Safe and Secure Schools : 27 Strategies for Prevention and Intervention

"When it comes to student and staff safety, there are no excuses. The authors have created a handbook that is comprehensive, explicit, and relevant to educational environments."
―Darlene R. Jones, Principal
Francis Howell North High School, St. Charles, MO

"Brunner and Lewis have done an outstanding job creating a series of commonsense reminders that will guide school leaders in creating and enhancing safety in their school and community."
―Ronald Stephens, Executive Director
National School Safety Center

Make a difference in school safety and security with these practical, realistic strategies!

This timely resource for new, veteran, and aspiring school administrators offers cost-effective techniques for creating a safe environment for students, staff, and the community. The authors use their experience in education and law enforcement to show how administrators can combine the need for a secure campus with the desire to maintain an open, welcoming environment.

Succinct and user-friendly, this handbook offers practical, realistic methods for designing general and event-specific safety plans, forming safety committees, and creating security checklists and visitor screening procedures. Sections on staff training include methods for handling harassment and bullying as well as recommendations for:

• Helping prevent or minimize a potential crisis
• Facilitating a stronger, more informed response when needed
• Aiding in school recovery and a return to normalcy

For easy reference, readers will find strategies organized by categories and concluding with a top ten list of security recommendations.

Judy Tilton Brunner is an author and consultant having served as an elementary, middle, and high school principal. She is currently Clinical Faculty at Missouri State University in the Department of Reading, Foundations, and Technology and a regular presenter at national and state conferences on the topics of literacy, differentiated instruction, student engagement, classroom management, school safety, and the prevention of bullying behaviors.

As consultants, Judy and Dennis K. Lewis work with school districts across the United States on topics related to creating and maintaining safe schools, crisis planning and management, managing aggressive and violent students, and the prevention of bullying behaviors. They have served as expert witnesses in matters of litigation on school violence and bullying and have written numerous articles for national school safety magazines, periodicals and served as guest lecturers for several universities. They are the co-founders of Edu-Safe LLC, a school safety and advisory service, as well as Instructional Solutions Group.

Their method of training school staff and crisis management teams for responding to classroom and school emergencies by problem solving events through the use of tabletop exercises has been featured in a variety of national publications. Both are widely respected in the field of school safety.

Dennis K. Lewis has over thirty-eight years of experience in working to provide safe schools and communities, including seventeen years as the director of a school police department for a large mid-western school district. He has held numerous offices for the National Association of School Safety and Law Enforcement Officers (NASSLEO) and is the past President of that organization.

As consultants, Dennis and Judy Brunner work with school districts across the United States on topics related to creating and maintaining safe schools, crisis planning and management, managing aggressive and violent students, and the prevention of bullying behaviors.  They have served as expert witnesses in matters of litigation on school violence and bullying and have written numerous articles for national school safety magazines, periodicals and served as guest lecturers for several universities.  They are the co-founders of Edu-Safe LLC, a school safety and advisory service, as well as Instructional Solutions Group.

Their method of training school staff and crisis management teams for responding to classroom and school emergencies by problem solving events through the use of tabletop exercises has been featured in a variety of national publications.  Both are widely respected in the field of school safety.