The start of a new school year is an exciting time. The season is filled with gathering school supplies, back-to-school shopping, and meeting the students, teachers, and parents who will be a part of the classroom community. At such a positive and promising time, it’s easy to forget about the priority of school safety. School administrators play a critical role in ensuring that the school environment is secure and conducive to learning. In this article, we’ll share our Back to School Safety Checklist for Administrative Staff, designed to guide you through taking every necessary step to ensure ..read more

Key Takeaways Positive reinforcement helps students thrive. Acts of kindness and emotional growth should always be celebrated. Nutrition, physical activity, sleep hygiene, and mindfulness all have proven correlations with students’ mental health. Encourage a sense of community and build social support in schools in order to boost self-esteem and reduce feelings of social withdrawal. Why does student mental health matter? According to research cited by the American Counseling Association, “a student living in the United States, in comparison to the Scandinavian countries of Finland or Sweden ..read more

Research published by the Department of Education shows that a safe environment is an absolute “prerequisite for productive learning.” In fact, findings from 2020 showed a “consistent negative relationship between feeling unsafe in the classroom and test scores.” One of the study’s key features was an emphasis on the importance of teachers in fostering this environment of safety within their classrooms. The data supports what administrators, parents, and students already knew: great teachers really can (and do) make all the difference when it comes to creating an environment where students f ..read more

Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) is everywhere, from fraud detection in financial institutions, to autonomous vehicles, to chatbots in customer service applications. AI has already been deployed in public venues (like football stadiums and airports) to help improve security systems and aid in image recognition. The wide application of the technology is leading school administrators to wonder: Is AI the future of preventing school shootings? At School Safety Solution, we’ve dug deep to discover how AI is being used in school districts across the country to keep students and staff safe. We’ve con ..read more

Alert systems, school resource officers, metal detectors, and other technological systems and/or physical safety equipment have at least two things in common. First, they help keep schools (and the students and staff within them) safe, but second, they can be very expensive. Thankfully, funding is available from a variety of sources, including federal and state governments, nonprofit organizations, and even the charity divisions of major companies, all with a common goal: to help schools financially as they strive to meet their safety needs. In this post, we’ll explore the concept of school s ..read more

School shootings are among the most disheartening topics that can be discussed — but this is a topic that desperately needs attention. As of June 2023, Education Week reports that there have been 23 school shootings in this year alone so far that have led to injuries and/or deaths. If trends from previous years continue to spill into this one, we can anticipate roughly an additional 28 shootings during the upcoming fall semester, bringing the count to over 50, with countless injured and innocent lives lost. And after each incident, school administrators across the country are left concerned ..read more

The factors that lead to violent disasters are complex. While we cannot put an end to school shootings overnight, administrators, teachers, and community groups can empower themselves by implementing thoughtful and controlled response measures proactively. According to the U.S. Army, “after a traumatic injury, bleeding is responsible for more than 35 percent of pre-hospital deaths and over 40 percent of deaths within the first 24 hours.” School Safety Solution’s STAT bleed control kits are designed to address this public health problem. Our kits include intelligently designed tourniquets that ..read more

We all know that in order to focus on learning, children must be provided with a safe environment at school. Teachers also need safe environments to devote their time and energy to the facilitation of learning. The Fordham Institute confirms that students who feel safe at school “are engaged and take intellectual risks,” and “the same is true for adults—both the teachers and families who make up a school community.” There is nothing more important than keeping our children and our communities safe. The Fordham Institute’s guidance also drives home the following: a safe “climate does not occur ..read more

Schools across the nation have struggled with rising rates of violence on campus. While the mental health issues that are often the underlying cause of violence at school are a difficult problem that requires long-term solutions, campuses are not completely helpless when it comes to developing an immediate action plan. Teachers, administrators, and communities can design procedures for assessing threats at school and do what is possible to secure campuses and classrooms from intruders. In this post, the experts at School Safety Solution will provide practical guidance and tools for school sta ..read more

Is There a Link? Here are the Facts and the Myths. While studies have shown links between mental health disorders, substance abuse problems, and other serious concerns, each circumstance is different. All too often, the signs on the path to a mass shooting are unclear, and even the most intuitive and empathetic communities feel powerless to heal the underlying problems that lead to violence. In this post, we examine the scientific literature surrounding the link between mental health and mass shootings. The Relationship Between Mental Illness and Mass Shootings A quantitative, cross-sectional ..read more