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.
