It’s nearly impossible to account for all the factors impacting school safety in 2024. Gun violence, sexual assault, robbery, fights, threats of physical attack (with or without a weapon), bullying, weather emergencies, and substance use are just some of the issues that affect school climate and school safety. Fostering an amazing school community focused on learning—while also prioritizing safety—may seem like an impossible task. Fortunately, with an effective school safety plan and the right support, it is possible. So, what does a safe school actually look like? 

Safe schools promote the protection of staff and students from the aforementioned safety concerns, plus other emergencies. School safety is linked to improved student and school outcomes—emotional and physical safety in school are related to academic performance. Conversely, students who are victims of physical or emotional harassment or who are involved in the sale or use of illegal substances at school are at risk for poor attendance, course failure, and school dropout. It’s imperative that schools build their school culture on a foundation of safety. 

Safe schools implement school safety plans that focus on resilience, information, support, and empowerment. What do all of those have in common? Effective communication. Here are some communication best practices for your back-to-school safety plan.

Back-to-School Best Practices for Safe Schools

Communication is the backbone of an effective school safety plan, and an effective school safety plan is the backbone of a safe school.

Here are four ways to prioritize safety in your school.

1. Visitor Management and Access

Schools protected by CENTEGIX, a foundational school safety platform, welcome more than 5,000 visitors each year. Community visitors and volunteers make our schools safer and enrich education, but opening your school to visitors means opening your school to potential distractions or higher-level concerns. Any time you open school doors to the public, you must monitor it for the safety of your teachers, students, staff, and other visitors. 

Each visitor represents a potential security risk, increased liability, and someone who will likely require teacher or staff time and attention. A good visitor management system can help screen visitors, unburden your office staff, and give your students, teachers, visitors, and even your student’s parents more confidence in your school’s safety. 

There are many ways to implement a visitor management system into your school safety plan, from spreadsheets and stick-on name tags to a fully automated visitor screening process. No matter the system, your school safety plan should facilitate visitor management.

The CENTEGIX Visitor Management System provides multiple benefits to schools, including:

• Enhancing school safety with automatic checks for sex offenders, banned persons, and custody issues at visitor check-in.
• Improving communication and reducing risk by sending review notifications to staff, administrators, and faculty.
• Simplifying visitor identification on campus with highly visible and informational badges printed out at check-in.
• Reducing the time it takes to record student tardies and early releases, and then print hall passes.
• Streamlining reports that are easy to filter, customize, and share.

2. Safety Planning

Most schools have some safety and security measures in place. In fact, nearly 100% of schools serving 12- to 18-year-olds use at least one safety or security measure. 

Safe schools cover all the bases, crafting a comprehensive and well-tested school safety plan. There are five elements of a comprehensive school safety plan:

• Equipment and technology
• Site and building design features
• School security personnel
• Policies and procedures
• Training, exercises, and drills

Access to adequate safety technology helps create safe schools. Hardware, physical infrastructure, cameras, and wearable panic button technology strengthen school safety plans by reinforcing the importance of reliable communication. To make schools safer, all facets of the safety plan must effectively integrate and function concurrently. 

For example, CENTEGIX, a school safety pioneer, offers Safety Blueprint, a data-driven critical incident mapping solution that assists schools in optimizing their incident response, safety planning, and visitor management. Easy to use, access, and share, Safety Blueprint ensures staff and students are safe by equipping school systems with accurate, precise information about the location of safety assets and accelerating response during emergencies.

Once your school implements a safety plan, it should be tested to ensure optimal performance. Utilize a comprehensive guide to test your school safety plan.

3. Emergency Response 

Incident Response technology. In a crisis, every second matters—so a reliable, timely response is needed when an emergency happens on school grounds. Wearable panic buttons are an effective way to supplement your school safety plan because they enable staff to request help with only the press of a button. To ensure they are always within reach, these buttons are usually worn on a lanyard around the neck or secured via a badge clip. CENTEGIX created CrisisAlert to allow for faster, more reliable emergency response. 

When CENTEGIX was designing the CrisisAlert wearable panic button, it prioritized insights from those directly impacted by school emergencies. With the CrisisAlert wearable panic button, staff can quickly and discreetly request help and inform their administration of their exact location. Wearable safety technology like CrisisAlert empowers staff in emergencies, leading to safer learning environments.

Integration. The CENTEGIX platform seamlessly integrates with CatapultEMS and your existing safety infrastructure to save time coordinating and communicating with staff in an emergency. The CENTEGIX and CatapultEMS integration makes it possible for staff to send alerts via CrisisAlert that can be managed within the CatapultEMS. CatapultEMS also facilitates communication—staff members can designate, chat with, and direct message a safety team. In addition to CatapultEMS, CENTEGIX also integrates with Fūsus, a safety ecosystem that enhances the investigative capabilities of law enforcement and public safety agencies. These integrations make communication between schools and emergency response personnel possible, which is critical for any effective school safety plan.

4. Reunification

When you encounter an emergency or evacuation situation, like severe weather, medical emergencies, or an active assailant situation, you will need to have a reunification plan to confirm each student is accounted for and that they are reunited with their guardian in order to leave school. Many states even require schools to have a written reunification plan. 

Using a manual reunification checklist for every student in your school is inefficient, and every second matters in an emergency. Since your visitor management system should already be able to identify which caregivers are allowed to pick up and check out each student, it should also empower the school community with reunification capabilities after an emergency or evacuation situation. In the event of a site change, your safety system should allow you to check each student in as they enter the site and then check when a parent, teacher, or caregiver comes to check the student out. 

With wearable panic button technology and visitor management capabilities, like the CENTEGIX Safety Platform, safe schools can reunite with confidence.

How Can CENTEGIX Help Your School Integrate These Safety Planning Best Practices?

Every second matters.™ The CENTEGIX Safety Platform—featuring the CrisisAlert wearable panic button, visitor management, and reunification capabilities—makes a layered and tested school safety plan possible. CENTEGIX is a national leader in developing innovative safety solutions that help build safe schools. The CENTEGIX Safety Platform utilizes dynamic digital mapping, real-time visitor locating capabilities, an easy-to-use wearable emergency button, and reunification capabilities to plan for and respond faster to emergencies. 

CENTEGIX Safety Blueprint™ provides schools with digital, multi-layered maps of their campuses, which is invaluable for staff, faculty, and first responders in the event of an emergency. CENTEGIX Safety Blueprint is highly customizable so that hospitals and schools have a solution that is tailored to their needs and effective in an array of different emergency scenarios.

Safety Blueprint’s critical incident mapping technology empowers administrators, staff, and first responders with real-time insight into a campus’s safety measures and assets:

• When staff members initiate an alert with their CrisisAlert™ mobile panic button, their location is visible to first responders on the Safety Blueprint intelligent map. Emergency personnel can respond to an emergency site, so response time is faster.
• The Safety Blueprint digital map makes a school’s safety assets visible. These include automated external defibrillators (AEDs), fire alarms, fire extinguishers, first aid kits, evacuation points, and other data necessary for a timely emergency response.

Click here to learn more about what we can do for your school and to see a demo of the CENTEGIX Safety Platform.