The quality of education you provide is a significant reason why your families choose your school for their children. Your families expect that you’ll provide a top-tier curriculum and a more personalized learning experience than they can get elsewhere. But in today’s competitive education landscape, the academic aspect of a private education is becoming table stakes. Beyond academics, your families are also seeking an environment that prioritizes school safety and their students’ safety and well-being.
They want to know:
- What measures have you taken to make your campus secure?
- How prepared are you and your staff in an emergency?
- How do you protect students from bullying and violence?
- How do you build a culture of accountability?
- How are you supporting students’ mental health?
Your school’s approach to safety and security isn’t just about protection—it’s a critical factor in a family’s decision-making process. Read on to deepen your understanding of evolving K-12 student safety and security challenges and make sure your school is prepared to address them.
Beyond Traditional School Safety: Identifying Gaps and New Threats
Secure entrances, emergency response plans, and well-trained staff are foundational elements of a school safety strategy. However, schools need to go beyond traditional campus safety to provide a truly safe environment. To ensure safety and security measures are keeping pace with an expanding threat landscape, private and independent schools need to shore up gaps in physical safety, as well as extend protections against digital risks. Here are the most vulnerable areas to evaluate.
Lack of Visibility into Student Movement
Many smaller schools may still be managing hall passes using manual methods, like a clipboard and paper passes. This can hinder responsiveness in the event of a lockdown or emergency. Without real-time visibility into student movement, school staff may waste precious minutes trying to quickly locate and account for students.
Visitor Management Gaps
Private schools are preferred because they promise a tight-knit and safe community. That promise, however, hinges on maintaining strict security. If visitor management controls are lax, schools are vulnerable to potential entry by unauthorized or dangerous individuals. Schools need an efficient and reliable way to verify visitor identities, confirm they’re safe to be on campus, and ensure students are released only to authorized parents or caregivers.
Exposure to Inappropriate or Harmful Content
The rise of technology use in schools presents new learning opportunities, as well as new safety threats. Without content filtering in place, students can accidentally or intentionally access inappropriate or harmful content online. School web filters (aka content filters) address this risk. But some school web filters provide only the most basic block and allow capability. This forces school IT and technology teams to implement overly broad restrictions, which often means access to educational content is restricted as well. This frustrates teachers and students, and places an inordinate burden on tech staff to try to overcome these limitations.
Cyberbullying Risks
Some families seek a private education specifically because they’re seeking a safe, bully-free space for their children. Keeping your school community free from bullying in a technology-driven world requires a broader approach to bullying prevention that encompasses cyberbullying. Technology that’s capable of detecting and addressing cyberbullying helps schools enforce a zero-tolerance bullying policy.
Increases in Self-Harm and Suicide
Sadly, no school is immune to the reality of student self-harm and suicide. While not exactly a school safety issue, such a crisis does shake a school community to its core. Schools are in a unique position to identify children who are demonstrating signs of mental and emotional distress. Furthermore, students struggling with mental health often leave clues in their online searches and interactions. When schools have a way to detect these distress signals, they can intervene before a situation gets worse.
Data Silos and Limited Insights
Edtech tools, like school web filters, collect large and diverse amounts of data. The data being collected can provide invaluable insights into school safety, school climate, student mental health, and more. Without an easy way to aggregate and analyze these data sets, however, school leaders and teachers aren’t able to take advantage of the insights that they hold. AI-powered data collection and analysis is overcoming this challenge to make data-driven decision making a reality.
Cybersecurity Threats
The data schools collect and store must be treated with the utmost respect to protect against cybersecurity threats and ensure student data privacy and security is maintained. Data privacy and security isn’t just a matter of cybersecurity, though, it’s essential to maintaining a school environment of trust and safety. When evaluating technology tools and data management practices, schools must carefully evaluate the measures being taken to ensure that data privacy and security are prioritized so they can maintain the safe and trust-based environment they’ve worked so hard to create.
The Private School Safety Checklist: How Does Your School Measure Up?
While ensuring a strong school safety posture is no easy feat, you don’t need to figure it out alone. This checklist will help you assess your school’s preparedness and responsiveness to these potentially under-served areas. Consider the key objective and review the suggested measures to address it.
Physical Safety & Security
Objective: Maintain visibility and control of movement on your campus, while also creating a safe environment centered on personal accountability
⬜ Digital hall pass and visitor management system is implemented
⬜ Visitor background screenings are conducted
⬜ Identity confirmation of adults picking up students is in place
⬜ Visitor badges are consistently generated and enforced
⬜ Visitor logs are maintained for security and audit purposes
⬜ Expectations around student movement and consequences of hall pass misuse have been communicated
⬜ Teachers are following consistent procedures around hall pass issuance
⬜ A real-time record of student locations is easily accessible in an emergency
⬜ Schoolwide hall pass usage data is available to investigate safety incidents and misconduct
⬜ Student-level hall pass usage data can be shared with families when needed
Digital Safety & Cybersecurity
Objective: Protect students online, while also providing rich digital learning opportunities
⬜ Families and staff are engaged in discussions about online safety
⬜ Customizable, cloud-based school web filter is in place
⬜ Families have insight into and control of school-issued devices at home
⬜ Compliance with student data privacy regulations is maintained (e.g., FERPA, COPPA)
⬜ Technology vendors are using enterprise-grade security protocols (e.g., SOC 2 Type 2 certification, 256-bit encryption)
⬜ Software updates are automatically implemented to close security gaps
Student Safety & Wellbeing
Objective: Identify students who indicate risk signals, while ensuring student privacy is maintained
⬜ Families and staff are engaged in discussions about student mental health
⬜ Early intervention systems are in place to detect risk signals of self-harm, suicide, cyberbullying, and school violence
⬜ AI is being used to support early identification and limit potential exposure of sensitive data
⬜ Support staff have access to current data and insights into students’ safety and wellness
⬜ Staff are trained to recognize signs of emotional distress
⬜ Preventative mental health resources and interventions are in place
⬜ Support staff are using robust case management tools
⬜ Student identities are anonymized to maintain data privacy
⬜ Clear response protocols for critical situations are in place
Comprehensive Data Analysis and Reporting
Objective: Make data-driven decisions, without adding additional work for you and your staff
⬜ Data collection and analysis is automated and continuous
⬜ Privacy-compliant methods for data collection and analysis are in place
⬜ School safety threats are regularly assessed and analyzed
⬜ School climate is regularly assessed and analyzed
⬜ Data is being used to identify trends early that may impact student safety and wellbeing
⬜ Reports are being generated and shared with stakeholders to increase transparency
The Securly Advantage for Private & Independent K-12 Schools
Remember, in the competitive world of private education, a comprehensive approach to safety isn’t just about ticking boxes—it’s about creating an environment where students can thrive, and families feel confident in their school choices.
Securly’s integrated student safety and wellness solutions are designed specifically to address the changing needs of K-12 schools. By partnering with Securly, you’re implementing a comprehensive ecosystem of safety and wellness tools that work seamlessly together and lighten demands on your internal resources.
With Securly, you can:
- Stay ahead of emerging safety risks and threats
- Tailor solutions to fit your school’s unique culture and needs
- Streamline IT demands by consolidating on a single vendor
- Get responsive support to help you troubleshoot and resolve issues quickly
- Ensure data privacy and security is prioritized
Ready to elevate your school’s safety and security measures to match your high academic standards?
Visit www.securly.com
