Why NCSI Cares About School Security

At the National Center on School Infrastructure (NCSI), we start from a simple premise: the school building is not simply a backdrop to education; it is foundational for learning and teaching. The condition of a school’s roof, HVAC system, classrooms, and grounds shapes whether students feel safe, whether they can concentrate, and whether they are likely to stay engaged and succeed.

That’s why we joined the editorial board of School Safety Quarterly. NCSI is a national resource hub – sponsored by the US Department of Education – that supports states and school districts in the stewardship of America’s elementary and secondary public school facilities. Building capacity for improving school security sits squarely within our mission.

Keeping students, teachers, and staff safe is among a school’s most fundamental responsibilities, but human-centered solutions that increase safety and security are difficult to implement. In part, this is because school security conversations often treat it as separate from, or worse, at odds with, the work of teaching and learning. We see it differently: A secure school and a functioning school should be one and the same. When security measures are bolted on without regard for how students, teachers, and staff use a school building, protocols get ignored and fail in exactly the moments they matter most. As Guy Bliesner, Idaho’s school safety and security analyst (and a NCSI Advisory Committee member), put it well in a recent conversation with us: “Security is the protection of assets, and the first asset in a school is its people, the second is the educational environment itself. Measures that protect one at the expense of the other aren’t really working.”

Read the rest of Jeff’s article at School Safety Quarterly.