A sound mind for school safety

People often rush to talk about physical safety and locked doors and security, and hardening the environment, whereas psychological safety centers on the sense of the safety and security of the people in the building—the students, staff, visitors and parents. It focuses much more on relationships, trust and communication.

We use a specific model called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), which was actually created in community policing. The model looks at community spaces and how we can architecturally design them to minimize crimes in these environments. It’s been applied to schools and has been found to be fairly successful in terms of following its principles.

The main principles or strategies are natural access control, natural surveillance, territoriality and maintenance.

• Natural access control focuses on things like locking all the doors, having a single point of entry and monitoring visitors.
• Natural surveillance relates to having bushes that are cut low to the ground and being able to see out into the parking lot and into the building—and really important in that is adult supervision. Having teachers in the hallway during passing time and a good staff-to-student ratio can be considered surveillance or supervision of behavior.
• Territoriality is how you design the building or space and the grounds, making it an entity marked off from the surrounding area. It has to do with the school’s identity and mission statement, or keeping the grounds clean or having murals and artwork to say, “This is our environment.” When groups are more invested in their space, they will be less likely to vandalize or commit crimes.
• Maintenance is making sure that lights are working and things aren’t broken in the school.

We say it always starts with prevention. Long before there is a crisis or threat, it’s what we do in the daily environment to promote a positive school climate and culture, including being very clear about expectations for behavior and how students and adults treat each other—and that we’re explicitly teaching these expectations to students. We can do this systematically, just like we teach reading and writing.

We have evidence that shows that we can integrate these concepts into the curriculum by reading books where kids learn about differences and how to get along with others. Using teachable moments and reflecting on how that character feels or what happens when you have a conflict makes it part of the everyday fabric of the school, where we are talking about, teaching and modeling these social-emotional competencies.

I always remind people that even though it doesn’t seem like it with the media attention, schools are safe places, by and large, for students and faculty to be.

More information is available on the Alberti Center for Bullying Abuse Prevention’s website and in “Lockdown Drills: Connecting Research and Best Practices for School Administrators, Teachers, and Parents,” which I co-wrote with Jaclyn Schildkraut.