The White House Conference on School Safety

Our Perspective...

On Thursday, October 15th, 1998, President Clinton convened the first White House Conference on School Safety. The Administration identified the conference purposes to include identifying the causes of school and community violence, as well as to identify strategies for preventing improving school safety.  Critics called the conference "election season politics" and suggested that the conference served no purpose.  Who was correct?

At National School Safety and Security Services, we lobby for bi-partisan discussions and support of school safety issues.  Did politics play a role in this particular conference and related activities?  We have no doubt that it did - on both sides of the political fence!  

We did, however, find some valuable messages and ideas as we listened to the presenters in the program.  In an effort to sort the quality content from the politics surrounding the event, we offer our perspective:

Trends, Causes, and Related Issues

Conference presenters identified some key school safety and youth violence trends and issues based on our experience.  These included:

 The need clearly exists for parental involvement with their children and in reducing access to firearms by youth

 The increased fear children have for their safety at school and that fear clearly disrupts the learning environment

 The fact that, in addition to the obvious seriousness of high-profile shooting such as those last school year, a more common threat to school safety is presented by weapons, drugs, gangs, aggressive behavior, and related violence

 Domestic violence, child abuse, violence in society, violence in the media, and related observations of violence contribute to youth violence in schools and in communities

 Serious mental health services are needed for youth. 

Strategies for Improving School Safety

In addition to addressing the issues above and highlighting numerous successful programs from across the country, presenters identified the following strategies for improving school safety:

 Reducing class sizes and increasing school construction to expand and improve school facilities

 Increasing the number of teachers, counselors,  nurses, and police officers to work with children and schools

 Training teachers, school staff, law enforcement, and others who work with youth to not only recognize "early warning signs," but also what to do once they are recognized and providing the resources for doing so

 Assessing individual school and district safety needs, collecting and evaluating local data, and developing plans specific to each school, school district, and community

 Implementing programs such as school uniforms, school-community collaboratives, after-school programs,  and other initiatives

 Recognizing that the key to "programs" and "prevention" rests in sustained, long-term, meaningful, and intense relationships between adults and children

Presidential Initiatives

During the conference, President Clinton announced five specific initiatives to improve school safety:

1.  Resources for Improving School Security:  A new $65-million initiative to help schools hire and train 2,000 new community police and school resource officers to work with schools.  

2.  New Federal Response to Violent Deaths in Schools:  A plan to Congress to fund Project SERV, a School Emergency Response to Violence program to help schools and communities respond to school-related deaths similar to what FEMA does with natural disasters.

3.  Reform of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program:  An overhaul of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program to require comprehensive school safety plans for effective drug and violence prevention and reduction to include requirements of tough discipline rules, proven drug prevention strategies, and yearly report cards to measure progress in safety and drug prevention. White House press releases on Revamping Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program have cited plans to include school security and crisis preparedness as points of emphasis in the new program approach.

4.  Community-Wide Response to School Safety and Youth Violence:  Programs in 10 new cities to develop and implement community-wide school safety plans.

5.  A New Partnership with MTV:  A campaign to encourage conflict resolution, mentoring, and other non-violence messages and programming.

Our Conference Evaluation

Most conferences have an evaluation form to be completed at the end.  Our conference evaluation comments include:

 An "excellent" rating for The White House, Congress, and other political leaders who are now making school safety a top item of discussion on national, state, and local agendas.  (It is long overdue!)

 A "very good" rating for presenters who accurately identified many of the factors contributing to school and youth violence, and who presented some realistic suggestions for what could contribute to improved school safety.

 An "excellent" rating for President Clinton's focus on improving school security, creating a federal emergency response program for schools, reforming the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program, collaborating with the media to send improved messages to youth, and community-wide safe schools planning.  We are especially pleased to see the concept of security and crisis preparedness represented in the first three recommendations, and we encourage the Administration to insure that they remain and are expanded as integral parts of safe schools initiatives.

 A "strongly disagree" rating for the over-emphasis on statistics, surveys, etc. presented before and during the conference.  We know that school-based crimes are grossly underreported (see our detailed explanation at FAQ: School Security) to law enforcement and to the public.  Although the new emphasis on data collection and analysis is commendable, it is our opinion that it should not be presented so strongly as to suggest that it reflects such an accurate picture of what is really going on in our schools.  A glance at our page on School Related Violent Deaths, while by no means suggesting that all schools are overwhelmed with daily violent crime, will illustrate that there are serious crimes occurring daily in schools across the nation.

 A "needs improvement" rating for the following areas:

          1.  Need presenters and active participants from the professional school security and school resource officer communities in the future, including recognition that both approaches (not one or the other) play an important role in improving school safety and acknowledgement of these communities as an integral part of national (and conference) agendas.

          2.  Need to include resources, strategies, and proposals for improving training of school personnel on security threats and strategies, school security assessments, crisis preparedness planning, and related areas.

        3.  Related to #1 and #2, need to openly discuss improvements of the immediate school environment by recognizing the complexity and need for above items, and by acknowledging that other prevention measures cannot be effectively implemented until the immediate education environment is secured in a balanced, rational manner.

We encourage President Clinton, Congress, and other leaders to continue to obtain input and involvement from all stakeholders in the school safety process and to continue the national dialogue, and most importantly the action, on these issues.

For Additional Information...

Visit the following federal government Web site for links on the conference, the First Annual Report on School Safety, and related information:

Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program News