Today’s schools face unprecedented safety challenges, and it’s essential to plan ahead for emergencies. Threat assessments and risk assessments are critical elements of every school safety plan.
What Is a Threat Assessment?
A threat assessment is a process for identifying, evaluating, and managing potential risks of violence or harm. It may identify a situation requiring attention or a student needing mental or emotional support. Threat assessment is not about predicting who could become violent, profiling students, or punishing anyone—it is about identifying student needs and proactively meeting them.
Understanding Threat Assessment in Schools
Threat assessments support several key goals:
- Prevention – Address concerning behaviors before they escalate.
- Student support – Identify and proactively attend to students’ mental health needs.
- Positive school climate – Build trust and cultivate a sense of belonging among the staff and student body.
Compliance and risk reduction – Meet legal requirements and demonstrate proactive steps to minimize risk.A familiar adage says, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Threat assessments help schools to prevent potential problems rather than simply reacting to dangerous situations once they have escalated. The National Association of Psychologists recommends that all school districts implement threat assessment procedures. They note, “These procedures are an alternative to zero-tolerance policies, which have been proven ineffective and counterproductive.”
- Threat assessments rely on evidence-based practices to identify at-risk students and situations and design a comprehensive support system to meet their needs.
- They train staff to differentiate between transient threats (threats that can be easily resolved) and substantive threats (threats in which a student has made a detailed plan to inflict harm).
- Assessments facilitate early intervention, equipping staff with the knowledge and resources to address students’ needs appropriately. Together, these steps foster a safer environment in our schools.
How to Conduct Effective Threat Assessments
Conducting effective threat assessments requires a multifaceted approach.
Assemble a Multidisciplinary Team
Your multidisciplinary team should include diverse expertise from teachers, administrators, mental health professionals, and law enforcement. This team collaborates to identify concerns, offer appropriate interventions, coordinate support strategies, and track progress.
Adopt a Consistent Model
Once you have a team in place, choose a model to guide your threat assessment. Trusted models include the Comprehensive Threat Assessment Guidelines (CTAG) and the National Threat Assessment Center Guidelines (NTAC).
Offer Consistent Training
Your threat assessment team needs regular training to become competent at recognizing warning signs, identifying needs, and providing practical solutions for student support. However, your threat assessment team isn’t the only group that needs consistent training; a thorough school safety plan includes training for the entire staff. The more knowledgeable your staff is, the more effectively they will promote a culture of safety in your school.
The school staff and threat assessment team need regular training in several specific areas:
- Identifying behaviors that need attention
- Clearly reporting concerns to the appropriate channels
- Maintaining detailed records for accountability
- Developing practical solutions to support student needs
Threat Assessment is One Component of Your Big-Picture Safety Plan
In addition to threat assessment, a thorough school safety plan includes additional layers. Despite prevention efforts, emergencies occur. A solution like the CENTEGIX Safety Platform™ provides the foundation for a layered safety plan to accelerate response when emergencies arise. Once your school has adopted a safety platform, the entire staff needs continued training to engage the solution and initiate emergency response. The more consistent and thorough the training, the more effective and efficient their response will be in an emergency.
What Is a Risk Assessment of a School Safety Plan?
While threat assessments identify specific students and situations that need support, your school also needs a risk assessment. A risk assessment examines your safety plan and identifies areas that require attention and improvement.
When conducting a risk assessment of your school safety plan, your safety team should evaluate several areas:
- Staff and student preparedness – Do staff and students know what to do, where to go, and how to request help during a critical event?
- Access and key management – Can emergency responders and law enforcement rapidly access keys in an emergency?
- Accurate building maps – Are your maps and safety assets up-to-date?
- Predetermine plans for key resources – To avoid confusion during a crisis, predetermine the locations of essential areas such as rally points, victim triage, an Incident Command Post, and a Joint Information Center.
Lessons from Emergency Preparedness Failures
Deficiencies in emergency preparedness plans can have tragic consequences. But schools don’t have to be unprepared. We can learn from past incidents to prepare for a safer future. Experts have studied tragedies in schools to identify outdated tactics and other deficiencies in school safety plans. Past incidents offer a few key takeaways:
A Risk Assessment Exposes Gaps and Weaknesses in Your Safety Plan
Risk assessment is a powerful, essential step. Evaluating your school’s infrastructure, plans, and policies can reveal gaps and areas that need attention. Addressing deficiencies ahead of time can save crucial time during an incident—because, in an emergency, every second matters™.
Active Threat Training Should be Versatile
Active threat training should provide versatile response options beyond the traditional single-option lockdown. In a single-option lockdown, students and staff are trained to lock themselves inside a classroom with the lights out and shades drawn. But what if students are on the playground or in the cafeteria when a critical event unfolds? What if evacuation is a safer choice than locking down? Staff and students need multi-option response training, which provides versatile evacuation plans and a variety of lockdown scenarios across campus.
Train Students to Evacuate Independently
Many evacuation plans assume that a staff member will always be present to guide students during an emergency, but what if students are on their own? Students need to know what to do if an adult is not present or is unable to guide them. That knowledge could save their lives.
Enhancing School Safety Plans with Notification Centers
Reunification is a foundational component of school safety plans, providing a structured process for bringing students and families back together after a crisis. In addition to reunification, introducing Notification Centers can further strengthen support for the school community. Notification Centers offer designated areas for police interviews, mental health support, private family notifications, secondary casualty collection points for victim triage, and timely community information.
Enhancing School Emergency Preparedness
How can schools better prepare for emergencies? Several steps can enhance your readiness.
Prepare for Critical Aspects of Incident Command and Management
An effective emergency response plan establishes centralized communication platforms to disseminate information accurately. It also strategically places command posts and triage locations to minimize confusion and maximize communication. (For example, rally points should be separate from the Incident Command Post.)
Practice Regularly with Agencies on and off Campus
In a critical event, schools must coordinate efforts with first responders, law enforcement, and government agencies. Successful multiagency coordination is the result of planning, preparation, and practice. According to a 2024 report by the U.S. Department of Justice, all agencies should conduct emergency response exercises at least once a year, if not more often.
How CENTEGIX Can Help
Preparing a school safety plan requires extensive planning and expertise. Our Safety Platform can assist in risk assessment planning, training, and data collection.
CrisisAlert™
CrisisAlert is a badge-based wearable panic button that empowers your staff to request help anywhere on campus with the push of a button. During risk assessments, the detailed data and analytics recorded by CrisisAlert can help administrators evaluate safety protocols, identify gaps, and improve emergency response plans.
During threat assessments, CrisisAlert facilitates early intervention and rapid response. Its campus-wide audio and visual notifications aid in managing incidents by providing clear directions to students and staff, reducing chaos and confusion.
Safety Blueprint™
Safety Blueprint is a critical incident mapping solution that enhances school safety by displaying the precise, room-level location where help is needed, as well as nearby safety assets. Safety Blueprint streamlines risk assessment planning with up-to-date digital maps and centralized asset management, reducing the risk of outdated information and improving safety compliance.
Safety Blueprint supports training with customized safety plans and provides access to real-time visualization of incidents. This allows for informed emergency response and enhanced situational awareness. Additionally, it facilitates data collection through actionable alerts and analytics, enabling efficient maintenance, compliance with legal requirements, and optimized emergency preparedness.
Visitor Management
CENTEGIX Visitor Management enhances school safety by allowing real-time authentication of campus visitors. It allows only authorized, verified individuals to enter the campus through a streamlined check-in process, screening every visitor, every time through multiple databases. With the Enhanced Visitor Management feature, all visitors receive badges with real-time locating technology that enables administrators to quickly pinpoint each visitor’s location, facilitating efficient management and peace of mind.
Visitor Management offers comprehensive reporting and analytics, helping schools refine visitor policies and effectively manage visitor activities, creating a secure environment for staff and students.
CENTEGIX Reunification
CENTEGIX Reunification digitizes and optimizes the emergency reunification process. By providing a real-time digital roster, it ensures all individuals are accounted for quickly and accurately, reducing chaos and improving situational management.
CENTEGIX Reunification verifies guardianship during reunification, lowering the risk of unauthorized releases. This accelerates recovery and also offers data-driven insights to evaluate and refine emergency response strategies, addressing potential gaps in safety protocols.
Learn more about how CENTEGIX can enhance your efforts to keep your school safe.
