In the last decade, more than 300 violent deaths have occurred in or
near school campuses. The killers, their motivations and backgrounds,
and levels of damage inflicted vary, but our response and our goal
remains singular: to protect our schools and keep those within them
safe. This handbook seeks to help administrators, school boards,
contractors, teachers--anyone connected with the design, construction,
or administration of schools--achieve this goal by providing
easy-to-follow guidelines for building safer school environments.
Drawing from various government resources, including the Centers for
Disease Control, Department of Education, Department of Defense, and
Department of Health and Human Services, this one-of-a-kind handbook
takes a two-part approach to protecting schools from threats. The first
part addresses how to design and build a safe school. It provides a
basic security overview and discusses how to identify critical assets
and conduct risk-threat assessments. The second part of the book shifts
from infrastructure to inhabitants. Here, you'll learn how to produce a
detailed crisis management plan to help your facility prevent incidents
from happening and to deal with them swiftly and effectively should one
occur. You'll also learn various "people" policies and practices you can
implement to reduce drug and alcohol abuse, bullying, vandalism, and
other violence and crime.
