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Guide to developing holistic school safety plans
A guide for school professionals on developing tailored holistic safety plans for middle to high school students. Holistic safety plans include physical, emotional, and systemic factors.
Why engage schools in holistic safety?
Too often school safety focus solely on physical safety.
Holistic safety is a comprehensive approach that includes physical, emotional, and systemic factors.
Holistic school safety plans require a multi-faceted “it takes a village” type of approach.
These plans require a deeper understanding of student behavior, and systems that influence it.
This kind of approach can be challenging, and it takes time.
Creating and implementing long-term school safety plans requires a lot of collaboration. And many stakeholders. There is not a one-size fits all solution. A plan must be specific to schools/districts and communities.
Our model is designed to:
- Engage schools in promoting holistic safety
- Engage schools in hands-on, critical thinking exercises relevant to holistic school safety
- Provide schools with tools and resources to identify, evaluate, and prioritize programs, services and policies that can contribute to an enhanced sense of safety
- Offer schools community resources (e.g., academics, criminal and restorative justice personnel) that can support holistic safety approaches
The 5 domains of the CLASS framework
1. Physical environment
This domain is the most frequently associated with school safety. It relates to physical buildings, surrounding structures, and physical safety protocols. These protocols might include:
- Comprehensive threat assessments
- Emergency operations plans (EOPs)
- Emotional behavioral distress plans and guidelines
2. Family engagement
Family engagement bridges the school and home environments. This makes it a very important component of school safety. Family engagement might include:
- Parent and family education on substance abuse
- Mental health awareness
- Family event nights
- English Language Learner (ELL) supports
- Parent committee input on policies and procedures
3. Student and employee wellness
Student wellness is critical for academic engagement and success. Addressing the wellness needs of teachers, staff and administrators positions them to be able to fully support students. Wellness might include:
- Stress management programs
- Teacher well-being initiatives
4. Community involvement
Partnerships can be an effective method for expanding student support mechanisms within the larger community. Partnerships might include:
- Nonprofit organizations
- Public health departments
- Religious and cultural organizations
- Law enforcement
- Healthcare organizations
5. Social and emotional climate
How do students feel about school How do students feel about themselves when they are at school? This component of our framework includes school climate surveys, as well as policies and programs about:
- Absenteeism and student reengagement
- Bullying
- Racism
- Cultural competency
- Conflict resolution
Workshops
The CLASS framework is the backbone of the interactive workshops.
CLASS project and how we developed this guide
From June 2023 through January 2025, a multi-disciplinary team worked together developing a project entitled Collaborative Leadership Addressing School Safety (CLASS). The team included:
- University of Washington (Seattle and Tacoma) researchers
- King County Office of the Executive
- King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office
- Educational Service District safety support personnel
This project was funded by the University of Washington’s Population Health Initiative (PHI). The project’s focus was centered on supporting schools in their efforts to improve school safety.
The outcome of our work was a co-designed, engaged workshop on holistic school safety delivered to King County school districts.
Our school district participants also provided leadership development as thought partners in the workshop design.
The learning opportunity included the full-day workshop with:
- Multiple presentation segments
- Hands-on holistic safety plan evaluations
- Engaging districts in thinking and learning about 5 domains of safety
Districts appreciated the opportunity to discuss issues and approaches in each of these domains and explore approaches within and across their organizations.
We drew from our experiences with this project to develop theses resources, offering a collaborative approach to an integrated school safety plan.
Goal of this guide
Our goal is to provide resources that help build capacity among and empower conversation between schools, organizations, and individuals. This supports them in co-designing and co-developing tailored holistic safety plans for middle to high school students.
Organizations and individuals might include:
- Community members
- Community-based organizations
- Healthcare organizations
- Academics
- Public health departments
Who is this for?
This information is designed for interested members of academic centers or programs, schools and school districts, regional and state education organizations, and other organizations interested in exploring and addressing school safety within multiple domains.
This guide can also be used by presenters, content experts and educational experts participating in holistic safety programs, and those organizing and conducting these programs or workshops.
What's included in this guide?
- Collaborative Leadership Addressing School Safety (CLASS) framework
- Information on planning an interactive workshop
- Tools and materials to develop your workshop curriculum, including:
- Sample workshop agenda
- Tabletop worksheet aligned with the agenda
- Prioritization tool
-
Mapping tool to translate a publicly available dataset to the holistic safety domains from our framework