May | June 2019

OJJDP Holds Listening Session on Preventing and Responding to School Violence
Shown (from left to right) are James Antal, Associate OJJDP Administrator and head of the Office’s Special Victims and Violent Offenders Division; Chyrl Jones, Deputy OJJDP Administrator; James Burch, President of the National Police Foundation; Caren Harp, OJJDP Administrator; and Brad Russ, Director of the National Criminal Justice Training Center.Shown (from left to right) are James Antal, Associate OJJDP Administrator and head of the Office’s Special Victims and Violent Offenders Division; Chyrl Jones, Deputy OJJDP Administrator; James Burch, President of the National Police Foundation; Caren Harp, OJJDP Administrator; and Brad Russ, Director of the National Criminal Justice Training Center.
Educators, law enforcement, and others concerned about school safety grapple with the challenges of identifying, assessing, and responding appropriately to potential and active safety threats in schools. A major barrier is the lack of a centralized, user-friendly resource for information and guidance. Currently, school employees, police officers, and parents must access multiple websites and databases, which can at times offer conflicting terminology and directives.

To address this issue, OJJDP, the National Police Foundation, and the OJJDP-supported National Criminal Justice Training Center (NCJTC) hosted a listening session on May 29, 2019, to explore comprehensive, multidisciplinary approaches to prevent and respond to school violence. The goal is to develop national school safety guidelines and best practices as well as a training curriculum for K–12 urban, rural, tribal, public, private, and charter school stakeholders. Experts in education, law enforcement, school safety, juvenile justice, trauma, and threat assessment training were invited to participate in the session. OJJDP Administrator Caren Harp offered opening remarks.

“Just a few weeks ago on May 7, two students shot and killed one student and injured eight more at the STEM School Highlands Ranch near Denver, Colorado,” said Administrator Harp. “As we know, these incidents of school violence were not the first and will likely not be the last. Our objective today is to identify areas for national policy, best practices, and training. We hope to create a national school safety collection of best practices that answers questions most frequently asked by school stakeholders.”

The session included an overview of the Police Foundation’s Averted School Violence Database. The database is an anonymous, secure, and confidential website where school personnel, law enforcement officers, mental health professionals, and others involved in school safety can share their averted school violence experiences and lessons learned to improve safety and prevent future violence. Information from the database has laid the groundwork for OJJDP to develop trainings through NCJTC and to identify priority school safety issues in need of best-practice guidelines. The session explored a range of these safety issues, including effective crisis planning, the establishment of school conditions that promote prevention and safety, and approaches for addressing students’ behaviors that might be cause for concern.

The national school safety guidelines, best practices, and training curriculum will be highlighted in upcoming webinars and on the OJJDP website.

Resources:

Information about NCJTC’s school safety trainings and the National Police Foundation’s school safety and violence prevention resources is available online.