On 3 May 2023, the first mass school shooting occurred in Serbia, positioning children as a particularly vulnerable group in need of further support. Subsequently, the government needed to create policies to help restore a sense of security, stability and trust in the community. The main dilemma was regarding the questions: Should we continue…

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.…

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has indicated that schools are vulnerable to school shootings. Understanding the experience of school members who have experienced such tragedies provides important context for further developing much-needed preventive and responsive measures. Using narrative inquiry, we explored the experience of a…

A variety of factors are associated with the likelihood of reporting guns at school; however, mixed empirical findings hinder our ability to inform policies to reduce school violence. Additionally, many of the established factors are difficult to change over time, and limited attention has been devoted to more malleable factors such as anonymous…

Arming teachers remains a divisive issue in the United States. Since one goal of this policy is to improve perceptions of safety, it is important to understand how arming teachers impacts students. Using survey data from six Midwestern school districts, we apply Ferraro's risk assessment model to explore how individual and school conditions impact…

This dissertation examines the effects of neighborhood characteristics on Detroit Public School Community District students' attendance rates for the 2018-19 school year. First, I analyze the effects of daylight savings time, relative to school start time, on absences for elementary and middle school students. By observing the natural change in…

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…

We examined the effectiveness of the "Say Something Anonymous Reporting System" (SS-ARS) program in improving school safety in a cluster randomized control trial among over 700 students in 19 middle schools in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools. The SS-ARS is a program that emphasizes youth engagement and trains youth to recognize…

The implementation of school-based law enforcement officers, commonly referred to as school resource officers (SROs), became an increasingly popular response to school crime in the United States, particularly in the aftermath of high-profile school shootings in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Following the expansion of SRO programs came the…

This study examined the phenomenon of school from the point of view of teachers, students and parents, and the question as to who wants what and who can do what and it was tried to make decisions about school safety and to determine strategies with opinions of stakeholders. The design of the study, which was designed according to the qualitative…

Despite their proliferation in schools across the U.S., the impact of lockdown drills on students remains largely understudied. Despite their goal of preparing students -- along with teachers and school staff -- for situations like the 2018 shooting in Parkland, FL, questions have been raised in both the public and academic discourses about…

This systematic review synthesizes research on school-based crisis intervention protocols, descriptions, and evaluations. We performed a comprehensive literature search, and 60 studies met the inclusion criteria for this review. We found an overwhelming lack of evaluation studies (n = 3), suggesting that interventions are being administered…

Virginia law mandates the use of threat assessment in all public schools, yet there is little research on grade-level differences. This study investigated a statewide sample of 3,282 threats from 1,021 schools. Threats significantly differed across grade level in demographics, characteristics, and outcome. As grade increased, students were more…

This poll was conducted between February 27-March 6, 2024 among a national sample of 1,002 Teens. The interviews were conducted online and the data were weighted to approximate a target sample of Teens based on gender, age, race, and region. Results from the full survey have a measure of precision of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Among the…

Little is known about principals' perceptions and their links to how school safety practices operate. Using data from School Survey on Crime and Safety from 2,009 public schools in the US, the current study examines the extent to which principals/administrators' perceptions of academic climate and crime risk are related to school practices…