School Bus Transportation News at STN Media

Dorn Deciphers Security:
What You Need to Hear

By Mike Dorn
Special to School Transportation News

School Transportation News readers and conference attendees give me great feedback on topics that are of interest to them. The pupil transportation professionals I interact with through STN regularly tell me that they appreciate the direct approach I use to tackle safety issues. I am always concerned, however, that I might sometimes fail to reach members of my target audiences because of this directness.

While I do make a genuine effort to be thoughtful in how I present information, memories of horrible events experienced as a school district police chief, as well as cases where I have been called in as a consultant after a tragedy has occurred, compel me to be clear and direct when addressing campus safety topics.

I once watched a young man bleed to death from gunshot wounds across the street from a local high school because of local politics, turf issues and attempts to pacify vocal segments of the community. I came very close to being shot by a student on the same night for the very same reasons.

While I served as the School Safety Specialist for the School Safety Project in the Georgia Emergency Management Agency, our unit responded to more than 300 school crisis situations not only in Georgia , but around the nation. During this time and since then, I have interacted with many school officials who were caught completely off guard by events that they never thought could happen at their schools or on their buses. My passion in life is to help make schools, school bus transit and students safer, providing appropriate warnings is a major tool in that quest.

While undoubtedly striking a nerve with some on occasion, my hope is that most people are willing to at least consider what they read in this column each month. Several dozen planned campus shootings and bombings have been successfully thwarted by techniques that my former co-workers and I developed. We have shared these concepts with many that have read my columns and articles, attended our seminars and viewed our training videos. I by no means claim to be the final authority on campus safety, but I have been around the block not only in terms of experience, but in terms of professional development as well. I hope that most readers are willing to consider the ideas put forth in this column each month.

While there are others who also choose to take a direct path in addressing campus safety matters, a number of experts in the field have told me that they are not in the position to convey information as directly and honestly as they would like. School safety efforts are too often corrupted by the constant cry to be politically correct to the point of being ineffective.

School transportation officials have an obligation to continually question, challenge and re-examine what that hear, read, experience and most importantly, what has become standard practice. Since active listening is so important, be sure to listen closely when engaging a consultant, seeking the council of local public safety experts or trying to involve students and parents in safety efforts. This type of feedback can be invaluable in averting disaster. And just as not every concept put forth in this column will be right for every school system, some of the feedback and advice offered by others will not be appropriate for every situation. Careful evaluation and consideration must be used to select the best concepts for each environment. But, being open to new ideas or different ways of doing business are important to success. Since Bill Paul , editor of School Transportation News , lets me keep writing this column each month, I guess I have not offended anyone too badly yet. Since you have read this far in this month's column, I guess I haven't rubbed you the wrong way too badly either.

Most of the people who read this column each month are decision-makers in their organization. If you take the time out of your busy day to read this column, I probably have not offended you too badly. Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity to say, thanks for your willingness to listen and keep up the good work, there are many special people who are dependent on your best efforts to do so.

* Michael Dorn is widely considered to be one of the nation's foremost experts in school safety and security. He is a regular contributor to School Transportation News. He will present on school bus security at the upcoming STN EXPO 2004 in Reno , Aug. 8-11, 2004 . Dorn can be reached by email at schoolsafety@hotmail.com.