Jul 2

Written by: Bret Rachlin
7/2/2009 1:57 PM

Earlier this week I attended the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) annual conference in Baltimore, MD. While the conference focused on providing training for NASRO members (approximately 700 school resource officers attended from across the country), it was also a celebration of the important work school resource officers (SROs) do on a daily basis. Many SROs brought their families to the conference, so that they could enjoy a little vacation while attending training sessions (SROs often have strict schedules during the school year and many of them also work as community police officers during the summer), and they thoroughly enjoyed interacting with other SROs, discussing their similar and different approaches to school security.

Schools that employ SROs empower them to keep the schools safe and secure, so teachers can focus on teaching. However, most SROs are not budget-funding decision makers, which means they manage the best they can, often with limited human and technical resources to do their jobs effectively. Based on this information, it’s critical for SROs to understand the safety and security risks that exist at their schools. How can SROs improve the safety of students and staff without knowing the key areas to focus on in the school?

Throughout my discussions with SROs, I found that many of them conduct safety and security risk assessments on a yearly basis. This is good news for schools because they understand the need to identify areas of risk prior to taking steps to mitigate the risks. Digging deeper into the SROs’ work with assessments, I found that often times the assessments didn’t go far enough to assist the SROs and the school in mitigating the risks they identify. While some risk-mitigation solutions, such as adding video surveillance or access control, may be cost prohibitive in the short term, other solutions simply need to be implemented with minimal spending. For example, improving the safety in the parking lot may simply require a fresh coat of paint to highlight the lines around the drop-off area for the buses, which can be managed by a facilities employee. Unfortunately, many basic assessments do not provide an action plan for school officials to follow.

Overall, when schools and SROs conduct security and safety risk assessments, it’s important for these assessments to yield an action plan that is easy for SROs and/or other school administrators to follow to ensure that not only are the risks identified, but that they are also acted upon in an efficient manner with as much available funding required to mitigate those risks. Without an action plan based on security best practices, current assessments stop short of improving the safety and security of schools as fully as possible.

Do your district’s risk assessments provide reports with action plans to mitigate the risks you’ve identified?

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