The primary goal of this year’s Symposium is to provide attendees realistic and attainable approaches to school safety. Attendees will take away valuable and, more importantly, practical information and tools that can be implemented immediately to ensure the safety and emotional well-being of their students, staff and community.

Ensuring a safe, caring culture and climate in our school is the foundation of effective school safety initiatives. Presentations will focus on current best practices in school safety planning, training, effective crisis and traumatic response, as well as provide attendees practical strategies to address worrisome and threat-related behavior. All those involved in school safety must be aware of and have the tools available to identify and react to, the warning signs concerning threat-related behavior to provide early intervention. Further, infrastructure target hardening, school emergency response training, and often-overlooked reunification post-incident will be presented.

Each outstanding presenter will pull from their respective subject matter expertise and share their best practices and lessons learned. The discussion topics will fundamentally build on each other and present a pragmatic, current, and attainable approach to school safety for 2023 and beyond.

Anyone involved in school safety will benefit significantly from the dynamic instruction and information presented at the Symposium. This includes educators, administrators, risk managers, counselors, mental health professionals and law enforcement. Only education can create change; it’s imperative that we educate ourselves with current best practice and measures to ensure the safety of our children.