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School resource officers (SROs) are sworn law enforcement who are responsible for providing security and crime prevention services in the American school environment. SROs have become commonplace in American schools, but support for their continued work is meeting more resistance from those who feel that schools need to be focused on education and not police actions. The responsibilities of SROs are similar to regular police officers in that they have the ability to make arrests, respond to calls for service, and document incidents that occur within their jurisdiction. They are expected to be more than a law enforcement officer; they are expected to be leaders, educate students about law-related topics; be a role model to youth; and typically have additional duties to include mentoring and conducting presentations on youth-related issues. SRO programs receive valuable augmented training from a partner in school safety, the non-profit organization – National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO). Towards this end, we will: (1) provide a historical context of SRO programs in the United States, (2) highlight concerns and challenges of school communities, (3) briefly present the case of SRO in Los Angeles, and (4) highlight implications for educational leadership. Conclusions and recommendations are presented.

This study aims to evaluate the effect of school safety on standardized learning outcomes for primary-age students in Tanzania, identifying causal direction and magnitudes.

Key dependent variables include standardized learning outcomes in English, reading fluency and math addition problems; while independent variables are the perception of school safety from head teachers. An ordinary least squares estimation explored the determinants of student performance when controlled for school and family specific characteristics. These results were then verified through the quasi-experimental method of propensity score matching, estimating the effect of school safety on learning outcomes and accounting for any misspecifications in the treatment or outcome models.

Results show statistically significant and negative effects of an unsafe school environment on learning outcomes for both reading and math.

As head teachers reported students’ perceptions of school safety, it may be underreported.

Donors, policymakers and other stakeholders need to consider school safety issues as a barrier to learning in policy design and program implementation.

This paper describes the educational experiences of children and youth (aged 3–20) with disabilities during school closures resulting from the 2017 Northern California wildfires. Students with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to the adverse impacts of disaster, yet the effects of school closures on these children remains understudied. This study identifies considerations for students with disabilities and their families post-disaster.

An inductive, qualitative approach was used for the study design, methodology and analysis. In-depth interviews were conducted with parents of 14 students with disabilities about their experiences during and following school closures. All of these children had missed between a week and over a month of school as a result of the wildfires. Thematic analysis was used to code data and identify four themes present across the data.

Our findings indicate that children and youth with disabilities experienced disruptions in school-based services; lost previously acquired skills; exhibited negative health and behavioral issues; had difficulties adapting to new, unfamiliar routines and were saddened by lost social connections. Additionally, findings pinpoint the importance of social connections while schools were closed, the benefits of resuming school which included access to responsive school staff, as well as challenges faced by children with disabilities and their families once schools reopened.

Families of children with disabilities, as illustrated in this study, often must transverse a different post-disaster landscape. Schools should assist them in navigating that landscape so students with disabilities can experience a more equitable return to education post-disaster.

The objective of this study was to investigate how participatory 3D mapping can promote local intergenerational engagement for disaster risk reduction.

This investigation was carried out in the city of São Luiz do Paraitinga, Brazil, where a low-cost participatory 3D model (P3DM) was used together with secondary methods (semi-structured interviews, round tables, discussions and presentations) to engage three local focus groups (the general public, high school employees and children) to visualize and interpret local hazards, vulnerabilities, capacities and risk mitigation measures.

Participants played with a 3D model, using it to express their memories about land use changes in the city and to share their knowledge about past disasters with children that have not faced them. They identified the impacts of the previous disasters and came up with proposals of risk mitigation measures, mostly non-structural.

When applied in a way that allows spontaneous and open public participation, the participatory 3D model can be a type of disaster imagination game that gives voice to oral histories, local knowledge, and which permits the intergenerational engagement for disaster risk reduction.

Despite increased attention to, and investment in, scaling up of disaster risk reduction (DRR), there has been little detailed discussion of scalability. The purpose of this paper is to respond to this critical gap by proposing a definition of scaling up for DRR, what effective scaling up entails, and how to measure and plan for scalability.

A literature review of debates, case studies and good practices in DRR and parallel sectors (i.e. education, health and the wider development field) unveiled and enabled the weighting of key concepts that inform scalability. The mixed methods research then developed, validated and employed a scalability assessment framework to examine 20 DRR and five non-DRR initiatives for which a minimum set of evidence was accessible.

Support from national, regional and/or local authorities strongly influenced the scalability of all initiatives assessed. Currently, insufficient to support effective scaling up, monitoring and evaluation were also found to be critical to both identify potential for and measure scalability.

The paper ends with a scalability assessment and planning tool to measure and monitor the scalability potential of DRR initiatives, highlighting areas for corrective action that can improve the quality and effectiveness of DRR interventions.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe the long-term impacts of hurricanes on schools and discuss approaches to improving recovery efforts.

Interviews with 20 school districts in Texas and North Carolina after Hurricanes Harvey (2017) and Matthew (2016). In total, 115 interviews were conducted with teachers, principals, district superintendents and representatives from state education agencies. Interview questions focused on the impact of storms and strategies for recovery.

The authors uncovered three long-term impacts of hurricanes on schools: (1) constrained instructional time, (2) increased social-emotional needs and (3) the need to support educators.

This paper focuses on two storms, in two states, in two successive years. Data collection occurred in Texas, one academic year after the storm. As compared to the North Carolina, data collection occurred almost two academic years after the storm.

This paper illuminates strategies for stakeholders to implement and expedite hurricane recovery through; (1) updating curricula plans, (2) providing long-term counselors and (3) supporting educators in and out of school.

To date, very few studies have explored the ways in which schools face long-term impacts following a disaster. This paper provides insight to the challenges that prolong the impacts of disasters and impede recovery in schools. With hurricanes and related disasters continuing to affect schooling communities, more research is needed to identify the best ways to support schools, months to years after an event.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically develop a safety performance (SP) framework for evaluating the various leading and lagging indicators of SP in Saudi public schools.

A comprehensive review of the safety and performance evaluation literature enabled the formulation of the constructs, factors and items that underpinned a conceptual SP evaluation framework. The research method involved a conceptual framework review and refinement process with 18 experts, followed by a questionnaire survey of 200 respondents from Saudi public schools. The final form of the SP evaluation framework was determined through a rigorous statistical analysis process, including exploratory factor analysis to uncover the underlying framework architecture from a relatively large set of items, and then the application of the partial least squares method to confirm framework adequacy and to assign loading coefficients.

The developed SP evaluation framework for Saudi schools included five constructs, namely, safety management and leadership, safety learning and training, safety policy, procedures, and processes, workforce safety culture and SP.

The developed SP evaluation framework is proposed for implementation by the Saudi Ministry of Education to better monitor and manage school safety in the future.

This SP evaluation framework is one of the first to holistically evaluate SP in schools, particularly in the Saudi Arabian context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of school safety measures, including SROs and safety personnel, on school-related delinquency and perceived safety.

Specifically, a comprehensive search of the literature was performed to identify studies published between January 1, 1998 and July 1, 2016 that focussed on structural school safety measures such as metal detectors, cameras, closed circuit television systems, and access control measures and/or school resource officers in primary and secondary schools. Only studies that relied on randomized controlled trials and pre-test/post-test designs evaluating the impact of at least one school safety measure in reference to a control condition were eligible for inclusion.

The results of this exhaustive search revealed 32 unique study samples that met the inclusion criteria. Results from the studies suggest that implementation of more security measures may not be an effective policy. More safety measures often result in a decline of student-perceived safety. Study limitations and directions for future research are also discussed.

Results from this meta-review can provide educational administrators, superintendents, and school safety policymakers with a synthesis of only the most rigorous and valid studies that evaluate the impact of school safety measures on both actual and perceived school-related delinquency and safety. This information will provide school safety decision makers with a state-of-the-art synthesis of how school safety measures impact school-related delinquency problems and safety, and which measures appear to be most effective for informing the allocation of scarce resources.