Being Safe and Feeling Safe at School

 

Independent schools have a strong history of assuring safety through operations: controlled access points, surveillance systems and emergency procedures. These necessary steps keep our communities safe and to signal to families that safety is a key part of a school’s value proposition. Those elements still matter, but today’s environment has shifted the baseline. School violence, global instability and economic volatility have made safety feel more fragile, even on campuses that invest heavily in protection.

Our schools may do everything right in terms of training, staffing and technology. But do our communities feel safe? Increasingly, safety isn't judged solely by what measures are in place. It's judged by what's visible, what's communicated and what people believe.

For business leaders, that shift carries strategic weight. Safety no longer sits inside a facilities line item. It cuts across capital planning, staffing, training, governance and communications. The choices CFOs make influence not just how a school manages risk, but how confidently families enroll, how comfortable faculty and staff feel, and how much trust the institution retains when a crisis occurs.

A Crisis Close to Home

I recently spoke with Patrick Meehan, CFO of LaSalle Academy in Providence, Rhode Island, about the gap between being safe and feeling safe. The December 2025 shootings at nearby Brown University gave him a firsthand look at how those concerns can converge. "It sent shock waves through our community,” Meehan said. Though the event unfolded on a completely different campus, being nearby forced leadership into immediate decisions: Do we keep operating? Adjust security? And how should we communicate with frightened members of our community?

Timing made the situation more complex. The suspect remained at large during LaSalle’s exam week, when student movement became less predictable and less contained. Leadership faced a clear tradeoff. Closing the school would have reduced exposure but disrupted academics and schedules. Remaining open required deliberate, visible risk management that addressed both safety and perception.

LaSalle ultimately balanced continuity with caution. The school maintained core academic functions while canceling athletic events and large gatherings. Leadership also increased visible security presence throughout exam week, reinforcing that the school was taking action to meet the moment.

The response proved effective not only operationally, but also in how the community received it. “We did not receive negative feedback,” Meehan said. “People appreciated the added presence.” Stakeholders understood the rationale for decisions and could see careful response in real time.

After the immediate crisis passed, harder strategic questions remained, particularly around public-facing events. Athletic games and performances involve open access and large crowds. Additional screening or staffing costs money and creates tradeoffs. Highly visible controls like metal detectors can also shift the campus atmosphere from welcoming to one that projects suspicion. Security questions have no clear answers.

Perception Drives (Some) Outcomes

Security professionals sometimes use the term “security theater” to describe visible measures that project safety without improving it. The risk isn't just wasted money. Cosmetic measures can erode trust when they fail under pressure. But the opposite error is just as real — schools can have genuinely strong safety systems that nobody knows about or trusts.

Chris Joffe, founder and CEO of Joffe Emergency Services, a firm specializing in school safety programming, event safety and emergency preparedness, told me directly: “The data is clear. People who feel safer are in fact safer.” When faculty and staff understand emergency protocols, they act faster and more clearly. Confidence produces real outcomes.

But feeling safe can't substitute for being safe. For Joffe, the correct sequence is this: "You have to make people safer first, and then make people feel safer." Business leaders who adopt that attitude have a clear standard to follow where each investment must improve real capability and reinforce community confidence. Measures that look reassuring but fall apart under pressure undermine both.

Spending ≠ Safety

Most of the increased spending has flowed toward personnel and technology, while training, assessment and planning often remain underfunded. That imbalance creates systems that look robust but lack operational depth.

In my conversation with Joffe, he pointed out a troubling pattern. Schools have increased safety spending more than threefold over the past decade, yet outcomes have not improved at the same rate. The issue lies in how schools deploy resources. Most of the increased spending has flowed toward personnel and technology, while training, assessment and planning often remain underfunded. That imbalance creates systems that look robust but lack operational depth.

“Schools can end up with all the technology in the world and none of the right answers,” Joffe pointed out. He recounted how one school installed a campus-wide lockdown system that allowed anyone to secure the building instantly, but hadn’t trained faculty or staff how to use it, which made an effective response from security personnel challenging.

Schools that balance spending, training and periodic assessment often improve effectiveness without increasing total cost because they strengthen how existing systems operate rather than simply adding new ones.

Layered Systems

No single security measure is sufficient on its own. Joffe calls it the "Swiss cheese model," where each layer addresses different risks and compensates for gaps in the others. Guards have blind spots. Cameras miss angles. Access systems can be defeated by tailgating. Overreliance on any one element will leave vulnerabilities.

That kind of cultural shift takes sustained reinforcement. Infrastructure investments deliver their value only when behavior supports them.

LaSalle had already built that kind of structure before the Brown University incident. Its buildings connect internally, which allows for rapid lockdown when needed. The school limits and monitors entry points, and cameras track both vehicles and foot traffic. Just as important, leadership reinforces behaviors that make those systems effective, through central entry points for example.

That kind of cultural shift takes sustained reinforcement. Infrastructure investments deliver their value only when behavior supports them.

Core Controls: Communication and Training

During the crisis, LaSalle’s most complex challenge involved coordination rather than technology. “We had to be clear about who was responsible for communicating and how messages were delivered,” Meehan recounted. Leadership designated a primary spokesperson and tightened messaging protocols to keep communication consistent and accurate under pressure.

LaSalle also recently conducted a full-day exercise with realistic emergency scenarios that tested coordination, response and decision-making. Participants initially expressed discomfort, but eventually “appreciated that we were preparing rather than ignoring the risk,” Meehan said.

Joffe recommends structured annual training that focuses on immediate response and coordination. He also emphasizes reunification planning, the process of returning students to families after an emergency, which is infrequently rehearsed.

Thus, reallocating a portion of technology and staffing budgets toward training and preparedness often delivers better outcomes at the same or lower cost.

Anxiety, Risk and Reassurance

School communities now operate with a higher baseline level of anxiety, shaped in part by the COVID pandemic and its aftermath. That shift affects how people interpret risk. A nearby incident can trigger concern, even when it doesn’t involve the school. “There is more anxiety, and it is not going away,” explained Joffe. The United Educators 2026 Top Risks Report underscores this point. Surveying 200 schools, UE identified that public safety was the second highest risk area for schools, up from fifth in 2025.

A stronger school climate, including fair rules and positive adult relationships, both increases students’ feelings of safety and reduces their exposure to violence and victimization, according to recent research in the American Journal of Criminal Justice. In other words, the same conditions that make students feel safer also correlate with measurably safer environments. It’s important to remember, however, that feeling safe does not replace the need for safety measures.

The tension between feeling safe and being safe means aligning financial decisions, operational planning and communications in ways that reduce real risk while reinforcing genuine confidence. In our current volatile environment, business leaders play a central role in delivering those interrelated outcomes.

Jeffrey Shields, FASAE, CAE
NBOA President and CEO
Follow NBOA President and CEO Jeff Shields on LinkedIn.