Assessing The Safety Of Your Child's School

School safety expert advises parents on what to look for in school safety plans, after-school programs, walking to school, drop-off and pick-up locations, and school buildings.

DISCUSSION
Michael Dorn
School Safety Analyst
Safe Havens International

What are the characteristics of a safe school?

A safe school is a school where safety concerns are openly acknowledged, where there is participation and involvement between school officials and students, parents and community stakeholders and resource agencies like police, fire, emergency management, juvenile court and probation officials. A safe school is one that has a best practices four-phase school safety plan, and a safe school is a school that conducts assessments every year to determine their level of risks, tactical sight surveys, surveys of staff, students and parents and other means, to see if we're really on task with where our threats and our safety strategies are and that the concerns are being appropriately addressed.

How can I tell if my child's school is safe?

First and foremost, does the school have a best practices four-phase plan in place? Do they have a written prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery plan? Have they conducted annual tactical site surveys of the facility? They may call that a safety audit or assessment. That is fine, but then an annual physical assessment, annual site student, staff and parent surveys and then look for visible indicators. Are fights a regular occurrence? That is a very bad sign. Is there a lack of things like dress code? Do they have poor access control? If you can go into a school and not show photo ID to staff who do not know you by name, then that's not good access control. If side doors are open during the day, that often shows a lack of concern for safety. That said, there are many different building configurations, but basically you shouldn't be able to just walk around a school without showing ID and signing in and putting on some type of time sensitive visitor badge in the system. Ask questions about how often drills are conducted, and how often safety training is conducted. I look more at what the school is doing than what the inherent level of risk is. I have seen schools in very high crime communities that are much safer than schools that are surrounded by million dollar homes. There may be less inherent risk, but they are not doing the things to mitigate that risk that the should. Look at what is being done in the school, and what is in place.

What should I do if my child's school does not have a safety plan?

Go through the process. Express your concern to the Headmaster or Principal. If appropriate, express it to the board, the Superintendent of Schools, and other people that you may choose to interact with. Schools respond to parental concerns fairly well. The reason why so many schools do not have the type of plans as they should, what we typically see is that it is not on the radar screen of the parents. Parents have not been complaining about it, and they have not been expressing support or concern. Try to work with an assistant. Don't be antagonistic, but express your desires and concerns as a parent and make school officials know that you are concerned about safety, because by and large they do respond to the constituency. Unfortunately, a lot of parents don't see safety truly as a priority. They are not willing to go ask a few questions, or to take a few minutes to find what the safety is and should be, and to express their support for that or concern if it is not there.

How can I encourage the school district to reevaluate its school safety plan?

One of the things is to become involved. Ask to volunteer. A well-run school system or independent school will have a school safety committee of some form with parental representation. You can ask to serve on that committee and become more involved if you want to make that investment of time. But basically just express your concern. Ask the questions. Has the plan been re-evaluated within the last year? Has the plan been developed with public safety officials and their input? Has it been evaluated by an external source such as another emergency management agency for the next county over from where you live? Ask questions, become informed and show interest. That's the best way to be a positive driving force for school safety.

How can I determine if it's safe for my child to walk to school?

It can be difficult to determine how safe it is for your child to walk to school. You have different factors to look at. First, you have to look at the climate, the environment, and the neighborhood. Is there gang graffiti? Are there other indications of high crime? In any environment with children, we have to be concerned about sexual child predators who will seek out access to children. So a low crime neighborhood may be the kind of place they seek access to children, because people are not as alert. Also you need to look at the inherent risks. What about traffic flow and patterns? Next, we look at our child. What is their emotional and maturity developmental level? Will they be walking alone or with a group of children that you trust their judgment, maybe with older children that you know. Another thing you might consider is to really look at the route that your child will take. Make sure that they're picking the best route, and then you should go with them and identify the proper route that they should take, because children may not be as aware of risks as you are as a parent.

At what age is it appropriate for my child to walk to school?

It's very difficult to set a number of years. I would say that you have to look at what the risk level is in that neighborhood, what the distance is that they would need to walk from your home to the school or even school bus stop, and what is the developmental level of your child in terms of maturity. Other considerations include how aware do they seem to be about risk, you know, if you are trying to talk to them about how to avoid dangerous situations do they seem to grasp those situations or are they dismissive of you? Again, will they be, walking alone or with a group of children. There is a big difference. There is safety in numbers and if you have a child who will be walking with two older children that you trust and know very well that puts a completely different texture on the situation. You know, what the level of risk is.

What procedures should my child's school have in place for safe drop-off and pick-up?

Unfortunately, some schools are not built as well as they should be, and particularly in terms of drop off and pick up. We help design schools and help train architects on how to properly design schools, and unfortunately, many situations are un-ideal. The bottom line is do you feel uncomfortable: if you look at it, and you watch children being picked up in the afternoon and dropped off in the morning, do you feel uneasy? Because, even if it is a difficult and challenging situation, there are usually things that can be done to buffer a design flaw, or maybe they have too many cars trying to come in, and some inherent risk is there, and there are ways to offset those, so one basic thing is to look and say, "Are there children unattended?", "Do you feel concerned that children would be run over by a car because they are not being properly supervised in relation to the flow of traffic and the number of people, children and vehicles?"

What is an open campus?

An open campus means different things to different people. There is a notion with some that an open campus means the buildings are unlocked, and you can freely come and go. The other idea is that it will make the campus more hospitable and parents will get more involved. The truth of the matter is that type of setting is inherently dangerous. The only reason that something terrible doesn't happen to a child in those circumstances is because someone doesn't want to do that type of harm. You can have a very open and inviting campus with good access control. Open campus designs are inherently more dangerous and other things have to be done to offset that inherent danger. There are so many facility designs and entryways that it is hard to generalize, but the bottom line is that there should be an ability to screen and scan visitors. They shouldn't be able to enter your child's campus from any direction without any form of monitoring, and walk in an endless variety of doors. That is a very dangerous situation, and school officials who think that that is ok, have never been visited by the wrong person on the wrong day. I have had people in my classes in the last year that have had children taken from a school and killed, because of a poor quality access control. This is because they naively did not understand their obligation, legally and morally to protect children; they made excuses.

How can open campus be kept safe?

To have a safe campus that's open and inviting takes a little more creativity, a little more thought. I guess it boils down to what your definition of open campus is, and to many people they misperceive that a campus has to be entirely open to be accessible, and we know from experience that is not the case. Parents when properly educated, and staff, have no problem with having to go through a main point to show identification to visit a campus. We have to define first off what we mean by open. To me, properly open means open and inviting but with decent physical security and you can achieve both. I think people worry too much sometimes that parents won't understand the need for physical security. If we take time and explain the need to them, they'll understand and they won't mind stopping for thirty seconds to ensure the safety of their child and every child in that building, rather than giving up maybe a little bit of convenience and balance for the safety of children.

What should I look for in a safe after-school program?

Like any program involving children, a safe after-school program involves attentive, careful, structured supervision of children. Just like a K-12 school you're looking at a program for your child. Ask yourself if when you tour the facility, are children being supervised? Are children left alone or out of sight of staff unreasonably? Ask yourself if this is a place where the level of supervision is structured. Are there obvious hazards are there things that might fall on a child that are up high on a shelf, that type of thing. If you see those very obvious indicators such as a child left alone or something that may fall on somebody, there's a good chance that there are other safety concerns that may not be so easy to spot and obvious to you.