I am attending the 2009 Virginia School and Campus Safety Training Forum in Virginia and the speakers have been very informative providing the attendees with a whole lot of “what you should dos”…also called recommendations.
The “what you should dos” and recommendations are targeting serious challenges and obligations:
- Legal Gotchas
- Regulatory Updates
- Gang and Drug Abuse
- Search Guidelines
- Violence and Crime Prevention
- Bullying
- Establishing Relationships with School and Community
- Threat Assessment Team Recommendations
- And many other important topics…
In talking with several of the attendees, I have been asking which step is the most difficult:
- Performing Assessments
- Planning and Development of Programs
- Implementing Plans and Ongoing Assessment Results
The results have been unanimous…Implementing is the most difficult.
This is not a surprise based on numerous school related reports including the Virginia Tech Review Panel Final Report which stated:
“Had the recommendations in this report been implemented, many of the problems cited above might have been averted.”
I think one of the attendees summed up this challenge even better telling me:
“The conference is great and I am fired up to go back to my school and improve my safety program….but when I get back to my office I am not sure how to implement all this information with all the people that need to know.”
Of course I explained to him that using proven implementation tools was the key…
