By Bret Rachlin on 11/24/2009 2:57 PM

Recently, a Ballston Spa High School (New York state) student was arraigned in court for allegedly setting off fire crackers in school (Source: Associated Content, November 19, 2009, Ballston Spa High School Receives Unwelcomed Fireworks Show). Witnesses say that the student “threw the pyrotechnics into a crowd of students in the school cafeteria and caused students to run for cover.” Hopefully, the video surveillance system captured the event, so investigators can use the video to support their case.

At least, this school had some video in the cafeteria, as many schools often install cameras in only a select few locations across their campuses. This high school now sees that it was valuable to add video to its cafeteria, but there are four other ways schools can use video more effectively:
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By Bret Rachlin on 11/20/2009 3:50 PM

How reliable is the school safety information contained in the New York State Department of Education’s software application designed to track schools across the state (Source: Poughkeepsie Journal, November 16, 2009, Schools’ safety data unreliable since 2006)? Unfortunately, it’s not very reliable according to a Poughkeepsie Journal investigation. In addition to failing schools incorrectly, the report indicates that data from more than 5,000 schools in the state are useless. What’s more, “despite a law mandating it, the state also never contacted districts whose schools had these ‘failing’ grades.”

The article goes on to highlight several schools who explain the inaccuracies of the data, showing that they either fixed any safety issues or that those issues never even existed. The state removed the flawed information from its web site, but a state spoke ... Read More »

By Bret Rachlin on 11/9/2009 3:22 PM

This week's blog post comes from our guest, Elizabeth Harper, 2009 Winner of the Wren SRO Scholarship.  While this post is longer than our normal posts, it provides insight into the work of SROs, as she encourages SROs to apply for this year's awards program.

Last year at this time, I was balancing two positions. By day, I was the School Resource Officer (SRO) for Fallston Middle and High Schools (working through the Harford County Sherriff’s Office). After hours I was a student, pursuing my criminal justice degree at Harford Community College. So, when I received the news that the tuition reimbursements my department had once offered were being eliminated due to budget cuts, I was faced with the challenge of finding an alternative route to finance my education – something I consider important to my work as an SRO and as an individual. Read More »

By Bret Rachlin on 11/4/2009 9:35 AM

Last Tuesday I participated in the 10th annual “Principal for a Day” event, shadowing Principal Peter McKnight at the South Atlanta School of Law and Social Justice. Over 160 business leaders followed principals around for the day across Atlanta Public Schools, so that we could learn and appreciate the level of effort principals put forth during a typical day. Moreover, the program enables community business leaders to initiate and build relationships with their school counterparts, providing insight from the business world, while also gaining perspective from observing the similarities and differences that exist in school env ... Read More »

By Bret Rachlin on 10/30/2009 3:19 PM

Earlier this month a West Virginia county gathered first responders together for a table-top exercise to focus on its emergency response procedures. The county used a mock chemical spill as its emergency (Source: WVNS-TV, October 17, 2009, “First Responders Gather for Table Top Exercise"). The mock chemical spill targeted an area near a school, along with a hospital and several businesses, to simulate the kind of chaos that can ensue in the case of an emergency.

Training drills help emergency personnel determine how prepared they are and what areas require additional practice. Concerning chemical spills, many schools’ emergency plans center on spills occurring within the school. However, what happens when the spill is from outside the school? Recently, a chemical spill near Indianapolis, IN, prompted a nearby school to keep its students and staff in ... Read More »

By Bret Rachlin on 10/23/2009 1:53 PM

Education Week’s “Inside School Research” blog had an interesting post this week about school shootings. Instead of highlighting school shooting issues, such as preventing them or mitigating their impact, the blog focused on a study that will be published this week in Psychological Science that says “school shootings are more likely to occur in states with a strongly rooted ‘culture of honor.’”

According to Debbie Viadero, the blog’s author, the report describes “societies that exhibit a culture of honor put ‘a high premium on strength and social regard in connection with one's person, f ... Read More »

By Bret Rachlin on 10/16/2009 2:34 PM

Next week is America’s Safe Schools Week. Sponsored by the National School Safety Center along with state governors and state school superintendents, the goal of this campaign is to motivate all those people involved with schools, including administrators, teachers, parents, students, and law enforcement to advocate “vigorously” for school safety.

Please click on the link above to read in depth about a list of strategies for schools to implement to improve safety. Key strategies include:

- Convince your school board, superintendent and principals that quality education requires safe, disciplined and peaceful schools.
- Establish a systematic, district wide mandatory incident reporting system.
- Develop safety policies.
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By Bret Rachlin on 10/9/2009 7:52 AM

Since the beginning of the 2007-8 school year, 67 Chicago students have died violently. Most of them have been killed just blocks away from school grounds, including Derrion Albert, the 16-year-old honor student who was beaten after getting caught on his way home between two rival South Side gangs (Source: New York Times, October 7, 2009, Focus in Chicago: Students at Risk of Violence).

To counteract this cycle of violence, Chicago has hired a new chief officer of public schools, Ron Huberman, a former police officer, who plans to use statistics and probability to improve the safety of students when they commute to and from school. Although controversy surrounds his plan, especially since it costs $60 million over two years to implement and only focuses on 10,000 high risk high school students, Huberman argues tha ... Read More »

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By Bret Rachlin on 10/2/2009 8:06 AM

Since this blog typically focuses on K-12 school security and safety issues and often the stories highlight security incidents, I thought it would be nice to profile a different story this week that centers on higher education. Recently, the Daily Beast blog ranked the top 25 safest college campuses (Source: Campus Safety Magazine, September 28, 2009, Blog Ranks Top 25 Safest Campuses) (Please see the link for a list of the 25 schools.).

According to the blog, “The Daily Beast took the two most recent years of raw data from almost 9,000 schools and then further analyzed more than 4,000 (excluding two-year colleges, standalone graduate schools, etc.) over more than 50 different crit ... Read More »

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By Bret Rachlin on 9/25/2009 3:04 PM

Have you implemented a security plan for your high school sporting events? After the shooting deaths of two teenagers (not on school grounds), Manatee school district in Florida has increased its security at all high school football games and other events (Source: HeraldTribune.com, September 18, 2009, Manatee officials beef up school security).

Event attendees can expect to see more police officers and to be scanned by metal detectors or patted down for weapons when they come to football games. District officials also plan to ban backpacks from school events. Unfortunately, the increased security could lead to higher ticket prices and will most certainly lead to a slower entry into the stadium as officers check fans coming to the game.

Overall, in light of the recent shooting incidents, Manatee ... Read More »

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