gives school officials the ideas of using practical low-cost to no-cost strategies to adding more safety to their schools.  By improving bettor collaboration between students, staff, and protection officials, schools can become a safer place for our children.
  • Arapahoe High School Active-Shooter Incident: This document gives insight of the Arapahoe High School Active-Shooter Incident and by looking into this incident we can evaluate how we can possibly prevent situations like this from happening in the future. By taking the necessary steps of prevention we can make schools a safer place for all and prevent deaths within our own communities.
  • Seven Important Building Design Features to Enhance School Safety and Security: This document goes over key concepts that can reduce the risk of harm to individuals within a security risk situation. By exploring safer school designs and working on enhancing safety it is possible to prevent future risks to security and safety within schools.
  • Report of Relative Risks of Death in U.S. K-12 Schools: This document dives into the relive risks of harm and or death within schools facilities. By assessing these dangers school boards can build risk assessment plans to help themselves prepare for the unknown future. It is important to fundamentally change a critical aspect of our prevention and preparedness strategies for preventing school shootings that could occur in the future.
  • Let None Learn in Fear

Sample Plans

  • How Schools Have Successfully Prevented Violence: This is an article on the steps to take in order to prevent violence in schools by minimizing threats, securing a school from active threats, and quickly and effectively informing law enforcement of a threat.
  • REMS Technical Assistance Center: The Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools Center provides plans and tools for every step of the process involving a school shooting including plans on how to prevent, protect, mitigate, respond, and recover from a school shooting.
  • Secret Service NTAC Enhancing School Safety Brief: United States Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center recommended targeted school violence prevention plan.
  • FC on School Safety: The Federal Commission has compiled resources past school safety reports, reports on past school shootings, and federal and state resources to reach out to better prevent and deal with acts of violence
  • Southwestern Consolidated Fact Summary: The Southwestern Consolidated School District’s Emergency Response System is an example plan of one of the safest schools in America. This plan has been endorsed by Indiana Chiefs of Police. SWAT Associations, the Indiana State Teacher’s Associations and the Principals and Superintendents Associations. This plan contains all the information that school personnel would need to create a plan for their school.

<< GO BACK  |  ACTIVE MEASURES >>