MOST SCHOOL SAFETY CRISIS situations take place in schools where there has not recently been a comprehensive hazard and vulnerability assessment. Most school crisis situations occur when gaps between the existent risk level and the safety measures that should be in place to offset them result in a safety or security breach. There is risk inherent in any environment. The key to safety is to accurately determine the level of risk and to offset that risk with appropriate protective measures.

The only effective way to develop and maintain a truly effective campus safety strategy is to coordinate periodic assessments of vulnerabilities and risks. Efforts to implement safety and security strategies and solutions without a fact-based assessment process will typically prove to be ineffective, fiscally irresponsible, and sometimes even counterproductive.

As one example, one public school system purchased a high quality security camera system for a high school. When the district was sued because a student was brutally beaten by gang members in a main hallway during school hours, the plaintiff's attorney showed a five minute segment from the school's security camera system to the jury. The footage clearly depicts a student being savagely kicked and beaten for several minutes. The attorney asked the jury to consider where school staff were while this lengthy and brutal attack was being carried out. The footage helped the attorney prove conclusively that proper and effective supervision of students was not in place.

Any type of security or safety equipment must be properly integrated with and supported by appropriate human utilization of the resource. In this instance, the camera system was not able to overcome the lack of proper supervision in the school which could have been easily identified with a comprehensive safety assessment.

This is a prime example of basing safety measures on gut feeling and common perceptions rather than a formal assessment of hazards and vulnerabilities. Sadly, it is not uncommon to see public and independent K12 schools, colleges, universities and technical colleges expend considerable fiscal and human resources on safety and security only to be hit hard by a major safety event.

Safe Havens International analysts have worked with thousands of educational organizations, public safety agencies and state and national government agencies around the world in using a fact-based assessment approach to intelligently tie safety and security equipment and strategies to the most pressing concerns that exist in specific educational organizations. Safe Havens has recently completed two state-wide projects in the United States where more than 1,300 instructors have been trained to coordinate these types of assessments. Safe Havens is currently undertaking a research project with Vietnam National University to help Vietnamese educators use a more scientific approach to school safety and school climate issues. We shall discuss the basic approach to hazard and vulnerability assessment for educational organizations that has been developed by Safe Havens for use by any type of school, any where in the world.

An effective comprehensive evaluation of risk for schools involves six components:

Review of National Data

A review of data pertaining to school safety incidents can help demonstrate the types of hazards confronting schools in general and educational organizations of similar demographics, size, geographic location etc. Care must be taken as there are many "studies" cited by the media that are not conducted by trained researchers. For example, the American media has cited data in recent years showing that the homicide rate in American K12 schools has increased. However, there is not a single study by a trained researcher to support this assertion. In fact, the K12 homicide rate has decreased in the past three decades.

This assessment phase is helpful in demonstrating the types of trends for various safety incidents in general, but is the least accurate of the assessment approaches listed here. Being aware of trends in safety incidents of all types, not just those that receive intensive media coverage, helps to create a balanced approach.

Reported Incident Data

A careful review of incident data for the specific educational organization by time, location, frequency and type of incident is important. This assessment will be most accurate when the organization has established written policies requiring mandatory reporting of specific types of incidents such as weapons violations, drug violations, accidents, fights and bullying. This evaluation should emphasize the appearance of any patterns that are predictive of the potential for major incidents. For example, if weapons are regularly being seized, it is clear the risk of a weapons assault taking place is higher. If most of the weapons seized are due to tips from students, we can deduce that the actual rate of weapons violations is much higher than the recoveries indicate because the tip is the least reliable means to detect weapons on campus (though it is the most common recovery method in most schools). If the data indicates a high number of fights in a school each year, we know the risk of a weapons assault is even higher because the vast majority of school weapons assaults are triggered by a physical altercation.

While a review of reported incident data alone will provide only a partial picture of the safety concerns of any organization, this information can prove to be very helpful in assessing risk when augmented by the other assessment techniques described here.

Safety Surveys of Staff Students and Parents

Many school safety experts agree that significant numbers of safety incidents and criminal incidents on school property are not reported to or detected by school officials. While it is important to utilize survey instruments that can be mathematically scored, it is at least as important to offer survey respondents an opportunity to make written responses to open ended questions such as "Is there any place on or near campus where you are concerned for your safety? If so, where and at what time(s)?" Sometimes, the most valuable information comes from the written comments of survey respondents.

Tactical Site Surveys

The tactical site survey is a multidisciplinary hazard and vulnerability assessment and emergency pre-planning inventory of a school or support facility and its grounds. This type of assessment should be conducted at least once each year with at least one participant being formally trained in the tactical site survey process. While many schools hire private consultants to perform these assessments, we have typically found this approach to be ineffective at achieving lasting and meaningful change. A far more effective approach is to utilize available funding to have experts train a local team to coordinate their own tactical site surveys. This approach creates a sustainable system while also affecting a more significant cultural change in the school. We have seen numerous situations where a consulting firm has coordinated assessments prior to a catastrophic school safety event. In most of these cases, changes that could have averted the tragedy did not take place because school officials were not invested in the process.

Community Hazard Assessment

The easiest of the assessment processes for school officials is the review of the community hazard and vulnerability assessment. This is because this assessment has already been completed by local emergency management and public safety officials in most communities. School officials should schedule a meeting with a representative from the local emergency management agency to review the results of the latest community hazard and vulnerability assessment. Most community hazards affect the risk level at area schools whether they are chemical hazards or hazards relating to gang or drug activity.

Independent All Hazards Evaluation

When funding is available or quality services are offered at no cost by a state agency, an independent safety and security assessment conducted by an experienced, formally trained and properly credentialed expert can dramatically reduce risk. The credentials of safety experts become extraordinarily important in the event of any future safety litigation and evaluation of credentials helps to ensure that a qualified professional is being utilized. This evaluation is appropriate whether the expert is a free government resource or a for fee service provider. The expert's credentials must hold up under the close scrutiny of major litigation if a major safety incident ever occurs.

Summary report

When each of these types of assessment is completed, a summary report can be prepared, often by the independent expert assessment outlined in the last section. This report should summarize the findings of the various assessment methods utilized into a relatively concise format containing specific recommendation for addressing the concerns noted during the evaluation of each assessment.

The assessment process described above will almost always be the least expensive fiscal approach to safety and security. This assessment process is often one of the most effective ways for a school or school system to improve the learning environment because there are fewer distractions to the process of education in a stable, orderly and warm climate that only a safe school can provide. Thousands of public, private and independent schools have faced major expenditures due to preventable safety incidents that were not prevented because the actual level of risk was not determined. In one instance, a small school district expended more than one third of their normal annual budget in just one month following a single safety incident. This of course, does not count the expense of the litigation that followed, the increase in annual insurance premiums, the loss of pubic confidence and, most of all, the incalculable human pain and suffering resulting from the failure of school officials to determine their actual level of risk and implement appropriate safety measures.

About the Author: The author of more than 20 books on schools safety, Michael Dorn serves as the Executive Director of Safe Havens International Inc. an international non profit school safety center whose analysts have work experience in more than two dozen countries. On the road from Vietnam to Virginia more than 300 days this year keynoting conferences and working with individual schools and school districts, Dorn has a vision that children should be safe at school wherever they happen to live. For more information on school safety, a free copy of his latest e-book, or a variety of free school safety evaluation tools, visit the Safe Havens International web site at www.safehavensinternational.org