Smart Parents, Safe Schools

The Essential School Safety Guide.

You don't need to be a school security expert to protect your child. You just need to ask the right questions.

You already carry the weight of it-that never-ending hope your child will be safe at school from the next school shooting. Replace your fear with understanding. Turn that feeling you are powerless into empowerment.

Written by Katherine Schweit, a former FBI special agent who built the Bureau's active shooter program in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, this book cuts through the noise of social media panic and conflicting internet advice. Inside, find a rare, proactive approach to empower parents and others who want to protect kids. Replace anxiety with practical ways to engage with your child's school and your child.

Whether your child attends large public schools or smaller private academies and preschools, Schweit replaces fear with understanding, equipping you with clear, research-backed emergency planning strategies, specific questions to discuss with school officials, and newly-developed data on 25 years of US school shootings.

This is the definitive handbook for child safety advocacy, showing you how to audit a school's campus defense, work with school administrators, and evaluate their crisis management protocols.

Drawing on frontline experience and behavioral research into real incidents, this blueprint gives you the language, the exact questions to ask, and the steps to get involved-whether you are a parent, soon-to-be parent, grandparent, caregiver, or anyone with a child in their life.

Inside this essential safety manual, you will learn how to:
Analyze 25 Years of Data: Explore never-before-seen data detailing exactly what grades, times, and days shootings active shooters have attacked PreK-12 campuse. See where we have improved and where we must do better.Ask the Right Questions: Get the precise language to evaluate local public and private school security and interact with school officials to aid in preventing school violence.Recognize Behaviors of Concern and Where to Report Concerns: Find detailed FBI-research on how to spot the warning signs known as behavior of concern, allowing you to intercede before tragedy happens.Build Peace of Mind Together With Children: Learn how to evaluate and discuss active shooter and other safety drills run with children and how to discuss it with them before and after drills occur. Don't leave kids to navigate this alone.
Keeping kids safe isn't someone else's job, it's yours-and now you'll know how.