John Dively is an assistant professor in the Education Administration Department at Eastern Illinois University.

The start of every school year brings a renewed sense of purpose contemplating the responsibilities and opportunities to educate the next generation. Excitement and anticipation are most prevalent, but we wouldn't be human if there weren't a small dose of anxiety as we also contemplate the duty to keep school communities safe and secure.

Numerous resources are available on school safety and crisis management. The specific combination to address the needs of each district and school will be unique. Some strategies are required or strongly encouraged by law, while others are accepted as being effective.

The first step in creating a safe, positive school climate is to actively engage all the school's constituencies. School safety is everyone's business. This is especially important for the student body.

At every opportunity, administrators and teachers should emphasize the obligation students have to work with school officials, anonymously if necessary, to proactively and preemptively address safety issues at their earliest stages. Students know what is going on in the lives of their peers. They know who is involved in activities that make their school less safe. They know who is suffering emotional difficulty and needs support. The cooperation and assistance of the student body exponentially multiply the school's efforts to provide a safe environment.

Sometimes this spirit of cooperation around school safety can be achieved without formal approaches. However, many schools have employed specific programs to foster greater trust and infuse the school's expectations regarding school safety and security in student leaders by implementing peer support curricula. Both Natural Helpers and Lifesavers train student leaders from every subgroup and clique to provide support to others. The benefits in terms of information sharing, peer-to-peer student support and crisis management are significant.

If an incident does occur, these programs provide a core group of student leaders trained to assist other students and school personnel in dealing with the aftermath of a school tragedy. Such programs are especially effective in school crisis situations because students tend to be more comfortable conferencing with peers as opposed to teachers and administrators. Their contributions in these circumstances include providing a healthy, calming response to the event, but they will also provide direct and accurate information to the school community regarding the incident and the school's response.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) notes that while society has traditionally viewed bullying as some "perverse sort of child's play," it is beginning to recognize it as abusive behavior linked to acts of increasing violence as children grow older. This recognition is reflected in schools, and the state legislature is becoming more proactive in addressing this and other sources of interpersonal conflict.

The School Code requires all districts to have a policy prohibiting bullying and may provide bullying intervention instruction. Section 10-20.14 requires that the school board, in consultation with a parent-teacher advisory committee and other community-based organizations, include provisions in the student discipline handbook to address aggressive behaviors, including bullying. These provisions must include procedures for notifying parents regarding early community-based and district intervention procedures.

Section 27-13.3 encourages schools to include two hours of instruction annually regarding Internet safety, including cyberbullying, and Section 27-23.4 requires school districts to provide violence prevention and conflict resolution training for students in grades four through 12. Numerous strategies and programs address behavioral issues, including consultation and behavioral monitoring, communication skills, non-violent problem-solving and decision-making techniques, empathy/caring, gang presence, negotiation/mediation skills, curricula regarding social competence, bullying prevention and community interventions.

Additionally, the U.S. Department of Education's (USDE) Safeguarding Our Children: Action Guide lists many early interventions with varying degrees of complexity and effectiveness aimed at preventing serious and violent juvenile misconduct.

The American Psychological Association's Commission Report supports what educators have suspected about the impact that intervention at the early childhood level has in reducing aggressive and antisocial behavior. Similarly the Illinois Children's Mental Health Task Force concluded in its 2003 report that schools should not overlook student mental health issues with respect to school safety and security, stating that:

"Unfortunately, many children including very young children experience psychological trauma and mental health problems that, if untreated, negatively affect their brain, their behavior, and their academic and social success. Services must reach these young children and their families early to avoid more serious and costly problems."

Another critical issue related to mental health is what school personnel can do with information that indicates a student may be dangerous. In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech University mass murder in April 2007, a report was compiled by three federal agencies. In part, it revealed that misunderstandings regarding the parameters of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) prevented the sharing of the shooter's mental health history with appropriate personnel.

As a result, the USDE now has outlined what can be shared under FERPA regarding potentially dangerous students. The USDE reemphasizes that FERPA allows relevant health and safety records to be shared with law enforcement, public health officials, and trained medical personnel without parental consent "…if knowledge of the information is necessary to protect the health or safety of the student or other individuals." It also recommends that board policies be adopted that designate "law enforcement units" within the school in order to facilitate the sharing of "investigatory reports" and other records generated by those units to appropriate persons and agencies including outside law enforcement personnel without parental consent.

This same FERPA guidance states that security videos are not educational records and can be shared with outside law enforcement authorities and parents of students who are on these videotapes. In addition, school officials may disclose special education records (including disciplinary records) to another school or post-secondary institution at which the student seeks or intends to enroll without parental consent, although the school's annual FERPA notification should indicate that such disclosures will be made.

While there are limits on what information can be gathered from community agencies regarding student activity outside of school, the state legislature has provided legal mechanisms for interagency cooperation regarding sharing student information that would be helpful in providing at-risk students with support services and in maintaining a safe and secure learning environment. A fully implemented Reciprocal Reporting Agreement allows information sharing concerning a minor student who has been arrested for any offense classified as a felony or a Class A or B misdemeanor and certain drug and weapons violations.

The Serious Habitual Offender Comprehensive Action Program (SHOCAP) allows school personnel to engage in interagency case management and information sharing that enables the juvenile justice system, schools and social service agencies to make more informed decisions regarding a small number of juveniles who repeatedly commit serious delinquent acts. In addition, all Illinois courts and law enforcement agencies are to report to the principal of any public school whenever a student is detained for proceedings under the Juvenile Court Act or for any criminal offense or any violation of municipal or county ordinance to aid in the proper rehabilitation of the child and to protect the safety of students and employees in the school.

The Illinois School Safety Drill Act establishes the minimum requirements for public and private schools' safety drills and their emergency and crisis response plans. Annually, each school board or its designee shall conduct at least one School Emergency and Crisis Response Plan review meeting where all the district's schools' emergency and crisis response plans, protocols, and procedures are reviewed and updated. The meeting also should determine if each building is in compliance with the school safety drill program. ISBE provides a format for conducting and documenting this meeting. A report of the meeting must be sent to all participants and the Regional Superintendent of Schools. If participants have additional commentary, they can send it to the Regional Superintendent, who is to maintain a record of the comments.

The Act requires schools to annually conduct three drills related to building evacuations and one drill each for bus evacuations and severe weather/shelter-in-place scenarios. In addition, the statute strongly encourages (though it does not mandate) schools to participate in one law enforcement drill a year to simulate school shootings, hostage situations, lockdowns, bomb threats or crises involving hazardous materials.

The three building evacuation drills may include simulations regarding fire, hazardous materials, bomb threats or earthquake, and one during October must include the local fire department. A fire department representative should contact the superintendent by September 1 each year to arrange for the participation. By September 15, the superintendent should provide four possible October dates for the joint exercise, however it may be held on some other date if mutually agreed by both parties.

ISBE regulations further clarify the Act and explain that each building's response plan must include an inventory of available resources, a description of staff training, a definition and assignment of the roles and responsibilities of staff during an emergency and a description of planned responses to a variety of common emergencies including:

• severe weather
• fire
• bomb threats or the discovery of suspicious items
• structural failure
• failure of utilities/loss of service
• bus accidents
• release of hazardous materials, indoors or outdoors
• presence of an intruder, use of a weapon, taking of a hostage
• public health or medical emergencies
• earthquakes
• nuclear power plant accidents (if located within 25 miles of such a plant).

The description of responsibilities should identify back-up people for each role and should cover each stage of a crisis, from the discovery of an emergency through the maintenance of emergency-related records consistent with the guidelines established by the National Incident Management System (NIMS). The School Emergency and Crisis Response Plan template distributed by ISBE indicates that compliance with NIMS also requires schools to:

Institutionalize the use of the Incident Command System — Staff and students tasked in the plan will receive ICS-100 training. ICS-100 is a Web-based course available free from the Emergency Management Institute. All persons tasked in the Basic Plan or annexes take the course.

Complete NIMS awareness course IS-700 NIMS: An Introduction — IS-700 is a Web-based course available free from the Emergency Management Institute at http://training.fema.gov/EMIWEb/IS/is700. All those tasked in the Basic Plan or annexes will take the IS-700 course.

Participate in local government's NIMS preparedness program.

Many resources are available to establish school crisis and management plans. One popular and effective source is the Secret Service/USDE's Threat Assessment in Schools: A Guide to Managing Threatening Situations and to Creating Safe School Climates. Its focus is on the use of the threat assessment process pioneered by the Secret Service as one component of the USDE's efforts to help schools across the nation reduce school violence and create safe climates. The threat assessment involves efforts to identify, assess, and manage individuals and groups who may pose threats of targeted violence.

The guide discusses characteristics of safe school climates and key findings of the Safe School Initiative. It also discusses the implications of these findings for the prevention of targeted school violence and the principles underlying the threat assessment approach to preventing targeted violence, and it outlines the central elements of a threat assessment process, and the process of identifying students whose behavior may suggest the potential for targeted school violence.

The guide also presents an action plan for creating safe school cultures and climates and an action plan to help school leaders implement a threat assessment program.

ISBE's self-assessment Safety Audit Manual is a comprehensive tool school districts can use as a guide to develop their own school safety plans and safety training. The Safety Audit Manual provides guidelines addressing: (1) preventing a crisis; (2) managing and responding to a crisis; and (3) managing the aftermath and post-crisis situation. It is also an excellent guide in planning and training to improve school safety.

School districts should explore resources for emergency training, such as the Multi-Hazard Emergency Planning for Schools, offered free of charge through the Regional Offices of Education. Other measures to ensure safety on school grounds also can be found in the audit manual.

Finally, ISBE has a comprehensive list of resources available on-line at http://www.isbe.state.il.us/safety/default.htm with links to a multitude of additional resources.

Natural Helpers, retrieved July 10, 2008 from http://teacherstore.discovery.com/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10003&storeId=10003&productId=61213&langId=-1& search=Y&searchKey=0

Lifesavers, retrieved July 10, 2008, from http://www.lifesavers.org/

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