Building a Comprehensive School Security Strategy: Community Engagement

By Brandon Faber

Published on Apr 04, 2024

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We’ve addressed the primary aspects of school safety: the physical security measures and the protocols for security events before, during, and after they occur. In this post, our attention will shift to the crucial component of community engagement, which can be categorized into three main groups: law enforcement, parents, and the broader community.

Engaging Law Enforcement

While law enforcement agencies may be obvious as an engagement point, there is an element of ongoing discussion and engagement that should be considered in the school safety strategy. A positive relationship between law enforcement, school security staff, and the student population is important not just in the students’ school day, but in their daily lives as well. This aids in dismantling barriers of misperception and in identifying potential issues, aiding in preventing both potential school safety incidents and other legal matters.

Many schools have a school resource officer (SRO) either full time or part time, whose job, beyond physical security and the maintenance of law and order, is to build such relationships with the student population. The National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) strongly advocates that SRO’s should be carefully selected, specifically trained, and properly equipped. Schools lacking the support of a School Resource Officer (SRO) should explore more than just police presence from a local agency. They should actively collaborate with the agency to facilitate officers meeting and conversing with students, fostering relationships in informal settings like lunch or break-time gatherings.

In last week’s post, we discussed emergency response, and conducting drills in support of a comprehensive school safety strategy. Nevertheless, it’s crucial for these drills to involve school staff, allowing for critiques from multiple perspectives and enabling the implementation of improvements. School staff members need to know what agencies will be involved in a response, how they will coordinate, and expectations for them, faculty and students. Continuous dialogue between agencies, school, and district administration should be formalized, with meetings dedicated to reviewing incidents from around the country. This approach allows for learning from these incidents and adapting strategies to update school safety protocols.

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Parental Engagement

K-12 education, and society in general is increasingly realizing the importance of mental health. Severe mental health issues leading to a school safety incident represent an extreme circumstance. Our goal is to do everything possible to avoid school safety incidents, but a school also has a responsibility to support the mental health and wellbeing of its student population as a whole. Parents have the overall responsibility for the health, (including mental health) of their children, so student care therefore becomes a partnership between parents, healthcare workers and school staff. An ongoing dialog and partnership should be forged between schools and their students’ parents. This should include the latest research findings and techniques, how to be vigilant and attentive to how minors communicate, and other factors such as the impacts of social media on mental health. Moreover, when parents frequently visit the school and engage with other parents, they help contribute to vigilance and foster an enduring culture of security awareness in schools.

Parents also play a crucial role during safety incidents. Although a parent’s initial reaction upon hearing of a safety situation may be to go directly to their affected child, this is not the best way to speed up the resolution of the incident. Every school district should have a collaborative reunification plan in place which has been communicated to every stakeholder possible. The I Love U Guys Foundation has developed its Standard Reunification Method (SRM) and provides it to districts across the nation free of charge. The SRM is an amazing tool that can help schools implement and carry out an organized plan to reunite students and staff with their families.

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General Community Engagement

It’s also best practice for school districts to keep the wider community aware of efforts and measures being taken to minimize the risk of critical incidents, and to be prepared should one occur. This practice also helps to continue build a school climate of vigilance and security conscientiousness, and even helps other institutions and public places be more prepared in case they are targeted.

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Summary

Ongoing communications, dialog and discussions around what is expected from everyone involved in relation to school security is critically important for a comprehensive, effective school safety strategy. Beyond awareness, learnings, changes and policy updates being implemented can also be discussed and reviewed in elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools. These collaborative approaches reinforce public consciousness of school safety, physical security, and vigilance in identifying potential threats before they escalate into a critical incident.

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Getting Help and Resources

For additional resources on addressing school safety, you can review guidelines and materials from our partners at Partner Alliance for Safer Schools (PASS).

You can also get in touch with us directly. We’d love to hear your thoughts and comments.

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Learn more about our complete School Safety Program