A school safety team collaborates with stakeholders to promote and maintain a physically and psychologically safe school environment. Together they must identify safety deficits and prioritize initiatives and practices. This phenomenological qualitative case study examined how a school safety team makes decisions and determines safety outcomes.…

Prevention of sexual violence is of vital importance, especially on university campuses where sexual violence occurs at particularly high rates. Universities are federally required to implement prevention programming, but little is known about retention over time. In addition, research has not analyzed the relationship between sexual violence…

We describe a holistic approach to promoting school safety that merges an emphasis on student voice with staff training in restorative practices. We first describe current approaches to keeping schools safe based on the existing research literature. Given that most of these approaches rely on access to credible information about potential threats…

School safety measures have become a significant concern in school districts, with efforts ranging from proactive strategies to reactive responses. This abstract delves into the contrasting approaches of proactive and reactive measures and examines their respective impacts on the culture and climate within schools. Proactive safety measures…

In a world where one in five women on campus experience some form of sexual assault, what would it take to create a campus culture that was free of violence against women? From a public health perspective, sexual assault is an epidemic on campuses, but why? What is it about a campus community culture that permits or encourages this, at a time when…

Since March of 2020, educational communities have largely been in survival mode with little attention, time, or resources allocated to the ongoing work of school safety and violence prevention. Planning and implementing initiatives for a return to school cannot just focus on a return to "normal" because of significant increases in other…

Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. students attend rural schools. After a two-year pandemic, issues related to funding, teacher recruitment and retention, and serving disadvantaged students have become more severe in rural school districts. In the five-part report series, "Educational Equity for Rural Students: Out of the Pandemic, but Still Out of the…

While students have a right to exercise free speech, schools have a responsibility to ensure safety and maintain the integrity of the learning environment. School and district administration must prepare for the potential of civil unrest both in the community and at school (e.g., walkouts, sit-ins, protests), and to prevent or mitigate the impact…

Risk reduction is traditionally understood as any programming that teaches potential victims how to protect themselves from an assault. In short, risk reduction educates potential victims and suggests they modify their behaviors in order to increase their own safety. But that programming focus is precisely why risk reduction is largely absent from…

This study examined relations between patterns of dating aggression and victimization and school environment factors among 4,114 early adolescents attending 37 middle schools in four sites in the United States (51% Black, non-Hispanic, 21% Hispanic, and 17% White). Latent class analyses revealed a five-class solution that differentiated among…

This case focuses on one novice school principal's experience with an elopement incident. School elopement sets the background for this case, and in this situation, the principal sees the need to take action to increase school safety and special needs students' teacher support. The authors enumerate leadership practices and organizational…

Campus sexual misconduct has been a growing concern in recent years. The researchers of this qualitative study analyzed the perceived adequacy of current sexual misconduct training and delivery practices from Title IX coordinators representing 11 higher education institutions across the United States. Results point to the importance of…

Bullying is prevalent in our culture and can be recognizable through a competitive, capitalistic economy and a dominance hierarchy. Based on dominance, bullying continues to be a problem in our public schools as witnessed through nationally televised stories in Colorado (Columbine), Vermont (Ryan Halligan), and Missouri (Megan Meier), to name a…

This updated and expanded new edition continues the theme of the second edition that presents a framework by which the reader can gain a broader and deeper understanding of the issues involved with campus violence incidents. In order to understand the current state of campus violence, two sources of information must be considered--the factual and…

A common response to school violence features the use of security measures to deter serious and violent incidents. However, a second approach, based on school climate theory, suggests that schools exhibiting authoritative school discipline (i.e., high structure and support) might more effectively reduce school disorder. We tested these approaches…