Campus Safety Voices

Each year, Orange County Public Schools conducts training, dubbed Preparedness Days, to train school leaders on emergency management and safety issues. However, this annual event started much smaller, the way many safety initiatives do. Several years ago, the Florida school district was gifted tourniquets and Stop the Bleed kits from one of its hospital partners, Orlando Health. Over three days in...

Southern hospitality may be alive and well in much of North Carolina, but safety precedes manners at Buncombe County Public Schools. For Joseph Hough, district assistant superintendent of auxiliary services and school safety and a 2024 Campus Safety Director of the Year finalist, access control has always been a priority. Over the years, he has implemented several inexpensive -- and even some free...

Nineteen years ago, Aaron Skrbin, now director of safety and security at the Allegheny Intermediate Unit, was unwittingly thrust into the role of school safety.  During his second meeting as assistant principal at a Pennsylvania school district, the superintendent noted he had a first responder background before handing him a dusty binder containing the district's emergency operations plans w...

Much of today’s focus regarding K-12 school safety and security is on emergency response. Various stakeholders, including district leaders, parents, and school boards, want to know if a school is prepared to respond to an incident, particularly those involving violence. However, prevention should be at the forefront of the rhetoric and school safety plans, and behavioral threat assessments play a...

On March 5, 2024, the U.S. Department of Education issued Liberty University a $14 million fine over its violation of the Clery Act for its handling of sexual assault allegations. Liberty also violated the Clery Act in 2010, and the latest review found the school failed to initiate and sustain remedial action from those findings. The penalty is the largest Clery fine in history, dwarfing the Depar...

Being proactive with a unified approach to school security and safety is critical to preventing and responding to incidents. However, historically most school districts have taken the exact opposite approach. Traditionally, they’ve waited to address their pressing safety and security vulnerabilities until after a major incident has occurred, according to Michael Garcia, HID Global’s safe schools n...

Inclusivity is the practice of providing equal access to opportunities and resources for those who might otherwise be marginalized. An inclusive school safety plan accounts for everyone’s individual needs and abilities — including students and staff — when and if a school is faced with an emergency. We spoke with Dr. Roderick Sams, a former educator and administrator of 20+ years, about ways schoo...

In the three months following the start of the Israel-Hamas war, anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. increased by 360% compared to the same period one year prior. Anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian incidents increased by 178%. Some of these incidents occurred on K-12 and college campuses. In Georgia, a middle school teacher was fired for allegedly threatening physical harm to a 13-year-old girl. In I...

Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation on college campuses are at an all-time high. More than 60% meet the criteria for at least one mental health problem -- a nearly 50% increase since 2013. College students are also seeking support at an unprecedented rate, openly discussing their struggles with professionals to formulate a game plan for improving their well-being and overall educat...

On March 15, 2022, 16-year-old Shawn Dwight Tolbert was fatally shot following an altercation between two groups of teens in the parking lot at Eisenhower High School in Yakima, Washington. As with all campus incidents, the district did a full after-action review of the shooting and the school's response. It was determined a security monitor gave incorrect information regarding the location o...

On Nov. 30, 2021, a student at Michigan's Oxford High School shot and killed four classmates and wounded six other people. Several weeks ago, independent investigators released a 572-page report outlining both successes and failures in the school's response before, during, and after the incident. In this interview with Campus Safety, Jill Lemond, who was Oxford Community School's as...

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) refers to the integration of architectural design and environmental factors to reduce criminal activity. Many strategies can be used to deter crime but perhaps the three most common, effective, and practical ones are natural surveillance and visibility (00:01), lighting (04:53), and wayfinding (09:22). Paul Timm, currently Allegion's Direc...

In a March 2022 survey, paraprofessionals, school counselors, instructional aides, and school resource officers (SROs) reported the highest rates of student physical violence (22%), while 18% of school psychologists and social workers, 15% of administrators, and 14% of teachers reported at least one violent incident by a student during the pandemic. In this interview, Dr. Marisa Randazzo, executiv...

On Dec. 1, 2013, Kari Hunt was stabbed 29 times by her husband in a Texas motel room while their three children were present. Kari’s nine-year-old daughter dialed 911 four times from the motel room phone but the calls never went through because the motel’s phone system required users to press “9” before dialing outside lines. Kari ultimately died that night, and coroners estimate she lived for 25-...

Dr. James Corbin, who is student safety and security coordinator for Hamilton County Schools in Tennessee, was tasked with developing a safety department for his district. Not only did he do so from scratch, but he also grew his department to more than 60 employees in only three years. Additionally, almost all of his employees have stayed with the department… a remarkable feat considering the curr...

To combat the nationwide police shortage, Eric James, chief of police for the University of Nevada, Reno Police Department-Northern Command and a 2023 Campus Safety Director of the Year finalist, secured funding to add at least one community service officer position to each campus (2:11). These student officers almost exclusively spend their time on foot patrol and handle cold calls for service, l...

A fall 2019 survey of approximately 167,000 students at two- or four-year colleges found 39% had experienced food insecurity in the last 30 days, according to an annual survey conducted by Temple University’s Hope Center for College, Community and Justice. On college campuses throughout the country, there are various departments and organizations working diligently to improve food access. At the U...

For years now, school districts have debated if school resource officers (SROs) make K-12 campuses safer or more dangerous, with some making the difficult decision to remove their police officers. The Lynwood (California) Unified School District (USD) was one such district, doing away with its SRO program before the COVID-19 pandemic. Doing so meant Lynwood USD needed to figure out other ways to p...

In 2022, Howard University received eight bomb threats based on racial motivations. As chief of police and executive director of the school’s Department of Public Safety, Marcus Lyles was tasked with responding to these threats as well as addressing concerns and fears expressed by the Howard community. In this interview, Lyles shares how the threats impacted Howard students and staff, as well as h...

After three people were tragically killed and five others were wounded in a February shooting at Michigan State University, conversations started swirling about how to best protect an open campus. While there are leading practices for improving safety on an open campus, each campus has its own unique challenges and therefore its own unique solutions. Vanguard University, located in Costa Mesa, Cal...

Outdoor public address systems are critical components of any school’s emergency notification system. Emergency messages must reach everyone on campus, including those students, faculty, and staff members who are outside on the football field, baseball diamond, picnic areas, playgrounds, and other outdoor areas. Unfortunately, PA speakers often aren’t installed in remote outdoor locations on campu...

Partnerships have long proven successful in improving safety within a community. Historically, these partnerships have been between various first responder groups. As the social divide within our country continues to widen, partnerships between first responders and social workers have proven extremely successful. This rings true for the University of Maryland Baltimore Police Department (UMBPD) si...

At the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and UT Health Science Center, all incidents are shared with and monitored by the police department. Threats are also shared with other campus leaders to ensure everyone -- at all times -- has a clear picture of the campus threat landscape. In this interview, Chief William Adcox shares why information sharing is essential to mitigating healthcare...

Brown County’s Teen Heartsaver Initiative has provided First Aid training and certification to nearly 2,000 high school students, campus employees, and area residents. The program, which was developed and launched by Brown County Kansas Sheriff John Merchant, has saved many lives. One student who received the training performed the Heimlich maneuver on a choking child she was babysitting. A bus dr...

Budget limitations are some of the biggest challenges campuses face when it comes to making security improvements. Whether it’s a school, college, hospital, or church, just to name a few, most safety and security leaders are expected to do a lot with little when it comes to protecting their facilities. In fiscal year 2022-2023, Cesar Gracia, director of public safety and chief of police at East Te...