School Security Assessment Tool (SSAT)

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About the Schoolnot completed
Choose a Scenarionot completed
Scenario Follow-Up Questionsnot completed
Existing Safety & Security Measuresnot completed
Safety & Security Measure Detailsnot completed
Results Overviewnot completed
Results Modulesnot completed
Results Summarynot completed

Select a scenario

An active assailant who is not a member of the school community enters the premises from outside the school grounds. The attack occurs on the school grounds on a weekday during student arrival. The attacker has a gun.
[Applicable school physical security layers: School Grounds Perimeter; School Grounds]

An active assailant who is a student enters the premises from outside the school grounds after making a threat on social media. The attack occurs inside the school building, on a weekday during instructional time when most students are in classrooms. The attacker has a gun.
[Applicable school physical security layers: School Grounds Perimeter; School Grounds; Building Perimeter; Building Interior]

A fight involving a large number of students occurs inside the school building on a weekday during lunch time, when most students are in the cafeteria. No weapons are involved.
[Applicable school physical security layers: Building Interior]

A fight involving a large number of students occurs on the school grounds on a weekday after school, when most students have left the building. No weapons are involved.
[Applicable school physical security layers: School Grounds]

A parent who is not authorized to have custody of their child enters the school grounds from outside the school perimeter on a weekday with the intention of kidnapping the child The parent attempts to kidnap the child on the school grounds during recess. No weapons are involved.
[Applicable school physical security layers: School Grounds Perimeter; School Grounds]

A parent who is not authorized to have custody of their child enters the building from outside the school perimeter on a weekday with the intention of kidnapping the child. The parent attempts to kidnap the child inside the building during classroom instruction. No weapons are involved.
[Applicable school physical security layers: School Grounds Perimeter; School Grounds; Building Perimeter; Building Interior]

The school recieves a bomb threat on a weekday during instructional time when most students are in classrooms.
[Applicable school physical security layers: Building Interior]

Adding missing policy or training can make the measures you already have more effective

For some security measures to be most effective, the measure itself must be supported by policy or training.

You listed the following measures, some of which involve school staff or security personnel, where either policy or training was not currently in place. Implementing relevant policies and regular training could make these measures more effective:

Some security measures also require associated overarching policies and plans to make them most valuable or provide options for how they can be used. In this tool, this primarily relates to:

Staff or systems controlling school building access, and
Emergency notification systems (and their role in triggering actions by the entire school community)

Your answers indicate that the following plans or training to support them are not in place. Developing and implementing such plans could make addressing this scenario more effective:

Better understanding your confidence in measures that you said you currently cannot assess

You flagged the following measures as ones about which you were unable to make a judgment regarding their ability to help detect or respond to a threat. These are measures that you should further assess in order to judge their performance in the event of an emergency.

For some security measures, the presence of other physical design features or technologies can help make them more effective.

For staff members and cameras seeking to detect threats, complementary features like lighting, physical design (e.g. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED)), or information coming from systems such as tip lines are likely to make them more successful.

If any of these complementary measures are not included in your security plan, consider adding them to make your security staff and CCTV cameras more effective:

*Note that a complementary measure may appear in the source and its complementary layer, these are referring to the same shared missing measure between complementary layers.

Provide communications capabilities to ensure measures in outer layers of your security system can fully contribute to the effectiveness of measures in inner layers

One of the principles of a systems approach to security is that measures in one layer can reinforce the performance of measures in other layers. Detection measures in outer layers allow the system to mitigate risk inside the school. Delay measures in outer layers can provide time to implement mitigation measures more effectively in inner layers, and for school staff to initiate response actions. However, communications capability that allows those outer layers to warn the school an incident is occurring or call police directly is the wiring that leads to the realization of those benefits. The following measures could play that “wiring” role; however you indicated that the complementary ability to communicate the occurrence of a threat across layers was not in place:

Enable local emergency responder capability to respond to school incidents

Many school safety incidents happen on very short timelines, and many are complete even before responders from outside the building can arrive on scene. You indicated that the likely response time of law enforcement to your school is [responseTime].

A number of school safety and security measures can alert law enforcement more rapidly or speed their response when they arrive. Among the measures that do so and that are included in this tool, you indicated that you did not have:

Adding one or more of these measures to your school safety and security system (or increasing confidence in the performance of any of these measures you already have) could better enable law enforcement to respond to incidents at your school.

Take steps to increase your confidence in the performance of the measures you already have

In asking about your security measures, the SSAT asked you to make judgments about how confident you were that they would detect or be able to respond to this scenario. Many things such as concerns about the challenge associated with the scenario or questions about the preparedness of your broader school safety system could cause low confidence in measures.

The following measures were ones you flagged as being concerned about their performance in [scenario] to either detect or act in response to a threat.

Steps you could take to increase confidence include strengthening policies that increase confidence in actions staff are supposed to take, training and exercises that help people practice their actions, and engaging stakeholders outside the school community, such as local law enforcement and other first responders. Your strategy to increase your confidence in your school’s safety and preparedness will need to address the specific sources of your concern.

Strengthen layers where one or more key functions – detection, delay or response – is missing or depends on only a single security measure

A strong security system spreads detection, delay, and response capabilities across physical security layers to reinforce overall security performance. If each layer has multiple measures that can perform these key functions with high confidence, a school will be better prepared to address safety risks, relative to a school where functions are missing or where layers rely on a single security measure.

Combining your responses about (1) which measures are implemented at your school and (2) your assessments of your confidence in these measures and (3) your assessment of the breadth of their effect, the following functions appear to either be missing from some layers or layers appear to rely on a single security measure.

In some cases, layers listed here may already have relevant measures; however, you are not confident they will perform effectively. Taking steps to raise your confidence (discussed above) would address that shortfall.

Results Summary

Summary of Options to Strengthen Your School's Physical Security System

Evaluation Scenario:

Date Performed:

This page presents a full, printable list of recommendations to improve your school’s physical security system. Results are divided into three categories:

Policy and Training to Support Your Safety & Security Staff
Additional Safety and Security Staff You Could Add to Your Physical Security System
Additional Measures You Could Add To Your Physical Security System.

Legend - Cost and Climate ratings shown in the SSAT
Cost	School Climate
$ low cost for most schools	+ likely positive impact on school climate
$$ medium cost for most schools	± neutral or variable impact on school climate
$$$ high cost for most schools	- likely negative impact on school climate
$-$$$ costs for most schools will vary

Click to expand the “Cost” and “Climate” boxes to view more information about the cost and school climate implications of each recommended security solution.

Click to expand the “Participant Notes” box to add your own notes related to specific improvement options. To ensure that your notes are saved, be sure to click “Expand All Results” when you are finished entering any additional information. Then click “Print” to save the Results Summary file as a PDF for future reference.

Policy and Training to Support Your Safety and Security Staff
Improvement Options	Why is this appearing?
This is a test here

Type any notes you may have with respect to this suggested improvement option

You indicated that there were measures in your school's physical security system that you were not confident or only mildly confident would perform well to detect, delay or respond to this incident. A key part of your school security improvement planning should be taking steps to improve your confidence in those measures.
You indicated that there were measures in your school's physical security system that you did not know enough about to assess whether you were confident they would perform well to detect, delay or respond to this incident. A key part of your school security improvement planning should be taking steps to gather the information you need to assess your confidence in those measures.

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School Security Assessment Tool (SSAT)

Step 1 of 9 Welcome

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Introduction

If you have a pre-existing SSAT session progress file you'd like to load, please input the file here now:

About the School

Students

Location

Campus and Facilities

School Activities

Additional Policies

Choose a Scenario

Scenario Follow-Up Questions

Existing Safety & Security Measures

Safety & Security Measure Details

Results Overview

Results Modules

Adding missing policy or training can make the measures you already have more effective

Better understanding your confidence in measures that you said you currently cannot assess

For some security measures, the presence of other physical design features or technologies can help make them more effective.

Provide communications capabilities to ensure measures in outer layers of your security system can fully contribute to the effectiveness of measures in inner layers

Enable local emergency responder capability to respond to school incidents

Take steps to increase your confidence in the performance of the measures you already have

Strengthen layers where one or more key functions – detection, delay or response – is missing or depends on only a single security measure

Results Summary

Summary of Options to Strengthen Your School's Physical Security System

Evaluation Scenario:

Date Performed:

School Security Assessment Tool (SSAT)

Step 1 of 9 Welcome

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Introduction

If you have a pre-existing SSAT session progress file you'd like to load, please input the file here now:

Results Summary

Summary of Options to Strengthen Your School's Physical Security System

Evaluation Scenario:

Date Performed:

Cost: $

Climate: ±

Participant Notes:

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