School Safety Guide: Emergency Plans, Drills, Threat Assessment and Security

School safety is the set of plans, practices, people and physical measures that protect students and staff from harm at school and keep schools able to teach: emergency operations plans and drills, a shared language for emergencies, behavioral threat assessment, controlled entrances and other security measures, trained adults, and a school climate in which students feel connected enough to report what worries them. Most American schools already have the visible pieces. In 2021–22, 97 percent of public schools controlled access to their buildings during school hours and 93 percent used security cameras, up from 61 percent in 2009–10, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Students’ sense of safety has not kept pace. In the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the share of high school students who missed school because of safety concerns at school or on the way rose from 9 percent in 2021 to 13 percent. And the federal agency that has studied school attacks longest concludes that many of them can be prevented: the U.S. Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center found that every attacker in its 2019 study exhibited concerning behaviors beforehand, and that most elicited concern from others.

This guide to school safety explains what national data show, which federal resources and state laws apply, how schools build an emergency operations plan, how the Standard Response Protocol works, what research says about lockdown and active shooter drills, how behavioral threat assessment and reporting work, and how schools approach physical security, cameras, weapons detection, police on campus and student wellbeing. It is written for district and school leaders, safety and security directors, principals and staff, with a section for families. It covers K–12 schools, not college campus safety. Each section links to edCircuit’s more detailed coverage.

Updated October 2026.

In this guide

• The basics: What school safety means · How safe schools are · Federal and state roles
• Planning and response: Emergency operations plans · The Standard Response Protocol · Lockdown and safety drills · Reunification and communication
• Prevention: Behavioral threat assessment · Reporting systems · Student wellbeing and school climate
• Security: Physical security · Cameras and surveillance · Weapons detection · Police and security staff
• People: Roles and training for staff · Families · Questions to ask

What does school safety mean?

School safety means preventing harm to students and staff where possible, limiting it when an emergency happens, and helping the school community recover afterward, across every threat a school faces rather than one. The federal Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plans, issued in June 2013 by the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Justice with the FBI and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, organizes that work into five mission areas: prevention, which stops a threatened or actual incident from occurring; protection, which secures people and property against violence and disasters; mitigation, which reduces the likelihood and impact of threats and hazards; response, which stabilizes an emergency and saves lives; and recovery, which restores the learning environment afterward. Its planning principles say that school plans must consider all threats and hazards, from natural disasters and disease outbreaks to accidents and crime, must cover incidents during and outside the school day, on campus and off, and must provide for “the access and functional needs of the whole school community,” including people with disabilities.

School safety is therefore broader than security, and it is shared work: teachers, bus drivers, custodians, coaches, nurses and families all see parts of the school day that administrators do not. edCircuit has written about that shared responsibility and the duty of care behind it:

• School Duty of Care: A District-Wide Responsibility
• Duty of Care Beyond the Classroom
• School Safety Resilience: Moving Beyond Response
• What 15 Episodes Taught Us About School Safety

How safe are American schools? What the data show

By most long-term federal measures, crime and violence at school declined over the decade before 2022, while students’ own reports of feeling unsafe and of being threatened rose between 2021 and 2023. The most complete national picture comes from the Report on Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2023, the 26th edition of a joint report by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, released on July 25, 2024. Most of its data are from 2021 or 2022. Its main findings, as summarized in the NCES release:

• Victimization. The rate of nonfatal criminal victimization at school for students ages 12–18 fell from 52 per 1,000 students in 2012 to 22 per 1,000 in 2022.
• Bullying. The share of students ages 12–18 who reported being bullied at school fell from 28 percent in 2010–11 to 19 percent in 2021–22.
• Weapons. The share of high school students who carried a weapon on school property at least one day in the previous 30 days fell from 5 percent in 2011 to 3 percent in 2021.
• Firearm possession. Public schools reported 10 firearm possessions per 100,000 students in 2021–22, higher than in any year of the previous decade, when the rate ranged from 2 to 7.
• Active shooter incidents. Between 2000 and 2022 there were 50 active shooter incidents at elementary and secondary schools, with between 0 and 6 a year. The four incidents in 2022 caused 52 casualties, the second-highest total since 2000 after 2018.

Students’ reports point the other way. In the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, compared with 2021, the share of high school students threatened or injured with a weapon at school rose from 7 to 9 percent, the share bullied at school from 15 to 19 percent, and the share who missed school because of safety concerns from 9 to 13 percent. The two sources use different samples and questions and cannot be compared directly, but together they suggest that serious crime at school is less common than a decade ago while many students still do not feel safe there.

Counts of school shootings vary widely, because there is no single national definition. Three widely cited measures:

Leaders should check which definition a count uses before comparing it with another. Shootings are also a small part of what schools prepare for: the 2026 drills guidance from the National Association of School Psychologists and its partners, discussed below, notes that school-associated homicides are about 1 percent of homicides of school-age youth and that an armed attack “is not as probable as other types of crises.” On how schools record and learn from everyday incidents, see The Modern Mandate for School Incident Reporting.

What do the federal government and the states do about school safety?

School safety is mainly a state and local responsibility; the federal government supplies research, guidance, data and grants. The main federal reference points:

• The Federal Commission on School Safety (2018). President Trump established the commission on March 12, 2018, after the February 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Chaired by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, it issued its final report on December 18, 2018. The report states that it “has no force or effect of law” and that implementing its practices “is purely voluntary.” Its recommendations included a federal clearinghouse of school security practices, rescinding the Obama administration’s 2014 school discipline guidance, and that districts consider arming some specially selected and trained school personnel.
• SchoolSafety.gov. The clearinghouse the commission recommended now operates as SchoolSafety.gov, the public website of the Federal School Safety Clearinghouse, an interagency effort of the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Justice. Its disclaimer says the departments “do not mandate or prescribe practices.”
• The Department of Education. ED’s School Safety and Security page, last reviewed May 8, 2026, links to SchoolSafety.gov and to resources on emergency planning, threat assessment, mental health and school climate. Its emergency planning page, last reviewed March 5, 2026, describes a comprehensive emergency operations plan as “a central element” of school safety and says training, exercises and “age-appropriate drills” should reflect school-specific needs.

One long-standing federal resource has changed: the website of the Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools (REMS) Technical Assistance Center, rems.ed.gov, which hosted federal emergency planning guides and training, did not resolve when checked for this guide in October 2026. The 2013 school emergency operations plan guide remains available through SchoolSafety.gov. Districts whose plans or training materials link to REMS pages should update those links.

State laws differ considerably, and leaders should read their own state’s requirements. Two examples:

On drills, the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) and its partners reported in April 2026 that at least 37 states require specific active threat drills, while noting that decisions about how such training is conducted are often left to individual districts. Other states have adopted threat assessment requirements of their own in recent years; edCircuit’s BTAM in Schools: From Compliance to Prevention discusses how districts are responding to those mandates.

What is a school emergency operations plan?

A school emergency operations plan (EOP) is the written plan that sets out how a school will prevent, protect against, respond to and recover from emergencies, developed with local first responders and reviewed regularly. The federal guide recommends a six-step planning process, adapted from FEMA’s general planning guidance (Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plans, 2013):

• Step 1: Form a collaborative planning team of administrators, educators, school psychologists, nurses, facilities and transportation managers, student and parent representatives, people who represent students and staff with disabilities, and community partners such as police, fire, emergency medical services and local emergency managers.
• Step 2: Understand the situation. Identify the threats and hazards the school faces and assess risk and vulnerability through site, culture and climate, behavioral threat and capacity assessments.
• Step 3: Determine goals and objectives for each threat, hazard and function, before, during and after an incident.
• Step 4: Develop courses of action that describe who does what, when, where and how.
• Step 5: Prepare, review and approve the plan.
• Step 6: Implement and maintain the plan through training, exercises and review.

The guide describes a traditional plan format in three parts. The basic plan gives an overview of the school’s approach. Functional annexes describe how the school carries out functions that apply across many emergencies; the guide names annexes for evacuation, lockdown, shelter-in-place, accounting for all persons, communications and warning, family reunification, continuity of operations, recovery, public health, medical and mental health, and security. Threat- and hazard-specific annexes, such as one for a hurricane or an active shooter, describe what the school will do about a particular threat.

The guide is specific about maintenance. It recommends a meeting at least once a year to educate everyone with a role in the plan, visits to evacuation and reunification sites, and role-specific training; substitute teachers, it says, “must be trained on the plan and their roles in the plan.” It notes that many schools review their plans annually and that “in no case should any part of a plan go for more than two years without being reviewed and revised.”

Plans must also cover “all settings and all times,” including after-school activities, athletics and the bus ride, which edCircuit has examined:

• After-Hours School Safety: Who Is Responsible?
• After-Hours School Safety Gaps Leaders Miss
• Unsupervised Access to School Athletic Fields
• The Importance of School Bus Safety
• School Safety First 5 Minutes Matter Most

What is the Standard Response Protocol?

The Standard Response Protocol (SRP) is a free, action-based set of five emergency actions, each paired with a short spoken directive, that many schools use so that students, staff and first responders share one vocabulary in a crisis. It was developed by the “I Love U Guys” Foundation, which Ellen and John-Michael Keyes started in 2006 after their daughter, Emily, was killed in a school shooting; the foundation’s name comes from the text messages she sent her parents that day. The foundation says its programs have been implemented by more than 78,000 schools, agencies and organizations, and that downloadable materials are free.

The SRP is built on actions rather than scenarios: a school chooses one of five actions and announces it with its directive. The current K–12 version is the SRP 2025 Operational Guidance, version 4.2, in which the actions and directives are unchanged. The foundation’s 2025 parent handout describes what students and adults are trained to do:

The SRP’s value lies in consistency: a student who changes schools, a substitute and an arriving police officer all understand what “Secure” or “Lockdown” means. The distinction between those two matters most. A Secure keeps teaching going behind locked outside doors when the danger is outside; a Lockdown stops everything because the danger is inside or at the door. A NASP resource on mitigating the psychological effects of lockdowns makes a similar point, recommending a lockout or modified lockdown whenever it is safe and full lockdowns only when imminent danger makes them necessary. For how lockdowns work and what they ask of staff, see edCircuit’s School Lockdown: Duty of Care and Safety Protocols.

Lockdown drills, active shooter drills and safety drills: what the research shows

Drills are how schools practice their plans, and the evidence now separates two kinds clearly: calm, announced lockdown drills that walk students through procedures appear to build preparedness without raising anxiety, while realistic simulations of an attack are associated with harm and are recommended against by the main professional and scientific bodies. The term “active shooter drill” is often used for both; NASP and its partners call it “an unhelpful catch-all.”

The federal EOP guide describes exercises of increasing cost and complexity, from tabletop discussions to drills, functional exercises and full-scale multiagency exercises, and advises schools to exercise “under different and non-ideal conditions” and to finish each one with a debrief and an after-action report.

The evidence on drills and students’ wellbeing, in order of publication:

• Social media study, 2021. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, working with Everytown for Gun Safety, applied machine learning and time-series analysis to 54 million social media posts linked to 114 schools in 33 states before and after drills. They reported that expressions of anxiety, stress and depression increased by 39–42 percent following the drills, alongside increases in civic engagement, and concluded that proactive strategies may be more effective and less harmful than drills (ElSherief et al., Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, December 2021; Everytown first released the findings in September 2020). The study measured language in public posts rather than diagnosed conditions, and it treated drills of many kinds together.
• Lockdown drill studies, 2021–2022. In surveys of more than 10,000 students in a large urban district at three points, before drills, after a first lockdown drill, and after training and a second drill, Jaclyn Schildkraut and Amanda Nickerson found that students were less fearful and perceived lower risk after participating, although reported avoidance behaviors increased (Criminal Justice Policy Review, 2022). In a companion survey of 3,000 staff, perceived preparedness rose significantly while perceived safety was unchanged (Educational Policy, 2021). The drills studied were announced, nonsensorial lockdowns conducted with training.
• National Academies, 2025. A consensus study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found that drills “often vary dramatically in intensity and design,” from simple walk-throughs to unannounced, high-simulation events, and that the inconsistency can increase anxiety and distress, especially among vulnerable students. It concluded that “drills involving realistic simulations or deception should be avoided entirely” and called for national guidance and sustained research (School Active Shooter Drills: Mitigating Risks to Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Health).

Professional guidance has converged on the same practices. In April 2026, NASP, the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) and Safe and Sound Schools replaced their earlier armed assailant drill guidance (2014, 2017, 2021) with Best Practice Guidance for School Safety and Lockdown Drills: Preparing for Active Threats. Its main recommendations:

• Discussion-based activities, such as tabletop exercises, should be the foundation, with simple discussions before operations-based drills.
• Lockdown should remain “an essential component” of any options-based approach, and all drills should be nonsensorial, without simulated gunfire, smoke, injuries or dramatic enactments.
• Schools should not use simulation techniques with students. If sensorial exercises are held with adult staff, they require informed consent, advance disclosure of the tactics and on-site mental health support, and should never involve props that simulate physical harm.
• Drills should be announced, and caregivers should be notified beforehand. “While it is understandable that school leaders may prefer ‘the element of surprise,’ the risk of heightened anxiety and poor performance outweighs this potential benefit,” the guidance states.
• Except where law requires it, student participation should not be mandatory, alternative preparation should be available, and school mental health professionals should be involved at every stage.

Everytown, which opposes involving students in active shooter training, recommends similar conditions where schools do hold drills, including no simulations, advance notice to parents and trauma-informed support (Everytown Research, updated May 2024). The remaining disagreement is therefore narrower than it appears: it is mainly over whether students should take part in active threat drills at all. For the practical side, see edCircuit’s School Safety Drills: Completion Is Not Preparedness and Risky Decisions in School Safety Under Pressure.

Reunification and emergency communication

Reunification is the controlled release of students to their parents or guardians after an emergency. The federal guide’s family reunification annex asks schools to plan how families will learn the process in advance, how staff will verify that an adult is authorized to take custody of a student, how to keep students from leaving on their own, and how to address technology and language barriers.

The “I Love U Guys” Foundation’s Standard Reunification Method, also free, sets out one widely used approach. Its parent handout explains that a reunification may follow weather, a power outage, a hazardous materials event or a crisis, may happen away from the school, and releases students only to listed emergency contacts after parents check in with identification. It asks parents to bring identification and to “be patient,” because the process provides “an accountable change of custody.”

Communication is the other half of that work, and plans need backups that work without power, networks or a particular person. The U.S. Department of Justice’s review of the 2022 law enforcement response at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, released January 18, 2024, examined school safety and security and pre-incident planning and noted the “inaccurate initial narrative” that emerged in public communications, as the COPS Office summarized. edCircuit has covered emergency communication in depth:

• School Safety Communication Breakdown Risks
• When the Wi-Fi Goes Dark: How Schools Can Prepare for Emergency Communications Without Technology
• The Importance of a Communication Plan in a School District

What is behavioral threat assessment in schools?

Behavioral threat assessment is a structured process in which a trained, multidisciplinary school team gathers information about a student whose behavior has raised concern, judges whether the student poses a risk of harm to others or themselves, and puts a plan in place to reduce that risk and help the student. It is often called behavioral threat assessment and management, or BTAM. The approach comes from the U.S. Secret Service.

The foundational practical guide is NTAC’s Enhancing School Safety Using a Threat Assessment Model: An Operational Guide for Preventing Targeted School Violence (July 2018), which sets out steps for creating multidisciplinary teams, establishing central reporting, identifying behaviors of concern, defining the threshold for law enforcement involvement, promoting safe climates and managing risk, as NTAC summarized it in 2019. Two NTAC studies supply the evidence base:

• Protecting America’s Schools (November 2019). NTAC examined 41 attacks on K–12 schools from 2008 through 2017. It found no profile of a student attacker or of a targeted school; that attackers usually had multiple motives, most often a grievance with classmates; that most used firearms, and that 19 of the 25 who used a firearm took it from the home of a parent or close relative; that most had been bullied, most had a history of school discipline, and all had experienced social stressors; and that all exhibited concerning behaviors, with most communicating a threat or their intentions beforehand. Seventeen attacks (41 percent) occurred within the first week back at school after a break in attendance such as a suspension, holiday or illness (NTAC, 2019).
• Averting Targeted School Violence (March 2021). NTAC examined 67 disrupted plots against K–12 schools from 2006 through 2018. It found that in every case the attack was averted because members of the community came forward, that plotters were most often motivated by grievances with classmates, and that students are best positioned to notice warning signs, though many cases also involved students who saw concerning behavior and did not report it. Eight plots were reported by family members, and in nearly one-third of cases a school resource officer played a role in reporting or responding (NTAC, 2021).

Several principles follow. Threat assessment should focus on “a student’s behaviors, situational factors, and circumstances,” because there is no profile; the threshold for intervention should be low; and the purpose is help rather than punishment. NTAC’s 2021 report says that “the primary objective of a student threat assessment is not to administer discipline or to introduce students into the criminal justice system,” and its 2019 report warns that “punitive measures are not preventative” and that removing a student from school “may not always be the safest option.” Teams should also ask whether a student has access to weapons, particularly at home.

Threat assessment has limits. NTAC notes that its case study research “is not designed for establishing generalizable truths or making predictions,” and a poorly run process can label students unfairly or channel ordinary misbehavior into discipline, which is why training, documented procedures and support plans matter. edCircuit covers the subject in depth:

• School Threat Assessment: Connecting Warning Signs
• BTAM in Schools: From Compliance to Prevention

How do reporting systems help keep schools safe?

Reporting systems give students, staff and families a reliable way to pass on a concern, and they are the front end of threat assessment: a team can act only on what it hears about. In NTAC’s study of attacks, only 7 of the 41 schools (17 percent) had any system for notifying staff of threatening or concerning student behavior before the attack, and in two-thirds of the cases at least one prohibited behavior had been observed by classmates or adults and not reported (NTAC, 2019). The same report described Colorado’s statewide anonymous reporting tool, Safe2Tell, which received 19,861 tips in the 2018–19 school year, most often about suicide, drug use and bullying.

In May 2023, NTAC and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a toolkit, Improving School Safety Through Bystander Reporting. Its five key takeaways are to encourage bystanders to report concerns, make reporting accessible and safe, follow up on reports and be transparent about the actions taken, make reporting part of daily school life, and create a climate where reporting is valued and respected (Secret Service, May 16, 2023).

Students need to know what to report, how to report it outside school hours and what will happen next, and a system that exposes the student who reported quickly stops receiving reports. Reporting has grown more complicated as harmful behavior has moved online, including fabricated images of students. edCircuit’s coverage includes:

• Bullying Prevention: Building Safer Schools Together
• AI and Bullying in Schools: What K–12 Leaders Must Know
• AI Deepfakes: The New School Safety Threat
• Deepfakes in Schools: The New Cyberbullying Crisis

How do student wellbeing and school climate affect school safety?

Student wellbeing and school climate are part of safety rather than separate from it, because the students who pose a risk are often students in distress and because connection protects students. The CDC reports that when young people feel connected at school, they are less likely to experience poor mental health, suicidal thoughts and behaviors, substance use and violence, and that schools can increase connectedness through relationship-building programs (CDC, 2023 YRBS results). In the same survey, 40 percent of high school students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in 2023, down from 42 percent in 2021.

The Secret Service’s research points the same way. Most attackers in NTAC’s 2019 study had experienced psychological, behavioral or developmental symptoms, half had received mental health services, and most had been bullied, often persistently. NTAC concluded that schools should build “safe and positive school climates, where students feel empowered to report bullying.”

Schools’ capacity to provide mental health support has not grown. In 2021–22, 49 percent of public schools provided diagnostic mental health services and 38 percent provided treatment services, down from 55 and 42 percent in 2019–20, although 90 percent of schools said they had increased social and emotional supports for students that year (NCES, July 2024).

Climate and security can pull against each other. CISA’s security guide asks whether highly visible measures such as indoor cameras or metal detectors could “elevate student fears of victimization and degrade school climate,” and the drill research above shows how a safety practice can itself cause distress. The most durable approach treats relationships, reporting and support as safety measures in their own right. For more, see:

• Student Mental Health: A Growing Focus in Schools
• Social-Emotional Learning (SEL): A Guide for Schools
• Safer Learning for Students with Additional Needs

How should schools approach physical security?

Physical security works best as a layered system in which equipment, building design, people, policies and training reinforce one another, rather than as a collection of separate purchases. That is the approach of CISA’s K-12 School Security Guide, 3rd edition (2022), used with the agency’s online School Security Assessment Tool. The guide’s main points:

• Layers. A campus has four layers, from the grounds perimeter to the building interior, and layering helps a school “detect, delay, and respond to threats” without single points of failure.
• Five elements. Equipment and technology, site and building design, personnel, policies and procedures, and training must work together; a camera nobody monitors or a locked door that is routinely propped open adds little.
• No single answer. Each school is unique, and the guide says “there is no one-size-fits-all approach to physical security” and that some measures “may be inappropriate for all schools depending on the context.”
• Effects on other goals. The guide asks whether a measure could degrade school climate or, for example, whether automatic door locks could hinder responders.

National data show which measures are common. In 2021–22, 97 percent of public schools controlled access to buildings during school hours and 97 percent required visitors to sign in and wear badges, while 2 percent used metal detector checks on students every day and 6 percent used random metal detector checks (NCES, July 2024). The Secret Service’s research adds a caution about relying on physical measures alone. Of the 41 schools attacked in its 2019 study, 80 percent had some physical security measure in place and two-thirds had full- or part-time school resource officers, and most attacks lasted two minutes or less. “Prevention is key,” the report concludes.

Cameras, monitoring and student privacy

Cameras are now nearly universal in public schools, and newer tools extend surveillance to license plates, faces, online activity and the air in restrooms; each brings safety benefits and questions about privacy that districts should settle in public before buying. The share of public schools using security cameras rose from 61 percent in 2009–10 to 93 percent in 2021–22 (NCES). In NTAC’s study of attacks between 2008 and 2017, by contrast, 14 of the 41 schools (34 percent) had cameras, a reminder that cameras record events far more often than they prevent them.

The same questions apply to every tool: what problem it solves, what it collects, who can see the data and for how long, how errors are caught, and how families are told. Supporters cite faster investigations and deterrence; critics cite students’ trust, misidentification and the reach of shared databases. edCircuit has examined each technology:

• Cameras in Schools: Safety, Surveillance, and Privacy
• Facial Recognition in Schools: Safety or Surveillance?
• Flock Cameras in Schools Face Growing Pushback
• School Safety Camera Trailers Arrive on Campuses
• AI Vape Detectors in Schools Redefine Campus Safety
• School Bus Cameras and Student Privacy
• Data Privacy in Schools: Protecting Teachers and Students

Phones are a related question, since families want to reach their children in an emergency while many schools restrict phones during the day. On how districts handle restrictions, see School Cell Phone Bans: Where the Devices Go and School Cell Phone Bans: Enforcement That Works.

Does weapons detection technology work in schools?

Weapons detection can find some weapons at a controlled entrance, but evidence that it prevents school attacks is thin, the technology has known limits, and at least one widely sold product has been the subject of federal action over its claims. Daily metal detector screening of students remains rare: 2 percent of public schools used it in 2021–22 (NCES). Three facts from primary sources frame the decision:

• Claims and performance. On November 26, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission announced a proposed settlement with Evolv Technologies, alleging that the company deceptively advertised that its Evolv Express scanners would detect all weapons. The complaint said the scanners were in more than 800 schools across 40 states, that they failed to detect a seven-inch knife brought into a school in October 2022 that was used to stab a student, and that raising the sensitivity afterward produced a 50 percent false alarm rate. The proposed order bars unsupported claims about detection and accuracy and requires the company to let certain K–12 customers cancel contracts signed between April 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023 (FTC, 2024).
• Who attacks schools. The attackers in NTAC’s 2019 study were, by its definition, current or recently former students, and most had elicited concern from others beforehand. Three of the 41 schools had magnetometers, which were not regularly used. Entrance screening does not address an attack outside the building or the observable behavior that preceded every attack in the study.
• Effects on climate. CISA’s guide names metal detectors among the highly visible measures that could raise students’ fear and degrade school climate, and asks schools to weigh that effect.

A district considering screening should ask for independent test results under conditions like its own, false alarm rates and the staffing they imply, and what happens to students who are flagged, and should compare the cost with prevention measures that address the behavior research associates with attacks.

Police and security staff in schools

School resource officers (SROs), who are sworn police officers, and school safety or security officers, who are usually civilian staff without arrest powers, are present in a majority of public schools, and research finds both benefits and costs. In 2021–22, 61 percent of public schools had security staff present at least once a week, and about 45 percent reported sworn law enforcement officers who routinely carried a firearm, down from 51 percent in 2019–20 (NCES, July 2024). For the difference between the two roles, their training and state requirements, see edCircuit’s School Safety: SRO vs School Safety Officer Explained.

The evidence runs in both directions:

• Effects on violence and discipline. A national study using school data from 2014 to 2018 and a regression discontinuity design based on federal policing grants found that SROs “effectively reduce some forms of violence in schools, but do not prevent gun-related incidents,” and that they increase suspensions, expulsions, police referrals and arrests, with the largest increases for Black students, male students and students with disabilities (Sorensen et al., Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2023). A North Carolina study of middle schools found a similar pattern (Sorensen, Shen and Bushway, 2021).
• Role in prevention and response. In NTAC’s study of averted plots, an SRO played a role in reporting or responding in nearly one-third of cases. Of the completed attacks it studied, five were ended by SROs, nine by other school staff and four by student bystanders, and half ended without any outside intervention.

For most districts, the practical question is how the officer’s role is defined: written agreements that separate law enforcement from routine discipline, selection and training for work with young people, a place on threat assessment and planning teams, and tracking of arrests and referrals. The Federal Commission on School Safety went further and encouraged districts to consider arming some specially selected and trained staff, a policy that remains contested; the 2013 federal planning guide, by contrast, states that the possibility of an active shooter “is not justification for the presence of firearms on campus in the hands of any personnel other than law enforcement officers.”

Roles and training for staff

Every adult in a school has a safety role, and training should match it. The federal EOP guide asks schools to train staff in the specific skills their roles require, such as first aid, threat assessment and assisting students with disabilities, and to train substitutes on the plan. NTAC’s research adds that “all school personnel should be trained to recognize signs of a student in crisis,” and the drills guidance from NASP and its partners emphasizes that students take their cues from adults, so “effective drills require the presence of staff who are calm and confident.”

In practice, leaders own the plan, the teams and communication with families; safety directors coordinate with responders and run exercises; teachers carry out response actions and pass on concerns; counselors, psychologists and nurses serve on threat assessment and crisis teams; and bus drivers, custodians, food service staff and coaches, who see places and hours others do not, need to know how to report and respond. Science labs, shops and other specialized spaces add hazards of their own; for those, see edCircuit’s Lab Safety Guide.

What families should know about school safety

Families help keep schools safe by knowing the school’s emergency language and reunification process, keeping contact information current, talking with their children about reporting concerns, and securing anything at home that could be used to cause harm. The Secret Service’s research gives families a specific role: eight of the 67 plots in NTAC’s 2021 study were reported by family members, and in some cases parents passed on what their children had told them. NTAC also found that most firearms used in school attacks came from the home of a parent or close relative, which makes secure storage a school safety measure as much as a household one.

The SRP 2025 parent handout answers several questions families commonly ask (“I Love U Guys” Foundation):

• Should parents come to school during a Secure? “Probably not.” Classes continue as normal, and parents may be asked to stay outside.
• Should parents come to school during a Lockdown? The handout calls the inclination “understandable, but perhaps problematic,” because police will be responding and parents are unlikely to be allowed onto the campus.
• Should parents text their children during a Lockdown? During the first part of a lockdown, it may not be safe for students to text; as the situation resolves, students may be asked to update their parents.
• What happens at reunification? Parents bring identification, check in, complete a reunification card and wait; students are released only to listed emergency contacts.

Families can also ask how drills are conducted and what alternative is available for a child who has experienced trauma. See also edCircuit’s What Parents Should Know When Their School Is Under Construction and Snow Day Safety: What Goes Into Calling a Snow Day.

Questions to ask about school safety in your district

For school and district leaders

• When was each school’s emergency operations plan last reviewed, and does any part of it go more than two years without review?
• Did local responders help write the plan, and do they use our response language?
• Does the plan cover after-school activities, athletics, field trips, buses and students and staff with disabilities?
• Are our drills announced, nonsensorial and followed by a debrief and an after-action report, as current NASP, NASRO and National Academies guidance recommends?
• Does every school have a trained, multidisciplinary threat assessment team, and does the process lead to support plans rather than only discipline?
• Can students and staff report concerns at any hour, and do they hear back about what happened?
• What problem is each security technology meant to solve, what evidence did we see before buying it, and have we published who can access its data?
• If we have school resource officers, does a written agreement separate law enforcement from routine discipline, and do we track arrests and referrals by student group?
• Do any of our plans, trainings or websites still link to REMS TA Center pages that no longer work?

For teachers and staff

• Do I know the five response actions and exactly what I do in each, including when I am outside my classroom or on duty in a hallway, cafeteria or bus?
• Do I know how to account for my students and report their status, and where the evacuation and reunification sites are?
• Do I know where to send a concern about a student, and whom to call if a threat seems immediate?
• After the last drill, did I say what did not work, and has anyone fixed it?
• Do I know how to support a student who is upset during or after a drill or an incident?

Safe schools are built before the emergency

The evidence on school safety is clearer than the public debate about it. Plans written with local responders and practiced calmly, a common language for emergencies, threat assessment teams that act early and offer help, reporting systems students trust, and adults who know their students all have support in federal guidance and research. The more visible and contested measures, from simulated attacks to new detection technologies, have weaker evidence and real costs to school climate, and they help, where they help, as layers in that larger system. Most of what makes a school safe happens on ordinary days, in how adults notice students and act on what they learn.

Related reading

• School Safety: SRO vs School Safety Officer Explained
• School Threat Assessment: Connecting Warning Signs
• School Safety Drills: Completion Is Not Preparedness
• Cameras in Schools: Safety, Surveillance, and Privacy

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