Do Restorative Justice Practices Increase School Safety?

Restorative justice practices were put into place in many of our nation’s schools a number of years ago. These programs focus on alternatives to exclusionary discipline practices such as suspension and expulsion. They include conflict resolution, relationship-building, and fostering empathy, forgiveness, and self-reflection.

But, do they help create safer schools and a more positive school climate?

Chicago Public Schools adopted the program during the 2013-14 school year. Researchers at the University of Chicago Education Lab gathered and analyzed data from before the practices were implemented (2008-09) and after they were in place for 5 years (2018-19). They found that the practices resulted in a 35% decrease in student arrests in-school and a 15% decrease in student arrests outside-of-school. Out-of-school suspensions were reduced by 18%. Students perceived improved classroom behavior among their peers and a greater sense of safety and inclusion at school.

Philadelphia High School reported that in the year of restorative justice implementation, “violent acts and serious incidents” dropped by 52%. The following year, they dropped by 40%.

Denver Public Schools reported that over 7 schools, the number of expulsions dropped from 23 to 6, and in-school suspensions improved by 13% after 3 years of restorative justice practices implementation.

While there are many anecdotal accounts of success from these practices, there is little scientific research, and we could benefit from additional studies. To be fair, a Google search will reveal that some studies fail to demonstrate the effectiveness of restorative justice practices in schools. However, the potential benefits of restorative justice practices range from a decrease in discipline referrals and racial disparities to improved academic scores and an increased sense of safety among students and staff.

Is it worth trying in your school?

Studies suggests that the program may need to be consistently in place for 3-5 years before we begin to see the impact If you have been implementing these practices over a number of years and have noted changes, I’d love to hear from you, so I can share your successes (or challenges) with others.

Source material:

The University of Chicago Education Lab, https://educationlab.uchicago.edu/projects/restorative-practices/

Goodwin, B. ASCD, October 2021, Vol.79, No. 2 https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/research-matters-does-restorative-justice-work 

Davison, M. NWEA, December 2022 https://www.nwea.org/blog/2022/what-the-research-tells-us-about-restorative-justice-in-k-12/

Bob Dylan Was Right

The times they are a-changin’

Bob Dylan was right

The past several years have brought tremendous change, and we are all affected by it. Weather patterns have shifted and extremes are becoming the norm. The political climate continues to be contentious. Our news provides a daily dose of war and atrocity. People remark that there is an increased air of hostility and entitlement in our society. AI has become a gift and a challenge. Student mental health needs have skyrocketed.

And, school violence continues to plague us.

A few years ago, I decided to work in the schools again. While I have worked very hard to acquire and share my expertise in school safety, I wanted to be back in the daily flow of school staff and student life. Then, the pandemic forced yet another change. During the time I was working in the schools, and nominally at my consulting business, many more individuals had entered the field of school safety, working hard to lessen bullying and violence in our schools.

Why, then, do our schools continue to have significant safety problems?

A few things got me thinking about this….school shootings continue, and some have claimed high numbers of victims. Sometimes, we don’t even hear about a shooting that claims fewer victims, and when we do, we may find ourselves trying to suppress our anger and frustration when the news details the tragedy. We’re seeing Department of Justice reports finding that our schools are not as prepared as we had thought.

And this, I believe, is the scariest thing of all.

We’ve worked hard to put safety measures in place. We rehearse and review our safety plans. But, do we do that as often as we should? Are we double-checking our own plans when a new tragedy occurs, to make sure we really are doing all we can? Are we continuing our training, and that of our staff and substitutes? Have we grown weary of hearing about school safety? Have we become at all complacent over the years?

In all honesty, I think I have.

And, I’m betting that I’m not alone. A few school staff members have confided to me that they almost feel like they’re waving a white flag and giving up. There are other problems to deal with on a daily basis. Social media has such an outsized impact on students’ daily lives that we struggle to combat it.

More creative and intrusive ways of taunting and bullying continue to creep up, and we have to keep up.

Which is why I am sharing information with you again. Full retirement wasn’t that fun anyway, and there’s work to be done. I know that your inbox is overflowing and I don’t want to add to that. You are overworked and there aren’t enough hours in the day. But, I continue to gain subscribers on my website who want information, and I’m going to provide it.

You have my word, no more than 1-2 updates per month. If you want to stay on my mailing list, you don’t need to do a thing. If this information is no longer applicable to you, or you just don’t want to hear about school safety anymore, I understand. You can click on the “unsubscribe” link and there will be no hard feelings.

We’re fighting a tough battle, doing our best to keep our staff and students safe at all times. We are in this together, and I will share what I know and continue to learn, to try to make that burden just a little lighter for you.

Suzanne

Averted Targeted School Violence Report Released Today

The Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) released its 2021 report on Averted Targeted School Violence today.

I urge you to download and read this report now as it has strong implications for the return to in-person learning for many students.

The report summarizes the findings of a detailed study of 67 averted school attacks. A comparison of home life factors, behaviors and stressors of “plotters” of averted attacks with those who completed attacks, reveals many similarities and a few critical differences.

The primary difference that leapt out at me today is that the highest proportion of plotters planned their attacks for the month of April.

With the April return to school for many students, it’s imperative that we train our staff members on concerning behaviors, reporting procedures and intervention strategies so we can assist students experiencing increased stress during this time.

According to the Secret Service report, stressors experienced by the plotters were:

  • Family
  • Social
  • Academic
  • Criminal/judicial
  • Change in schools
  • General/personal
  • Physical health
  • Unknown

Home life factors experienced by the students who plotted attacks were:

  • Parents divorced/separated
  • Family financial difficulty
  • Parents or sibling arrested/incarcerated
  • Family substance abuse
  • Family discord, incl. domestic violence
  • Family mental health 
  • Abuse/neglect 
  • Non-parental custody/care

In many cases of averted attacks, others have witnessed objectively concerning behaviors – threats, bringing weapons to school, physical violence, suicidal statements.

Also detected in these students were a constellation of lower-level behaviors – changes in behavior, interest in violent topics, a concerning mental status.

I think we can all agree that students have experienced unprecedented stressors over the past year. It is likely that we can’t begin to comprehend the level of stress some of our students have been living with.

Now, more than ever, we need to be vigilant and spend time checking in with our students.

We need to provide resources and we need to report concerns to our student services staff and/or administration. We must have a process in place for identifying those in need of intervention and a method for following up and providing help. We need a trained multidisciplinary threat assessment team. We need to train our students to say something to an adult when they have concerns about their peers. And, we need to act on those concerns.

I have provided only the briefest of details from the Averted Targeted School Violence report in this article. Please download it and spend some time familiarizing yourself with it. Share it with all staff members in your school and make sure everyone knows what to watch for and what to do when they see it. Only then can we feel adequately prepared for our students’ reentry to in-person learning.

My job is to make sure you have the resources you need to make your school a safer place to learn. I want you to be able to make your school safer without spending a lot. I’ve made many resources available to you at no cost, and just a few tools at minimal cost. To see the school safety resources, click here.

For a quick, low-cost way to train your entire staff online, click here. This training includes an expanded section on the warning signs of violence.

If you’d like help determining how to train your staff, feel free to contact me here.

School Safety on Sale

School Safety on Sale

These are trying and unpredictable times, and many of us are trying to find ways to calm our own fears, while keeping our students engaged in learning during their time away from school.

If you are interested in keeping your mind active by learning some new things, I invite you to brush up on school safety basics by taking Youth Risk Prevention Specialists’ FREE online course, Increase Your School Safety in 5 Easy Steps.

If you’d like to explore further, I am discounting the Everyday School Safety online course to just $15 for the next few weeks. That’s a savings of nearly 70% off the regular price! The Everyday School Safety course is 90-minutes long, has downloadable resources, and is the exact same training delivered to schools across the country.

I’m offering this special pricing because I believe that all parents and school staff members have a desire to do everything they can to keep students safe; they just don’t have the time to learn as much about school safety as they might like. If your school is closed and you have some extra time, I invite you to take advantage of these learning opportunities.

Be well.

STOP School Violence Grant Available Now

STOP School Violence Grants

It’s a new year, and it might just be time for some new school safety strategies. I trust that you had a restful holiday break and are ready to hit the ground running for the second half of the school year.

As you may have heard, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice has opened the STOP School Violence Grant Program to new applications. The STOP School Violence Grant Program is designed to fund improvements to school safety and security. Its objective is to increase safety by implementing training and school threat assessments and/or intervention teams to identify school violence risks among students; technological solutions such as anonymous reporting technology that can be implemented as a mobile phone-based app, a hotline, or a website in the applicant’s geographic area to enable students, teachers, faculty, and community members to anonymously identify threats of school violence; or other school safety strategies that assist in preventing violence. The grant application deadline is March 3, 2020.

If you’re interested in funding threat assessment team training and development or all-staff training in school safety, and would like help with your grant language or a price quote for training with Youth Risk Prevention Specialists, please feel free to contact me by phone or email. I’m happy to help!

I wish you the best of luck!

Could this happen to your school?

Jury awards school shooting victim

A jury in California recently awarded 3.8 million dollars to a school shooting victim. The school district was ordered to pay 54% of that 3.8 million, a jury finding the school 54% negligent.

Could this happen to your school?

The prosecutor argued that the school did not do enough to protect the student from harm. The school was found to have ignored “red flags” which included threats and a very disturbing violent drawing. Six school employees were also found negligent.

In this particular case, the perpetrator’s family also brought suit against the school district, alleging that they did not follow state laws regarding bullying and sexual harassment.

How can we avoid being caught in this type of situation?

I believe it’s imperative to have safety protocols and processes in place, provide safety training for all staff, and adhere to your school’s protocols for both intervening in bullying and harassment and for assessing indicators of violent thoughts and threatening behavior.

Only then, will we be able to show that we have done our due diligence to protect our students from harm. Of course, we cannot always anticipate the actions someone will take, especially when those actions do not follow our own sense of values or logic. But, we must be prepared to take action when there is even the slightest hint of violence or violent ideology.

To further assess your liability quotient when it comes to school safety, check out these critical points. If you find that your staff is in need of training, or your school needs help developing safety protocols, take a look at this.

I wish you a safe and productive school year!

Key Points for Schools – 2019 Secret Service Report

School Safety Update

The Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center released its review of 2018 Mass Attacks in Public Places in July. While the full report can be viewed here, key points relevant to schools include:

  • Three attacks (11%) were carried out at high schools.
  • The findings emphasize that we can identify warning signs prior to an act of violence. While not every act of violence will be prevented, the report indicates that targeted violence may be preventable if appropriate systems are in place to identify concerning behaviors, gather information to assess the risk of violence, and utilize community resources to mitigate the risk.
  • More than half (63%) of the attacks ended within 5 minutes from when the incident was initiated.
  • Two-thirds of the attackers (67%) experienced mental health symptoms prior to their attacks. The most common symptoms observed were related to depression and psychotic symptoms, such as paranoia, hallucinations, or delusions. Suicidal thoughts were also observed. Nearly half of the attackers (44%) had been diagnosed with, or treated for, a mental illness prior to their attacks.
  • The violence in this study resulted from a range of motives, with some attackers having multiple motives. In half of the incidents ( 52%), grievances appeared to be the main motivating factor. Beyond grievances, some motives were related to the attackers’ mental health symptoms (19%), while others were connected to ideological beliefs (7%). While only two of the attacks were primarily motivated by an ideology, nearly one-third of the attackers (30%) appeared to have subscribed to a belief system that has previously been associated with violence.
  • Two-fifths of the attackers (41%) exhibited a fixation, defined as an intense or obsessive preoccupation with a person, activity, or belief to the point that it negatively impacted aspects of their lives. The behaviors that demonstrated these fixations included, but were not limited to, posting written material or videos online, stalking or harassing others, and filing lawsuits or complaints to police.
  • Most (85%) attackers had at least one significant stressor occur in their lives in the five years preceding the attack.
  • Nearly all of the attackers (93%) engaged in prior threatening or concerning communications. One-third had threatened someone (37%), including threats against the target in six cases (22%). All but four attackers (85%) made some type of communication that did not constitute a direct threat, but should have elicited concern.
  • Most of the attackers (78%) in this report exhibited behaviors that caused concern in others. Those who were concerned had various degrees of association with the attackers, from those who were close to them, to strangers in the community who may have never met the attacker before. For the majority of the attackers (70%), the concern others felt was so severe that they feared specifically for the safety of the individual, themselves, or others.
  • Because these acts are usually planned over a period of time, and the attackers often elicit concern from the people around them, there exists an opportunity to stop these incidents before they occur. Threat assessment is one of the most effective practices for prevention.

As you can see, this report echoes the previous year’s report and a great deal of research and literature on prevention efforts such as threat assessment. If you don’t already have a threat assessment protocol in place in your school district, perhaps the time is now.

Critical Aspects of Back-to-School Safety

safer school

Summer has flown by, as usual, and school is starting in most parts of the country. Those of us in the West are already in session, and you lucky folks in the Midwest and East have until after Labor Day to savor the last days of summer.

In addition to lesson plans, creating a welcoming classroom, and getting to know our new students, many of us have school safety on our minds. We are charged with one of the most important tasks – keeping children safe while they are with us. This is bound to cause some anxiety as the school year gets underway.

School safety can be broken down into five separate areas, which helps us to put it in perspective.

Prevention – the capabilities necessary to avoid, deter, or stop an imminent crime or threatened or actual mass casualty incident. Prevention is the action schools take to prevent a threatened or actual incident from occurring.

Protection – the capabilities to secure schools against acts of violence and manmade or natural disasters. Protection focuses on ongoing actions that protect students, teachers, staff, visitors, networks, and property from a threat or hazard.

Mitigation – the capabilities necessary to eliminate or reduce the loss of life and property damage by lessening the impact of an event or emergency; reducing the likelihood that threats and hazards will happen.

Response – the capabilities necessary to stabilize an emergency once it has already happened or is certain to happen in an unpreventable way; establish a safe and secure environment; save lives and property; and facilitate the transition to recovery.

Recovery – the capabilities necessary to assist schools affected by an event or emergency in restoring the learning environment and healing from the event. This includes a plan for business continuity.

As you begin the school year, consider doing the following over the next two months:

  • Implement a school climate or safety survey for students, staff and parents, to pinpoint areas that need attention. If you are looking for a survey to use, check out this school climate survey compendium.
  • Foster a sense of belonging in your school community. Celebrate differences and offer a diverse menu of activities, mentoring and connectedness programs, so everyone has a place to call home.
  • Train your staff to identify the signs of those who are struggling so they can support and refer those needing help.
  • Review your crisis response plan. Ideally, this should be done every year, and no less frequently than every 3 years. We learn more every day in this field – you’ll want to be sure your plan reflects current recommendations.
  • Add a new type of drill. If you haven’t done a reverse evacuation or a lockdown drill in awhile, schedule one today. Then, review the results with your staff so everyone can make adjustments if needed.

I’d love to know more about your specific safety challenges and needs. Let me know by typing your safety challenges into this form. I look forward to hearing from you.

Have a great school year!

Key Points from 2018 FBI Report on Pre-Attack Behaviors

FBI 2018 Report Pre-Attack Behaviors

In 2014, the FBI published a report titled A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States between 2000 and 2013. The report focused on the circumstances of 160 active shooter events that had occurred from 2000-2013. In July, 2018, the FBI released the second phase of the study entitled A Study of the Pre-Attack Behaviors of Active Shooters in the United States between 2000 and 2013.

This report details behaviors and warning signs that occurred before an attack, providing readers with increased awareness of what to look for in our own settings. In the aftermath of an active shooter incident, we often listen as the media dissects the risk factors and warning signs that may have been missed. It might begin to sound as if there is a consistent profile of the active shooter.

I want to stress one thing: experts and authorities are still very clear on the fact that there is no profile of an active shooter.

While it is true that certain behaviors and characteristics appear in multiple individuals that have perpetrated this type of violence, each situation must be assessed on its own. An assessment is valid for a moment in time. Risk will either be increased or decreased as circumstances and individuals change. It is this fact that gives us hope. When we identify threatening situations and individuals early, we can intervene and reduce, or even eliminate, the likelihood of violence.

What the study tells us

The key findings of this phase II study that I believe are most pertinent to those of us who work in schools are:

  • The 63 active shooters in the study did not appear to be uniform in any way such that they could be readily identified prior to attacking based on demographics alone.
  • Active shooters take time to plan and prepare for the attacks, with 77% of subjects spending a week or longer planning their attack and 46% spending a week or longer procuring the means for the attack.
  • The FBI could only verify that 25% of active shooters in the study had ever been diagnosed with a mental illness. Of those diagnosed, only 3 had been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. The FBI further states that, “declarations that all active shooters must simply be mentally ill are misleading and unhelpful.”
  • Active shooters were typically experiencing multiple stressors, an average of 3.6, in the year before they attacked.
  • On average, each active shooter displayed 4 to 5 concerning behaviors over time that were observable to others around the shooter. The most frequently occurring concerning behaviors were related to mental health, problematic interpersonal interactions and leakage of violent intent. In 56% of cases, the first incidence of such behavior occurred more than 2 years before the attack.
  • For active shooters under age 18, school peers and teachers were more likely to observe concerning behaviors than family members. In 12 student shooters studied, 92% of cases involved a schoolmate noticing concerning behavior before the attack.
  • When concerning behavior was observed, the most common responses were:
    • communicate directly with shooter 83%
    • do nothing 54%
    • report to a non-law enforcement authority 51%
    • discuss with a friend or family member 49%
    • report to law enforcement 41%.
  • In cases where the shooter’s primary grievance could be identified, 33% were related to an adverse interpersonal action (or perceived action) against the shooter and 16% were related to an employment action (or perceived action) against the shooter.

If you’d like to read more of the report, you can get it here.

Next steps for schools

If you don’t have a threat assessment team in place, I urge you to make it a priority this school year. Threat assessment is a research-based prevention and school safety strategy that will help you identify and intervene with not only potentially violent students, but students who are struggling on many levels. Those students need our help. We can’t help them if we don’t know who they are.

I’ve trained schools across the country to implement this practice. Is your school next? Contact me here to find out how I can help.

Be extra vigilant this week

There are at least two reasons to be extra vigilant this week when it comes to school safety.

First, we know that anniversary dates of past school violent attacks are particularly significant to those planning a similar act of violence. Friday, April 20 marks the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting.

Second, Friday, April 20 is also designated as National School Walkout Day to protest school violence. This means that many of our schools will not be following their normal routines and students will be out of the building, on school grounds or otherwise out of class and hard to keep track of. It’s also a fact that transition times, those moments in our school day when students are moving from one place to another, are a high risk time for a multitude of incidents.

I urge you to create awareness among your school’s staff and encourage extra caution and vigilance for the remainder of the week.