SROs: A great investment in campus safety
One of the best security measures any district can employ is a school resource officer (SRO)--a trained police officer assigned to a campus. If an emergency strikes, the…
Patrick Fiel
Buses need security, too
School buses are often a likely place for assaults, bullying, and vandalism to occur. In a Chicago suburb, a 3-year-old, hearing-impaired girl was allegedly assaulted on a school…
Campus recovering after massacre
It’s been more than five years now since a 16-year-old student at Red Lake High School in Minnesota shot and killed his grandfather and the grandfather’s girlfriend. He…
Work with staff, parents, and students
Not long ago, the decision by a Northeastern school district to install security cameras in two high schools without any announcement to parents, faculty, staff or students stirred…
Think outside the box: Doing more with less, Part 2
In my last blog, I wrote about the massive budget deficits facing most school districts, making it vital that everyone learn to do more with less. Yet, at…
Schools see the value of cameras
More and more school districts are seeing the value of camera systems in helping to protect campuses. There is a ... Read more
Keep after-school events safe
The start of a new high school football season is a reason to celebrate–but it also is a time for ... Read more
More schools take security seriously
As we enter a new school year, I'm happy to see several districts spent the summer making investments in keeping their students, faculty and staff safer. One New…
Train and maintain
One of the more confusing stories I’ve read lately comes from East St. Louis, Ill., where burglars have taken more than $1 million in...
Copper thieves continue to strike
Schools are not immune. I recently wrote about an Oklahoma district hard hit by thieves taking or gutting…
We owe our students more
Once a student becomes a victim of a school crime, he or she becomes more aware of…
Detroit’s commitment to school security
The Detroit Public Schools is moving briskly forward with plans to spend nearly...
Great cooperation between school and law enforcement officials
School and law enforcement officials in Central Florida’s Volusia County are to be commended for their efforts to…
Handcuffs for first graders?
How far can a school go in disciplining students? Twenty states have laws permitting…
Schools: Protect yourselves
Here’s another story that leaves me shaking my head. A Midwestern school district has reported…
Don’t ‘pass the trash’
An investigation in 2008 by the state of Oregon found that 47 schools in the state had made a “pass the trash” deal over the previous five years.…
Safe passages
Chicago has had major problems with gangs attacking people throughout the city, including school kids going to and from school each day. I’m sure many of us remember…
Let cops carry the guns
One thing that still surprises me is the number of states willing to allow college and university students to carry concealed weapons on campus. More than 30 years…
What price on student safety?
One of the most important security measures any district can employ is a program in which…
Cameras up North
Although security cameras in schools raise staff and student privacy issues, they can be highly beneficial when it comes to...
Practice the plan
Recently police officers moved through a Florida middle school hunting for a gunman that had opened fire on campus. There was blood everywhere. Students were lying on the…
Lock the gates
It seems a first-grade student recently slipped away from a Massachusetts school with the intention of walking home. Apparently, none of the school staff noticed him leaving. Fortunately,…
Kid vandals?
The criminals seem to get younger all the time. A school in Louisiana recently reported...
3,000 new sex offenders each month
As of June, there are now 716,750 registered sex offenders in this country. What alarms me is that number is up nearly 72,000 over the past two years.…
Protect teachers, too
Most often, talk about securing campuses centers around protecting the students. But there are times that we have to remember that we need to...
Why does something always have to go wrong?
Moved by the disappearance of a 7-year-old boy in Portland, Ore., a mother of two in southwest Washington has started a petition to…
More on preparing for a potential campus lockdown
In my last higher-education blog, I wrote about planning for how and when to lockdown a campus. Once the task force is in place and working, it’s time…
Peers judge peers
The idea behind zero tolerance for school violence is generally a good one. But some states and local districts have taken their policies a little bit too far...
Hotline goes 21st century
I applaud the state of Missouri for taking one of my favorite ideas for deterring campus crime and violence...
Cameras help the human eye
We always have to be cognizant of privacy rights when installing cameras. I could never support cameras in restrooms or athletic locker rooms. But I also don’t see…
Problems happen
Fortunately, the cost of delaying installation of basic security measures didn’t result in much more than an inconvenience for one midwest K-12 district.
No access for bad guys
In my last blog, I referenced some of the security measures used on K-12 campuses, according to a Zogby International survey of 400 teachers. The most popular measure…
Teachers speak about campus security
Last fall I was involved with a Zogby International survey, in which 400 K-12 teachers answered all manner of campus security questions. There were some interesting findings. Nearly…
Don’t take chances with information
While Twitter delivers quick messages, mass notification systems have several key advantages that make them invaluable to school administrators in an emergency.
Stop the bullying
Data indicating that more children are being bullied in and out of school, along with news that a 15-year-old girl committed suicide after being bullied by classmates, have…