Every school district has safety responsibilities. Many have documented emergency procedures, established reporting processes, trained employees, and invested in safety technology. But how can superintendents determine whether those efforts are making a meaningful difference in their schools?
That question was central to the AASA and CENTEGIX webinar, Safer Schools, Every Day: How Superintendents Build a Culture of Safety.
Moderated by Dr. Roderick Sams, CENTEGIX Chief Development Officer, the discussion featured Max Schachter, founder and executive director of Safe Schools for Alex; Jeffrey D. Harrison, superintendent of Brecksville-Broadview Heights City Schools in Ohio; and Van Ayres, superintendent of Hillsborough County Public Schools in Florida.
Their perspectives revealed five important indicators of whether a district's school safety plan is working: a trusted reporting culture, clearly defined employee responsibilities, practiced emergency procedures, regular safety audits, and a commitment to continuous improvement.
As the panelists emphasized, the existence of a school safety plan does not necessarily mean those procedures are understood or consistently followed. The real measure of preparedness is how effectively a district puts its plans into practice.
1. Does Your School Safety Plan Encourage Students and Staff to Report Concerns?
When Dr. Sams asked the panelists how superintendents could assess the strength of their district's safety culture, Schachter began with the experiences of students and staff.
“I think, you know, obviously one of the ways to tell is do a culture and climate survey, you know, of your students and your staff.”
Schachter encouraged district leaders to examine whether students feel comfortable reporting concerns to teachers and whether employees believe their reports will be taken seriously.
These questions get at an essential distinction: having a reporting process is not the same as having a reporting culture.
A school might provide several ways to report threats or concerning behavior, but those options are less useful if students fear speaking up or believe adults will not respond appropriately.
The U.S. Department of Education's school climate resources identify surveys as tools for understanding school environments and identifying areas for improvement. The department's ED School Climate Surveys include instruments that gather perspectives from students, instructional staff, noninstructional staff, and administrators.
These resources offer a way for districts to examine whether their stated safety priorities align with how people experience school every day.
Ayres shared an example of student involvement from Hillsborough County Public Schools, where students receive training on Florida's FortifyFL reporting application. The district also communicates its school safety priorities to families, including through a dedicated safety newsletter.
Together, these practices demonstrate that reporting culture requires more than a single tool. It depends on communication, education, trust, and consistent follow-through.
The National Center for Education Statistics' School Survey on Crime and Safety also illustrates the range of information districts can examine, including school climate, prevention practices, and security procedures.
For superintendents evaluating their school safety plan, the critical question is whether students and staff know how to raise concerns—and trust that doing so will lead to an appropriate response.
2. Does Every Employee Understand Their Role in School Safety?
Harrison offered one of the webinar's most direct answers to the question of how superintendents can evaluate safety culture.
“I think my response is, is everyone part of it?”
He cautioned against assuming that hiring a school safety director or assigning security responsibilities to a small team means the entire district is prepared.
Instead, Harrison encouraged superintendents to consider how every employee contributes to maintaining a safe learning environment.
“No matter if they're superintendent, bus driver, classroom teacher, or third-shift custodian, we all have a role in school safety.”
That responsibility extends beyond emergency response. Harrison described everyday actions such as checking that doors are secured, recognizing when students may be struggling, and helping students feel a sense of belonging.
His perspective reflects the importance of involving employees across roles in a district's school safety strategy.
The federal guidance on developing and maintaining school emergency operations plans similarly emphasizes collaboration among different school personnel and community partners, along with training that helps employees understand their responsibilities.
How Wearable Technology Can Support Staff Participation
Harrison also shared a practical example of how his district expanded employee participation through the CENTEGIX CrisisAlert wearable panic button.
When Brecksville-Broadview Heights City Schools initially distributed CrisisAlert badges, employees working inside school buildings received them first. The district subsequently extended access to bus drivers.
Although the badges were not intended to provide coverage while drivers were traveling their routes, they could be used when drivers were on school campuses during arrival and dismissal.
That distinction mattered. Bus drivers observing activity from school parking lots could now initiate an emergency alert if they identified a serious threat.
Harrison described the change in employee engagement:
“Everybody owns it and it's no longer just on a shelf collecting dust.”
The experience reinforces a broader point about school safety technology: accessibility and employee participation are closely connected.
District leaders evaluating an emergency alert system should consider whether employees understand how to use it, have access when and where they need it, and feel confident taking action.
That is why staff adoption of safety technology and practical school alert system implementation deserve attention alongside technical capabilities.
The objective is not simply to equip employees with devices. It is to support a culture in which every staff member understands their responsibility and has the means to act.
3. Are Emergency Procedures Regularly Practiced and Reinforced?
A comprehensive school safety plan provides a foundation for emergency preparedness. It establishes expectations, documents procedures, and identifies the responsibilities of school personnel. But as the webinar panelists emphasized, the existence of a plan does not necessarily mean those procedures are understood or consistently followed.
Harrison described how his perspective on school safety has evolved throughout his career.
“It was a survey. It was a form. It was uploading a plan.”
He explained that these administrative activities matter, but districts must go further to ensure employees understand their role in keeping schools safe.
The distinction is consistent with SchoolSafety.gov's emergency planning guidance, which recommends that schools regularly review, evaluate, and update emergency operations plans while using training and exercises to reinforce responsibilities.
Schachter offered a more sobering perspective. His son Alex was killed in the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Since then, Schachter has advocated for stronger school safety practices and accountability.
During the webinar, he warned that written policies cannot substitute for effective implementation, pointing to failures in threat assessment procedures surrounding the Parkland tragedy.
For superintendents, the lesson is that school safety compliance and school safety preparedness must be evaluated together. District leaders need to know not only whether a policy exists, but also whether the people responsible for carrying it out are prepared to act.
Drills Help Turn Plans Into Practice
Ayres discussed the importance of conducting drills regularly enough that preparedness becomes familiar.
He explained that when drills are embedded in school culture, employees and students can become more accustomed to established emergency procedures.
Schachter similarly emphasized the importance of practicing safety plans rather than relying solely on written policies.
The Department of Homeland Security Exercise Starter Kits provide resources for conducting tabletop exercises, evaluating emergency procedures, and identifying gaps that may need attention.
These exercises can also support a broader emergency management approach that reduces avoidable delays by giving teams opportunities to identify coordination challenges before an actual emergency.
Regular drills, training, and assessments should therefore be viewed as opportunities for improvement—not merely activities to complete and document.
For superintendents, the goal is to understand what works, what needs reinforcement, and where additional preparation may be necessary.
4. Are School Safety Audits Identifying Gaps and Reinforcing Expectations?
While Schachter emphasized school climate and Harrison focused on employee participation, Ayres highlighted another indicator of a strong school safety culture: consistent evaluation.
Hillsborough County Public Schools serves more than 200,000 students across approximately 250 schools. Maintaining consistent safety practices at that scale requires ongoing attention from district leadership.
Ayres explained that his district conducts its own school safety audits in addition to the reviews performed by the state.
“We do safety audits on all our schools every single year.”
He described how the district's security team examines practical measures such as locked doors, fencing, and single points of entry.
These recurring reviews help communicate that school safety is not a one-time initiative. It is an ongoing district priority.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's K–12 School Security Guide similarly recommends a layered approach to physical security and provides guidance for assessing vulnerabilities and identifying improvements.
CISA also offers school security assessment resources to help school teams evaluate existing measures and consider opportunities to strengthen campus security.
For districts, a school safety audit should do more than identify whether equipment or procedures are present. Findings should inform discussions about whether current practices address the risks and operational conditions of individual campuses.
That includes evaluating whether school safety solutions address real operational needs rather than simply satisfying a purchasing or compliance requirement.
As Ayres's example demonstrates, consistent audits can reinforce leadership expectations while helping districts identify where additional attention is needed.
5. Are Assessment Findings Driving Continuous School Safety Improvement?
The final consideration brings together the panelists' central message: a school safety plan should evolve as districts learn from everyday experiences, training, assessments, and changing needs.
During the AASA and CENTEGIX webinar, Harrison described how school safety had once been treated as an administrative checkbox. He encouraged superintendents to move beyond completing forms and uploading plans to making sure employees feel personally responsible for safety.
Schachter similarly warned against allowing written policies to create a false sense of preparedness.
And Ayres demonstrated how district leadership can reinforce expectations through regular audits, drills, and communication.
These perspectives highlight why school safety evaluation should not end when a district completes an audit or meets a compliance requirement.
The next question is what leaders do with the information they collect.
Districts can use school climate surveys to identify concerns about reporting culture, training feedback to understand employee preparedness, and safety audits to identify vulnerabilities that need attention.
Findings should help inform priorities, reinforce expectations, and guide decisions about training, procedures, and technology.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency's exercise and evaluation resources provide guidance for documenting lessons learned and developing improvement plans following exercises.
For district leaders, this creates an opportunity to connect school safety evaluation with the broader work of organizational improvement.
As Harrison emphasized during the webinar, school safety should not be an isolated agenda item or annual exercise. It should influence the decisions districts make throughout the school year.
What Should Superintendents Ask When Evaluating Their School Safety Plan?
The five considerations from the webinar offer a practical starting point for assessing whether a district's safety priorities are reflected in everyday operations.
Superintendents can use the following questions to guide conversations with their leadership teams:
- Reporting culture: Do students and employees know how to report concerns, and do they trust that those concerns will receive an appropriate response?
- Employee responsibilities: Can staff members across different roles explain how they contribute to maintaining a safe school environment?
- Emergency preparedness: Are emergency procedures regularly practiced, reviewed, and reinforced?
- School safety audits: Do recurring assessments identify gaps between written expectations and actual campus practices?
- Continuous improvement: Are findings from surveys, drills, and audits being used to strengthen the district's school safety plan?
These questions are an editorial synthesis of the panelists' perspectives, not a formal assessment instrument presented during the webinar.
District leaders seeking additional guidance can also review the CENTEGIX School Safety Plan Checklist, which addresses considerations such as reporting systems, threat assessments, emergency response planning, staff training, and drills.
Make School Safety an Ongoing Measure of District Readiness
The strongest message from the webinar was that a school safety plan cannot be evaluated by documentation alone.
Schachter challenged superintendents to examine reporting culture and whether safety procedures are carried out in practice. Harrison emphasized the importance of giving every employee a meaningful role. Ayres demonstrated how ongoing audits, drills, and leadership attention help reinforce safety expectations across a large district.
Together, their insights show why effective school safety requires continuous evaluation, shared responsibility, and a willingness to improve.
A district's safety culture becomes stronger when the people responsible for implementing its plan understand what is expected and are prepared to act.
Watch Safer Schools, Every Day: How Superintendents Build a Culture of Safety to hear the full discussion and learn how these education leaders approach school safety in their districts.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can superintendents tell if their school safety plan is working?
Superintendents can evaluate their school safety plan by examining five areas: reporting culture, employee participation, emergency preparedness, safety audits, and continuous improvement. School climate surveys, training feedback, and regular assessments can help identify whether safety procedures are understood, followed, and reinforced.
What is the difference between school safety compliance and school safety preparedness?
School safety compliance involves meeting applicable requirements for policies, procedures, training, and documentation. School safety preparedness also considers whether those procedures are understood, practiced, and effectively implemented. Both are important components of a comprehensive school safety strategy.
Why are regular school safety audits important?
Regular school safety audits help districts identify potential vulnerabilities, assess whether established procedures are being followed, and prioritize improvements. During the AASA and CENTEGIX webinar, Hillsborough County Superintendent Van Ayres described how his district conducts annual audits to reinforce safety expectations across its schools.