Providing the Gold Standard in K-12 Safety, Security and Emergency Preparedness

September marks National Preparedness Month, the annual campaign to remind everyone that preparing for emergencies and disasters can keep them, their families, and their communities safe. The BSD Safety and Security Department is the gold-standard in K-12 safety, security, and emergency preparedness. They utilize a multi-layered, research-based approach to school security to promote the safety of our students, staff, and community. The team remains committed and focused on preparing and empowering our schools to respond confidently, safely and effectively to incidents, emergencies, and security risks.

Coming soon: BSD Safety and Security will be featured in the district’s new podcast, launching this fall. Stay tuned to learn more about their work across the district.

BSD Safety and Security recently presented a report to the school board outlining a various safety topics and accomplishments over the past year, including:

Staff Training and Preparedness

Providing staff, students and community members with lay-person emergency response training is crucial to our approach to safety. During the 2023-2024 school year, ALL schools successfully completed their required life-safety training modules.

Advanced Life-Safety Training

In addition to the mandatory life-safety training for school-based staff, the department developed and delivered the Safety Academy 201 training class, an advanced version of the popular Safety Academy 101 training class. These classes are designed to help prepare staff to be leaders in an emergency response situation. District custodians are some of the most trained staff in the district, receiving 40 hours of advanced life-safety training.

Reunification Jump-Out Team

This past school year, the district assembled and trained a central office Reunification Jump-Out Team. This team is committed to responding to large-scale critical incidents involving our schools and assisting with the planned and orderly off-site reunification of students with their emergency contacts.

Threat Assessment Program

Working in concert with building administrators, school-based threats are triaged by law enforcement and specially trained safety and security department personnel. The formalized threat assessment process helps guide the district’s response to each threat, ensure the safety of staff and students, provide appropriate interventions and supports, and overall fidelity in response efforts. During the 2023-2024 school year, the district conducted 49 school-based threat assessments and two employee-based workplace violence assessments — and from that, provided supports and interventions needed for students and employees.

Physical Security

Throughout the school year, our schools are audited quarterly to improve physical building safety. These audits include a check of 1) the use of a single point of entry; 2) locked exterior doors; 3) pre-locked classroom doors; 4) use of the electronic visitor management system; and 5) the use of employee badging. This past year, we saw continued improvement in the physical security of our school buildings with three schools receiving perfect security audits and a 22% drop in the overall number of unlocked classroom doors.

Surveillance Camera Upgrades

The Safety and Security Department has been actively working with our Technology Services and Facilities departments to upgrade our older district-wide camera system with a user-friendly, high-resolution, cloud-based camera system. The department has a multi-year plan to finalize the upgrade of cameras at all district facilities.

Opioid Overdose Medication

Working in collaboration with Health Services, the Safety and Security Department standardized the placement of opioid overdose kits in all our buildings and are conducting monthly inspections of this essential life-safety equipment. In conjunction with the kits, we are also providing training to district staff and secondary students on drug trends and hazards, how to identify an opioid overdose, and the proper application of the opioid overdose reversal medication.

Student Voice and Preparation

The Safety and Security Department provides life-safety training to our students to increase overall safety and preparedness at the school level. Team members leverage technology to present secondary student safety assemblies. During these live events on Microsoft Teams, subject matter experts from the Safety and Security Department connect with all students and teachers at a secondary school while they are in their classrooms

Watch the board presentation.

Read the full board report.

Additional Safety Resources

Staying Safe Online

In our schools, district and surrounding community, safety extends beyond physical security. BSD families are also encouraged to familiarize themselves with current events and best practices related to internet safety. Here are some safety measures that students, families and staff can take to protect themselves from cybercrimes:

• Do not add or accept any social media connections without being certain that you know who it is beforehand.
• Do not open a message or click on a link from an email address or name that you do not know. Delete it immediately.
• Do not send any information or images via social media to someone you don’t know.
• Understand that every action taken on social media, and online in general, leaves a digital footprint. This digital footprint can always be accessed, even if images “disappear” on some platforms.

If you see something, say something. Any cybercrimes, should be reported to local law enforcement, FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, as well as the safety/privacy portal of the social media platform(s) involved:

• Bellevue Police Department, non-emergency phone number: 425-577-5656
• FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (C3)

Reporting a threat and sharing valid information on where you saw the threat helps law enforcement and the specific platform investigate the source of the post and its potential risk. Do not repost a threat, as it can spread the threat in the community, be altered by other users, and/or cause alarm and fear.

Tips for Parents, Teens and Kids for a Safe School Commute

Public Health – Seattle & King County shares resources for the new school year to help families learn best practices to keep our kids safe as they travel to and from school. Ensure a safe journey for everyone by learning more about riding the bus, driving to school, child passenger safety, safe driving for teens, walking or rolling to school, and more.

Safety Study Hall

The Washington State Department of Health recently launched their Safety Study Hall website, a place for schools, students and families to learn about important safety topics such as:

• Opioid Overdose Prevention Strategies
• Secure Storage of Prescription and Over-the-Counter Medication
• Secure Storage of Firearms and Ammunition