7 Strategies for Improving Student Safety with Technology
How AI-driven monitoring, trained safety specialists, and connected technology help under-resourced districts identify students in crisis and respond before a critical event occurs.
Introduction
School districts across the nation are facing an uphill battle when it comes to providing adequate mental health and safety support to their students. The Great Resignation has left school safety teams short-staffed and overwhelmed—a dangerous combination as school violence is on the rise and student mental health is on the decline. A safe school environment is crucial to healthy academic and social development. It also has ripple effects throughout the entire school community, impacting factors ranging from staff retention to parent satisfaction. However, according to a survey conducted by Lightspeed Systems® and Safe and Sound Schools, only three out of five students have confidence in their school’s ability to handle mental health crises.
Districts have tried to hire to reach better student-to-staff ratios, but applicant pools are simply not big enough. In fact, out of the 19% of public schools that have vacancies for mental health professionals, 84% report that it will be difficult to fill them. These staff shortages can have a damaging effect on student well-being and achievement. Learning suffers when students fear for their safety, worry about being bullied, or feel isolated with nowhere to turn.
Nearly 1 out of 5
schools have vacancies for mental health professionals.21 out of 25 schools report it will be difficult to fill mental health positions.
To help safety and student support staff provide the best protection to students regardless of staffing limitations, districts can leverage technology to focus limited, precious resources effectively.
This guide will provide the following seven strategies in which technology can help safety and mental health teams improve student safety:
- Use online data to identify imminent threats.
- Leverage trained safety specialists for around-the-clock monitoring.
- Automatically notify on-campus administrators, counselors, or safety resources of threats.
- Include crisis centers and/or local law officials in imminent threat notifications.
- Focus resources with threat categories and levels, and schedule settings.
- Augment threat intelligence with context from other web searches.
- Integrate technologies for a more comprehensive, connected view.
By implementing these strategies, district counselors and safety leaders can prioritize mental health resources, drive earlier, more effective intervention and support, and create a more responsive school environment. It is important for districts to evaluate their own unique situation to ensure the best formula for safer schools.
Read the report conducted by Lightspeed Systems and Safe and Sound Schools: 2022 State of School Safety Report
01 | Use online data to identify imminent threats
Not only do schools not have the staff to address the rising demand for mental health services, but many also lack the capability to monitor and assess student behavior in one of the most common places they interact—online. In the post-pandemic environment of online learning and 1:1 technology, both students and educators rely on digital resources for enhanced learning and engagement. With increased interaction within these digital environments, it’s inevitable that students will use their school-issued devices to do online searches, watch YouTube videos, or engage with one another across social media platforms, outside of their schoolwork. Students’ online activity can often reveal things they may feel uncomfortable sharing in person or with parents, like feelings of self-harm, harm to others, or suicide contemplation. This information can be invaluable for helping identify students in distress and proactively supporting them.
“What are kids doing online?” asks Ryan Keag, Director of Safety Sales at Lightspeed Systems, shared with District Administration (DA) at Future of Education Technology Conference (FETC) 2023. “Realistically, kids are much more comfortable communicating and existing in an online world than when they are talking face to face. So, what kind of communication and collaboration are they having with their friends? What are they searching for online? This helps us paint a much more accurate picture of the struggles these kids have and the kind of help they need.”
Sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) can scan and analyze student online data across the internet—social media, online docs and images, email, YouTube, apps, browsers, search engines, and more—for warning signs of student distress, including self-harm, violence, bullying and explicit content. Potential risks and threats are flagged for further review, while imminent threats are automatically escalated to designated school and district contacts. This automated ability to sift through an overwhelming amount of student-generated data for at-risk behavior and warning signs not only saves staff time but also helps extend their reach by identifying suffering students who may not be on schools’ radars.
It’s important to note that monitoring school-issued devices is required under the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA). Monitoring is happening; the question is: is that data being used to the fullest extent possible to protect and serve students?
In their first year of use, 87% of Lightspeed Alert™ flags within Visalia Unified School District were issued for students who were not otherwise on their radar.
“I can’t emphasize enough, and how seriously, that Lightspeed Alert saves lives. We have instances where we have gotten the alert, called law enforcement and literally stopped a student from hurting themself,” Judy Burgess, Director of Equity and Student Services at Visalia USD, explains. “This was for a student we never even expected to have an issue.”
For more context:
- Read the District Administration article with Lightspeed’s Ryan Keag: Is student monitoring software the best solution for child safety?
- Read the case study: Visalia USD Saves Numerous Student Lives with Lightspeed Alert and Safety Specialists
02 | Leverage trained safety specialists for around-the-clock monitoring
Lightspeed Safety Specialist™ identifies an imminent threat and follows the escalation list, contacting district staff via phone and email.
Technology solutions are critical to scaling and prioritizing mental health resources, helping address the pain of “not enough time, not enough people.” In addition to sophisticated AI that enables visibility into student online behavior, best-in-class online monitoring solutions offer a human review component for further assessment of the risks flagged by the AI. Full-time safety specialists can provide 24/7/365 review and evaluation of potentially critical events. This allows for any urgent issues to be quickly identified and escalated in real time, even when district staff is not working. Trained to read between the lines and review students’ web searches and written text, safety specialists look for red flags that might otherwise go unnoticed and immediately contact designated school and district personnel about high risks and imminent threats—regardless of the time or day they occur.
The benefits of these additional “eyes” are many. Not only do they save staff time by reviewing thousands of flagged alerts, but they also help to prevent desensitization to warning signs and create a sense of urgency around escalations. Last year, Lightspeed Safety Specialists reviewed 372,000 total flagged alerts and identified and communicated nearly 15,000 high-risk alerts to school safety teams. Having this type of additional coverage in place provides school staff with peace of mind after hours and on weekends and holidays.
In addition, by expanding staff bandwidth, these solutions enable under-resourced teams to be more operationally capable of receiving and acting quickly on escalated threats. Knowing that pressing concerns will be prioritized and escalated to appropriate school and district contacts, staff can devote more time to building intentional connections and creating a more positive school climate for all students.
“If it is a critical event, we know a Lightspeed Safety Specialist will call us about it. This has reduced staff anxiety about missed alerts,” shares John Gonzalez, Network Engineer, Hays Consolidated ISD.
Three things to consider when evaluating a solution’s human review component:
- Experience: Do they have experience evaluating context? What are their backgrounds and levels of expertise?
- Employment Type: Are they full-time employees dedicated to triaging emergency situations?
- Training: What training have they received, including how much, by whom, and on what topics? What, if any, ongoing training do they receive?
Watch the webinar to learn how John Gonzalez from Hays Consolidated ISD uses Lightspeed Alert: How to Safeguard Your Students from Suicide, Cyberbullying, and School Violence
03 | Automatically notify on-campus administrators, counselors, or safety resources of threats
In instances of self-harm and school violence, time is critical. Automatically notifying on-site personnel, such as school administrators, counselors, or safety resource officers is an essential step in protecting student safety. The Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Office of the U.S. Department of Justice emphasizes the need to be able to quickly identify a threat, immediately communicate the threat, and then react in a timely manner as imperative to saving lives. To further drive home the importance of time, according to the Center for Targeted Violence Prevention, 73% of successfully averted targeted school violence was discovered the same day that it was prevented.
Successfully averted targeted school violence was discovered the same day that it was prevented.
Source: Center for Targeted Violence Prevention
“Mental health issues and suicide prevention is actually about early intervention and early alerts. Noticing signs and symptoms before a crisis is important so that counseling and support can be given to that student,” Amy Grosso, Board Chair for the Central Texas Chapter of American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and Director of Behavioral Health Services at Round Rock ISD advises.
Identifying threats early is the first crucial step to protecting student safety but maintaining the necessary vigilance and responsiveness can be a challenge in overworked, under-resourced school communities. AI-based online monitoring solutions automatically scan student-generated online activity for warning signs of student distress. Potential risks are flagged for review, and notifications are sent in real time to school and district personnel best suited to respond to the situation. This real-time scanning and notification process ensures that districts are alerted immediately when a threat is identified, ensuring no time is lost in responding to critical events.
“We were able to get so many teams involved. The alert notifications are split up. If it’s self-harm it goes to our counseling team. If it’s violence related, the security team will handle it and get the principal and on-campus sheriff involved,” explains John Gonzales, Network Engineer at Hays Consolidated ISD.
Source: COPS. Ten Essential Actions to Improve School Safety: School Safety Working Group Report to the Attorney General
Source: COPS. Averted School Violence (ASV) Database: 2021 Analysis Update
04 | Include crisis centers and/or local law officials in imminent threat notifications
With limited funding and a lack of mental health and security personnel, many districts leverage community partnerships to address the mental health and safety needs of their students. And, even for districts fully equipped with these resources, collaboration with outside agencies is often required to provide students and school communities with full protection and support. The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) states “that effective collaboration between school-employed and community mental health partners broadens the availability of supports and enhances access to mental health care”, stressing that “it is not either/or, it is both/and.” The same can be said for schools and law enforcement. According to a survey by the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO), 73% of officers reported that they can respond to a crisis more quickly when they are part of the crisis response team.
of officers reported they can respond to a crisis more quickly when they are part of the crisis response team.
Source: National Association of School Resources Officers
Protecting students and the school community is a shared responsibility that can be maximized using early identification technology. This type of technology should facilitate information sharing, transparency, and collaborative communication between the district’s extended student safety response team, mental health providers, local law enforcement, and other contacts. The ability to share relevant information with appropriate non-district personnel can be critical for timely emergency response, incident investigation, support plans, and reporting. This technology should also enable alert escalation and notification to outside mental health and local law enforcement, as well as the ability to share incident data, such as screenshots, current browsing activity, or website history, with designated contacts. This information sharing is critical to protecting the safety and well-being of the school community.
“The most progressive school districts are working with key stakeholders and building strong partnerships with their local police and with parents. They’re paying attention to the events in the community. They’re anticipating what’s happening and what’s going to be happening. And they’re partnering with mental health experts, who bring a whole new perspective to threat assessment and keeping our schools safe,” explains Chief Frank Kitzerow, Chief of Police and District Security, Palm Beach County School District.
Source: NASRO. Measuring the Strategic Fit of the School Resource Officer with Law Enforcement (Leaders), the Education System, the Community and Other Interested Parties: SECTION I – SURVEY RESULTS
Watch the webinar to hear more about the role of the school resource officer from Chief Frank Kitzerow: How Districts Can Combat Increasing School Threats
05 | Focus resources with threat categories and levels, and schedule settings
Lightspeed Alert’s AI monitors student activity for indicators of self-harm, violence, and bullying.
With high caseloads overwhelming school psychologists and counselors and an increased priority on student safety, it is imperative that schools direct resources effectively to ensure urgent issues are addressed immediately. With the right technology, schools can focus people-based resources where they are needed most and structure alert processes according to bandwidth and availability.
Online student monitoring solutions leverage AI to assign each potential risk to a category, such as self-harm, violence, bullying and explicit content. Trained human review specialists then evaluate each threat for validity, severity, and imminence. Districts can customize staff notifications based on category, availability, and level of concern (high, medium, or low), relying on 24/7/365 human review to monitor alerts after hours, on weekends, and during school breaks. Regardless, designated staff and/or law enforcement are notified immediately about imminent and high-risk threats, while lower-risk concerns can be managed as part of the staff’s normal caseload. This allows districts to focus resources on high and imminent concerns and direct alerts to school personnel best suited to address them.
With Lightspeed Alert, admins can set a notification schedule by day and time so that designated staff only receive alerts when available. Lightspeed Safety Specialists receive alert notifications 24/7/365, giving staff peace of mind that every alert will be reviewed.
“If an incident occurs Friday at 8 PM, they won’t get that [email] alert until Monday at 7 AM. But if it is a critical event, we know a Lightspeed Safety Specialist will call us about it. We were able to do that schedule and still be confident that our students at the highest risk are going to be taken care of because someone is going to get those phone calls regardless of if we have the rules turned on or not. This has reduced staff anxiety about missed alerts and made onboarding easier,” shares John Gonzales, Network Engineer at Hays Consolidated ISD.
Threat categorization and levels also enable districts to identify trends at the school or district level, providing eye-opening data to inform short- and long-term resource allocations and funding requests. This aggregate view can illuminate the need, as well as provide the required justification, for additional staff and programs that can address acute issues as well as proactively address underlying issues.
Watch the webinar to learn how John Gonzalez from Hays Consolidated ISD uses Lightspeed Alert: How to Safeguard Your Students from Suicide, Cyberbullying, and School Violence
06 | Augment threat intelligence with context from other web searches
At-risk student identification technology contextualizes alerts to enable staff to quickly understand the situation for more effective response and intervention. AI technology scans online activity, such as browser searches, social media, online documents, photos, and YouTube videos in real-time, flagging potential threats to student safety. Flagged alerts are sent to designated staff along with a timestamped screenshot of that threat. Admins can also see any online activity that occured prior to the flagged alert giving designated staff or law enforcement a contextual timeline surrounding the alert. This helps to establish the student’s intent and the information needed to assess severity level and imminence for quick decision-making.
Having immediate access to relevant incident information, including screenshots, browser history, and case notes, gives staff the necessary context at their fingertips for rapid and informed decision-making. This type of information enables staff to evaluate the situation quickly and more effectively intervene to keep students safe and get those in distress the help they need. In addition, having this information in one central place also helps streamline incident reporting and follow-up.
Lightspeed Alert provides relevant contextual records automatically, ensuring proper documentation and case management.
Meet the Lightspeed Safety Specialists and hear their life saving stories.
07 | Integrate technologies for a more comprehensive, connected view
Important information pertaining to student safety and well-being comes from multiple sources and resides in different systems. Schools lack the ability to view, evaluate, and manage this data in one place. This often results in ineffective, inefficient response protocols as well as preventing schools from having access to a more holistic picture of student well-being.
In the modern school environment—made up of countless physical and online interactions between peers and school staff—it can be difficult to capture a comprehensive picture of an individual student’s well-being and the associated behaviors that might signal distress. However, forward-thinking districts are using integrated technologies to ensure that students are safe online and offline for comprehensive protection. Operating as a single pane of glass, these integrated solutions are more easily managed and provide districts with even greater context to evaluate risks and determine the appropriate intervention.
With Lightspeed Classroom Management™, teachers can monitor student screens, close distracting tabs, and record concerning activity.
In addition, with classroom management tools, teachers can use technology to identify concerning behavior or provide additional context around an already known risk. These tools allow teachers to view a student’s browsing history, see an individual student’s screens in real time, and record any student’s device screen activity. By empowering educators, as well as mental health and safety personnel, with technology that increases visibility into online student activity, districts can provide greater student safety coverage, and ultimately support, using existing staff.
Lightspeed Classroom Management’s Group Web Rules feature gives teachers control over the exact content students can access during class time so students stay focused.
Watch this webinar and learn how technology integrations work together to better protect students: How the Right Edtech Strategy Can Stop Violence and Protect Students
Conclusion
Many K-12 schools across the country lack the mental health personnel required to respond to the growing mental health needs of students. Even with an influx of both state and federal funding, schools are scrambling to find qualified professionals to fill these vacancies. Schools cannot hire themselves out of this crisis nor can they afford to do nothing. With more than 70% of children who receive mental health support doing so in a school-based setting, schools have a responsibility to ensure they can keep up with the increasing needs of their students. Additionally, the proliferation of student-issued devices and online learning necessitates that districts rethink their approach to student safety and well-being to include both the physical and digital learning environments. With this new reality, schools should look to technology to increase visibility into student online behavior, extend bandwidth, and empower staff to do their jobs more effectively.
In a people-first field such as mental health, where relationships are essential to success, technology alone is never the answer. However, coupled with sophisticated AI tools and the support of 24/7/365 human review of critical issues, technology can enable qualified staff to identify struggling students earlier and provide them with better support.
of children receive mental health support in a school-based setting.
Source: KFF, “The Landscape of School-Based Mental Health Services: Barriers to School-Based Mental Health Services”
Lightspeed's Safety & Wellness solution can help
Lightspeed’s Safety & Wellness solution helps districts proactively identify students in crisis, allowing early intervention and more effective support—before a critical event occurs. Combining online activity monitoring and risk analysis with 24/7/365 human review and threat escalation, the Safety & Wellness solution enables schools to reach struggling students earlier and take life-changing steps to protect their community.
In a people-first field such as mental health, where relationships are essential to success, technology alone is never the answer. However, coupled with sophisticated AI tools and the support of 24/7/365 human review of critical issues, technology can enable qualified staff to identify struggling students earlier and provide them with better support.
Lightspeed Alert™
Lightspeed Alert is an at-risk student identification tool that monitors and analyzes student online activity for signs of self-harm, violence, and bullying. Alert helps districts proactively identify students in crisis, allowing early intervention and more effective support. By identifying and escalating threats and augmenting existing resources, Lightspeed Alert helps schools detect unknown risks and more effectively direct resources, creating a more responsive school environment and increasing peace of mind.
With Lightspeed Alert, schools can:
- Get visibility into warning signs you wouldn’t normally see.
- Prioritize valuable support resources.
- Provide a critical layer of protection.
- Get relevant incident information for rapid decision-making.
Lightspeed Classroom™
Lightspeed Classroom helps teachers effectively manage classrooms in this 1:1 world. Save teachers time with real-time visibility and control of student device activity, so teachers can provide support and ensure devices are being used properly.
With Lightspeed Classroom, teachers can:
- Monitor student screens, close distracting tabs, view and block URLs, and identify concerning online warning signs of self-harm or violence—whether it’s in the physical classroom or remote.
- Create URL block lists for their class, which will help keep students from accessing sites known for bullying and serve as a second line of defense for their school’s web filter.
- Quickly record inappropriate online behavior so incidents of cyberbullying, harassment, or warning signs of self-harm or violence can be documented and addressed.
