School Safety Pt. 2: Developing a School Safety Team

Pt. 1: Overview

Pt. 3: Volunteer Identification and Training

Overall plan and design

Identify Problems

In collaboration with the principal, parents, and students, discuss and identify problems happening during drop off (and if you’re brave, pickup) at the school.

  1. Identify the laws, rules, and best practices that are commonly violated so everyone knows and understands what should be happening.
  2. Prioritize the rules/laws/best practices that are most important to solve first.
  3. Consider issues specific to those who walk, bike, or roll to school in addition to vehicle drop offs. 

Brainstorm Solutions

As a group, propose solutions for fixing the issues you identified. When designing solutions, consider using the following:

  1. Volunteers issuing directions, helping students out of cars, lock bikes, etc. (This is a huge part of existing programs. 
  2. Cones or other temporary barriers
  3. Mascots
  4. Signage
  5. Marketing materials and communication channels to distribute them. The creation of videos to educate the school community. (See this Maya Lin example)

Be sure to avoid blocking bike lanes and crosswalks with cones, signs, and other items. It’s important to ensure everyone can get to school safely, especially cyclists and pedestrians.

You can see pricing for some of these (cones, vests, etc.) in the Example Budget.

Start with a Pilot Program

If resources are scarce or you’re starting in the middle of the year, consider starting with a small pilot program to solve the most important problems. 

Create a Communication, Implementation, and Enforcement strategy

  1. Communication Tips
    1. Communicate changes with the behavior you want to see (positive messaging – not negative)
    2. Include different languages in messaging or globally understood images
    3. Send communication through multiple channels
  2. Implementation
    1. Identify what implementation will look like
    2. Consider volunteer identification and training
    3. Getting and storing supplies (You may need to figure out a budget in advance)
    4. What will day 1 look like?
  3. Enforcement
    1. Determine enforcement procedures. Ideally violation messaging should come from the school (likely principal), not volunteers.
    2. Create a process for reporting violations to the school (license plate, child name, etc.)

Continue to Pt. 3: Volunteer Identification and Training.