School Safe Gives Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools Fresh Angle on Security

• NCJ Number: 251751
• Author(s): Becky Lewis
• Date Published: May 2018
• Length: 2 pages
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Award: A proposal to operate the National Criminal Justice Technology Resource Center.

Annotation

This feature article from the May 2018 issue of TECHBeat describes how one North Carolina school district (Winston-Salem/Forsyth County) used the “School Safe“app to improve school security throughout its school district.

Abstract

Under the leadership of the school superintendent, all schools were enabled by the app to perform guided safety and security assessments of their buildings by using the Justice Technology Information Center’s (JTIC’s) Security and Safety Assessment App for Schools (“School Safe“), which is based on studies conducted by security professionals. School Safe is available free to criminal justice professionals and school administrators. The school system’s school resource officers (SROs) store the app on their smart phones and can then use it to assess the security features of their buildings. After conducting school security assessments with School Safe, principals submitted copies of completed assessments to the school administration’s security team. The article includes comments by school administrators regarding how the School Safe app enabled them to consider security issues they had overlooked in their previous security assessments.