Across the country, school divisions continue to make meaningful investments in security technology, emergency plans, and training. Yet many K–12 leaders still wrestle with fundamental questions: How do I know our school safety investments actually work? Is our safety and security approach designed around our schools’ unique risks and needs? Are our investments strategic and sustainable for today’s demands and tomorrow’s challenges? And as school leaders, how do we ensure we are building a coherent safety system—rather than a patchwork of fixes? In this session, Drawing on a decade of work with divisions of every size, Hough—former senior federal school-safety official—will outline why compliance-driven approaches often stall and what it looks like to move toward holistic, risk-based safety systems that support not only survival, but learning, growth, and development. This is not a session about buying the next tool. It is about building the conditions in which young people feel safe to learn, belong, and thrive.
