Homeland Security twirled off the rails with its patchwork 2018 Guide to Preventing School Gun Violence. Anyone else think suggesting smoke cannons as counter-measures to an active shooter is better scripted for Hollywood than for classrooms? SINGLE FOCUS SAFETY INITIATIVES. In my book, School of Errors, I use the analogy of fielders in a baseball game to make an argument against single focus safety initiatives. One could train baseball players to field line drives. In fact, the coach could swat sizzling liners for hours. Players would improve at fielding liners hit directly to them. Per our friends at Baseball Info Solutions, we know the following statistics to represent a typical game of baseball. 45% of batted balls were grounders, 36% were fly balls and 19% are line drives. Practice all you want on liners, but if you can’t snag a grounders then you are going to be foiled by half of the balls put into play. In other words, we need our professional guidance documents to prepare us to field any ball. FOUR PHASES OF SECURITY. The DHS guide identifies four phases of security: Connect, Plan, Train and Report. OK, connect with law enforcement and community agencies. That makes sense, until you realize that the steady churn of staff will shuffle the point of contact every few months. People are great at starting inter-agency collaborative teams. People stumble at attempting to sustain such efforts. The guide doesn’t address this or the need to have redundancy in training and a solid induction process for on-boarded players. The 29-page missive wasn’t enriched by this section, or other sections that attempted to push in place a foundation for the document. Readers don’t need a literature review. Know your audience. WHAT IS AN OFC? Beats me – and I’ve been in this field for over 20 years! Mystery solved! It is an Option For Consideration. You have to hunt through the document to find that in the narrative as it’s not bolded or highlighted. Oh, I later found it in Appendix E: Acronyms. So, we have a “new” term. DHS whiffed at the most important point. Do not take on too many OFCs! Again and again, school administrators tell me they can focus on 3-4 objectives and yet routinely list a dozen or more safety objectives as they don’t want to leave anything off the list. I get it, but you can’t be a mile wide and an inch deep. THE WILD IDEAS OF APPENDIX A: EVOLVING PRODUCTS. This section was a sloppy mix of primitive technology (CCV), stating the obvious (Door Locks), and ludicrous ideas including thwarting school intruders with smoke cannons, turnstiles and drones. What’s next? Perhaps dumping a jar of 5,000 marbles into the hallway would impede the shooter? After all, a similar approach proved effective in the movie Animal House. REMS-TA IS THE BETTER OPTION. The biggest problem with Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools Technical Assistance Center (REMS-TA) is that many school leaders aren’t aware of it. Yep, even my knowledge of REMS-TA was scant until member checks in the field continually calibrated me to what is the most complete, accessible, friendly center dedicated to increase school safety. These folks are dialed in. You won’t weed through redundant or fluffy documents to find something you can plug into your school safety plan. REMS-TA has templates, samples, and will connect you with a local person to inform your school’s emergency management. And, webinars that are relevant and they know your name! It’s not attending some one-way concert. Learn more about REMS-TA: https://rems.ed.gov/K12GuideForDevelHQSchool.aspx If you want to be entertained by the hot mess that is the K-12 School Security Guide 2nd Ed. (2018), visit https://www.dhs.gov/publication/k-12-school-security-guide FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE & BLOG: www.safetyphd.com The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. Opinions are those of the host & guests. The show adheres to nondiscrimination principles while seeking to bring forward productive discourse & debate on topics relevant to personal or institutional safety. LOOKING FOR DR. TIMOTHY LUDWIG, PHD? Dr. Perrodin’s “Safety Doc Podcast” negotiates school and community safety. To be informed about industrial safety, please contact Appalachian State University Professor Dr. Timothy Ludwig, PhD, at www.safety-doc.com. This is episode 106.
Purchase Dr. Perrodin’s Book: Schools of Errors – Rethinking School Safety in America
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Enjoy the amazing story of the making of the most honest book written about the school safety industrial complex! Hector Solis, producer of the riveting investigative truth Awareness Podcast, interviewed author David Perrodin and gifted him a brilliantly-rendered episode titled: The Making of School of Errors. ABOUT SCHOOL OF ERRORS. School of Errors: Rethinking School Safety in America released on August 7, 2019. The book establishes another voice in the discussion of how to promote safe schools. It challenges the unchecked expansion of school fortification and questions the realized benefit of inter-agency collaboration during a sentinel event. School of Errors offers an alternative to traumatizing simulations by providing clear options for improving school safety by the empirically-proven effective measures of leakage detection and sensemaking. Dr. Perrodin restores the scientific method to school safety and clears a path through the media rhetoric fogging this vital topic. THE ARTICLE THAT BECAME A MANUSCRIPT. In 2015, an education journal published David's school safety article. Fortunately, the journal’s editor was friends with an editor at book publisher Rowman & Littlefield. Connections were made and, confident in his expertise and experience, David aimed to write a book that would peel away the rhetoric and deliver an empirically-based, and at times punchy, account of the forces shaping school safety in America. He submitted a book outline and was subsequently offered a book contract. SPEECH-LANGUAGE PATHOLOGY AND DE-CONSTRUCTING COMMUNICATION. Hector recognized how Dr. Perrodin’s university degrees and work in communicative disorders and speech-language pathology centered the de-construction of the communication process - breaking words into phonemes, or sounds, and carefully monitoring expressed communicative messages to ensure they aligned to how the recipient actually comprehended the message. This keen observation shed light upon David’s prioritization of communication systems, including 2-way radio systems and concise communications protocols, as being fundamental to safety. Clear messages. Conveying information. Checking for understanding. In the first pages of School of Errors, David writes about a time when he urged a colleague to assess his district’s communication systems before making a decision to spend money on surveillance cameras. MEMBER CHECKS RAISED THIS BOOK ABOVE OTHERS. First, this book is packed with short stories. You will NOT be bored by a textbook disguised with a fancy cover. The narratives ease you from page to page and the themes couple like railcars being systemically assembled on the tracks. David willingly submitted his manuscript to authentic experts and sought their candid feedback of this work. Dr. Paul Rapp, Dr. Seann Dikkers, Hector Solis, and others, calibrated the manuscript as it clawed forward through edits and proofs. The robust reference section and index are tributes to the depth of research and input from members of the safety community. Additionally, personal interviews with Katie Pechon and Kevin Sullivan bring forward vibrant stories from which the reader will better understand chaos and order as it manifests in the real world -- in ways that are NOT found in binders or flowcharts. WHAT WAS THE MOST SURPRISING THING THAT HAPPENED WHILE WRITING THE BOOK? David and his family were grocery shopping at 8PM on a Friday night. His phone rang and he answered. “I found it!” exclaimed a voice loud enough to be heard in the bread aisle. On the phone was Yvette from the New York City Planning Department. She helped fulfill David’s requests for NYC documents specific to the study of the 9/11/2001 attack on the city. FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE & BLOG: www.safetyphd.com The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. Opinions are those of the host & guests. The show adheres to nondiscrimination principles while seeking to bring forward productive discourse & debate on topics relevant to personal or institutional safety. LOOKING FOR DR. TIMOTHY LUDWIG, PHD? Dr. Perrodin’s “Safety Doc Podcast” negotiates school and community safety. To be informed about industrial safety, please contact Appalachian State University Professor Dr. Timothy Ludwig, PhD, at www.safety-doc.com This is episode 105. Thank you to Hector Solis for conducting the interview and producing this show!
Purchase Dr. Perrodin’s Book: Schools of Errors – Rethinking School Safety in America
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Dr. Perrodin founded two major school conferences and thoroughly understands the teacher professional development industry. David is keenly aware that school safety conferences geared toward school administrators, school boards and teachers has devolved from showcasing best practices to a cash-grab exposition of the latest, greatest, flashiest safety gizmos and doodads. GONE ARE THE RESEARCHERS. Ten years ago, safety conference keynotes were reserved for motivational speakers and researchers. The strategy was to share an empowering story and then turn the stage over to people that were fluent in educational research. This wasn’t always perfect, but it often ensured empiricism over rhetoric. School safety conferences are sprouting up across the country and the presenters are now primarily on the response side of safety - and not specifically school safety. Conference seek folks from the FBI, Secret Service and the military. These folks are not school safety researchers, but their credentials are mesmerizing and they share interesting stories that seldom have anything to do with school safety. HOW CONFERENCES GENERATE REVENUE. A market savvy conference coordinator will exploit numerous revenue streams. Here are four common sources of revenue: (1) Attendees registration fees; (2) Vendors; (3) Sponsors; (4) University credits or Continuing Education Units (CEUs). University credits have waned in recent years, but were very popular around 2011 and before when teachers could ascend the pay schedule by taking university credits. EXPENSES OF OPERATING A CONFERENCE. Running a conference of fewer than 300 people is often more expensive, per person, than running a larger event. Bulk is better. Here are seven primary expenses of operating a conference: (1) Exhibition space; (2) Meals; (3) A/V equipment; (4) Presenter fees and expenses; (5) Marketing; (6) Staff to organize the event and process registrations; (7) Agency overhead. TEN THINGS YOU CAN NEGOTIATE AS A CONFERENCE PLANNER. A charismatic, keen conference planner will find ways to maximize profits. Here are some strategies: (1) Finding keynote presenters that are already paid by their employer. This often applies to people working for the government. You can pay them a smaller presenter fee as they are double-dipping. Ironically, many of these folks have this feature built into their employment contracts. might double dip; (2) Promote the presenters books or products as marketing is valuable; (3) Buy their books in bulk and include them for drawings or to the first 100 registrants. Event coordinators will typically receive a discount of 25% off retail price when you purchase 10 or more books; (4) If 200 or more people to stay at the conference center’s lodging accommodations, a discount if often applied to the use of the exhibition hall - or even waived; (5) Comp the table space of nonprofit or start-up vendors if they will bring value to the event; (6) Require vendors to “donate” for keynote sessions prize drawings; (7) New or local presenters might agree to waive their fee for exposure as they seek to “break into” bigger circuit of presenting; (8) Selling breakout sessions to vendors; (9) During the off-season, the local chamber of commerce might offer incentives, such as dining or shopping coupons to attendees, to encourage hundreds of people to visit the community; (10) Turn attendees loose for lunch - works well if conference center is near restaurants. BOTTOM LINE is that SAFETY CONFERENCES ARE CASH GOLD MINES! There is no research to back that attending a school safety conference results in safer schools. Vendors are paying thousands of dollars to buy access to educators. A 2-day conference attended by 400 people can generate a net income of $100,000 or more. FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE & BLOG: www.safetyphd.com The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. Opinions are those of the host & guests. The show adheres to nondiscrimination principles while seeking to bring forward productive discourse & debate on topics relevant to personal or institutional safety. Email David: thesafetydoc@gmail.com LOOKING FOR DR. TIMOTHY LUDWIG, PHD? Dr. Perrodin’s “Safety Doc Podcast” negotiates school and community safety. To be informed about industrial safety, please contact Appalachian State University Professor Dr. Timothy Ludwig, PhD, at www.safety-doc.com This is episode 104.
Purchase Dr. Perrodin’s Book: Schools of Errors – Rethinking School Safety in America
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