Safe Schools Start Before Something Happens

A safe school is more than a locked gate or an emergency plan. Safety is also what happens every day—in classrooms, on playgrounds, during passing periods, in cafeterias, and everywhere students spend time. 

I believe the strongest approach to school safety starts with prevention. That means engaged adults who are present and paying attention, strong relationships with students, secure and thoughtful campus access, and early support when behavior or other concerns begin to emerge. When something starts to go wrong, we should be able to recognize it and respond before it becomes something bigger. 

That doesn't mean r or that consequences don't have a place. Students and staff have a right to learn and work in a safe environment. But removing a student doesn't necessarily solve the problem that caused the behavior. We need appropriate consequences and effective interventions, behavioral and mental-health supports, and follow-through to determine whether those supports are actually working. 

For me, school safety isn't only about how well we respond when something happens. It's about how much we're doing to keep it from happening in the first place

Safe and Secure Campuses

Prevention also includes the physical environment of our schools. Families should be able to drop their children off knowing campus access is controlled, doors and gates are used as intended, and adults actively supervise the places and times where problems are most likely to occur.

As both a parent and an educator, I pay attention to those details. Are entrances actually monitored? Are adults moving through playgrounds and common areas rather than simply standing in one place? Are cameras, communication systems, locks, fencing, and other safety measures working as intended? During passing periods and other less-structured times, do we have clear expectations for supervision?

Safety doesn't always require adding more people or buying something new. Sometimes it means looking carefully at the systems and resources we already have and making sure we're using them effectively.

The Board's role isn't to decide where an employee should stand during recess or which door to open in the morning. Our responsibility is to establish expectations for safe campuses, provide appropriate resources, and ask whether the systems the district has put in place are actually working.   

The Work Identified by Measures J&K Didn't Disappear

In June, Oakley voters did not approve Measures J and K, the two bond measures that together would have provided $123 million for school repairs, modernization, and safety improvements. I respect that decision. But the facility needs identified through our planning process did not disappear when the measures failed. 

Now we have to determine what comes next. That starts with prioritizing. Which projects involve immediate safety concerns? Which systems are approaching failure? What can be phased over time, and what cannot wait? I want those decisions driven by our facilities assessments and actual conditions—not simply by which project is easiest to complete. 

I also want us to look beyond the options we've already considered. California has state modernization funding available for eligible projects such as HVAC, plumbing, lighting, and electrical improvements, although those programs have eligibility and local-funding requirements. School districts also have access to certain developer fees for school facilities. We should understand every option Oakley may qualify for before deciding what can and cannot be done. Department of General Services

And we don't have to figure this out alone. I want us talking with CSBA, state facilities experts, and other school districts that have faced similar circumstances. If another district had significant facility needs, went to its community for a bond, didn't receive approval, and found another way to move critical projects forward, I want to know what they did and whether any part of that approach could work in Oakley. 

The voters' decision changed the funding available to us. It didn't eliminate our responsibility to maintain safe, functional schools. Our job now is to prioritize the work, research the alternatives, and be transparent with the community about what is possible.

Preparing Our Schools for a Crisis

What I learned from NASP’s PREPaRE School Safety and Crisis Preparedness training

As part of my training in school psychology, in late September I completed the first six-hour workshop in NASP’s PREPaRE School Safety and Crisis Preparedness curriculum: Comprehensive School Safety Planning: Prevention Through Recovery. 

I went into the training expecting to learn more about school crisis planning. What I didn't expect was how often I would find myself thinking about the schools around me.

We talk about school safety a lot, but this training pushed me to think beyond locked doors, drills, or what happens in the first few minutes of an emergency. Comprehensive preparedness means thinking about what happens before a crisis, how we respond when one occurs, and what happens in the hours, days, and even weeks that follow.

PREPaRE approaches those questions across five areas: prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery. 

When Training Becomes Personal

There are parts of school safety training that are difficult to talk about, but they are also the reason this work matters. During the training, we discussed lessons learned from school crises, including the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Sandy Hook became a major point of reflection for schools across the country about what it really means to be prepared—not just how we respond in the moment, but what happens before, during, and after a crisis. In the weeks following the tragedy, NASP itself called for a renewed national commitment to comprehensive, evidence-based school safety. 

That connection stayed with me throughout the training because preparedness is much bigger than I had previously thought about. 

An emergency plan isn't enough if it sits in a binder. Who is on the safety team? Who is responsible for what during a crisis? How do we account for every student and adult? What happens if the normal evacuation location cannot be used? How do we communicate if our usual systems are unavailable? Have we considered students with disabilities or others who may need additional assistance? Are we actually practicing our emergency procedures in ways that help us identify problems before a real emergency occurs? And how do we evaluate what worked and what needs to change afterward? 

Even something like reunification—something I had not spent nearly enough time thinking about before this training—requires planning long before an emergency. Getting students safely out of a building is not necessarily the end. Schools have to know where students will go, how everyone will be accounted for, how families will receive information, and how children will safely be reunited with the right adults. The training materials treat reunification as one component within that much larger continuum of preparedness. 

As I sat through the training, I kept applying these questions to the schools in my own life. I thought about the school where I work. I thought about Oakley schools as a trustee. And I thought about the Oakley school where my own children attend. 

I didn't leave the training thinking our schools are unsafe. I left thinking about opportunities to strengthen our preparedness. What are we already doing well? Where do our plans align with current best practices? Have we missed anything? Are there areas where we could be even better prepared? One of the exercises we did challenged us to do exactly that—look at what is already in place, identify strengths, and identify opportunities for growth. 

Turning What I Learn Into Better Questions

One thing today's training reinforced for me is that preparedness has to be more than checking a box. Over the years, I have seen drills where students were already outside before an alarm sounded. I understand why staff need advance notice—some students may need accommodations or preparation so a drill doesn't cause unnecessary distress or retraumatization. But we also need to actually practice what will happen when an alarm sounds. If students leave their classrooms early and wait outside for the alarm, we haven't learned how they will respond when it interrupts a normal school day. We haven't identified the student who may freeze, hide, become overwhelmed by the sound, or need additional assistance. We want to discover those things and plan for them before an actual emergency, not during one. The training reinforced that meaningful practice and attention to individual student needs can—and should—exist together. 

And that is probably my biggest takeaway from Workshop 1. As a trustee, I'm already thinking differently about the questions I want to ask about our emergency planning: how we practice our procedures, how we account for students' individual needs, and how we evaluate whether our plans actually work.

This was PREPaRE workshop 1, and I have more training ahead of me. But it has already given me new things to think about as we continue working to strengthen the safety and preparedness of our Oakley campuses. I don't have a predetermined list of changes to propose. I want to understand what we currently have in place, where our strengths are, and where there may be opportunities to improve—and then use what I'm learning to help inform the goals and priorities I bring to my work on the Board.

Supporting Students While Protecting the Right to Learn

I've spent much of my career working with students who need additional academic, behavioral, or special education support. Now, as a school administrator, I also see what happens when one student's behavior begins affecting an entire classroom. Those experiences have shaped how I think about student behavior as a trustee. 

I don't believe the answer is simply to remove a struggling student. Removing a student may stop a problem temporarily, but it doesn't necessarily address why the behavior is happening or teach the student what to do differently. At the same time, the other students in that classroom have a right to learn, and the teacher has a right to teach in a safe environment. We can't lose sight of either side of that equation. 

That's why I believe in strong behavioral interventions and supports—but I also believe we should expect those interventions to work. A plan shouldn't exist simply because a box has been checked. It should have a purpose, be implemented consistently, be monitored, and change when the evidence tells us it isn't working. 

My experience in schools also reminds me that some of the most important behavior work happens before an office referral. I spend a lot of time outside during recess and other less-structured parts of the school day. Being present matters. You begin to know students, students begin to know you, and you can often recognize when something is starting to go wrong before it becomes something bigger. Relationships and prevention are part of school safety too. 

As a trustee, my role isn't to decide how a principal handles an individual student or which intervention a school should use. My role is to ask whether Oakley has the people, systems, training, and resources our schools need—and whether the evidence shows those supports are working. 

That's the perspective I bring to the Board: support the student who is struggling, protect the learning environment for everyone else, and make sure the systems we've invested in are actually producing better outcomes.    

“Without safe schools, teachers cannot teach, and students cannot learn.”

— Ronald D. Stephens

National School Safety Center

How Will We Know Our Schools Are Safer?

I believe we should return to the data. School safety shouldn't be measured by how many programs we have, how many plans we've written, or how many new initiatives we've introduced. We need to know whether students and staff are actually safer because of them.

I want the Board looking at the bigger picture over time. Are behavior incidents increasing or decreasing? What do suspension and attendance trends tell us? What are students, staff, and families telling us through school climate surveys? Are we seeing different patterns between schools or grade levels? If we invest additional resources in behavioral or mental health supports, what changed as a result? 

Some of that evidence won't fit neatly into a spreadsheet. If we conduct an emergency drill, I want to know what we learned from it—not simply that it was completed. When something happens at one of our schools, I want us looking at what we can learn from it, what worked, and whether something needs to change. And when a school or program is getting good results, I want to understand what's working there too. 

That's how data becomes useful for governance. It helps the Board see patterns, establish priorities, make informed budget decisions, ask better questions of district leadership, and monitor whether the investments we've made are producing the results we expected. 

Safety isn't something we accomplish once and check off a list. We should continually be asking: What does the evidence tell us? What's working? Where are we seeing concerns? And what do we need to do differently?