Listen to the full interview here: https://soundcloud.com/humanfactorscast/hfes2018-bonus-interview-with-amanda-klinger
“It’s beneficial what we see, to identify trends and determine what is different about each case. The only way to prevent these is to know where they are coming from. We need to look at whether there was a disclosure of information. Were other people concerned. Were people egging them on, if there was a catalyst,” Klinger said.
Read the full article here: https://triblive.com/local/westmoreland/14149586-74/secret-service-gets-secret-report-from-alex-hribals-court-file-to-study
Amanda Klinger, Esq. quoted in Huffington Post Parenting
How To Talk To Kids About School Safety
“Ask kindergarteners what we’d need to do if we needed to get out of the classroom in a hurry so that no one gets trampled or left behind,” she explained. “We’d be careful with our bodies when we leave, we’d follow the teacher, we’d pay attention and we’d use our listening ears and our looking eyes. That’s not scary.”
Read the full article here: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-talk-to-kids-about-school-safety_n_5b9a6ee8e4b05092ceee1d23
"I think that it's something that we're under prepared for," said Klinger, director of programs for Educator's School Safety Network. "A lot of schools don't have anything in their crisis plan or in their training that speaks to bomb threats, that speaks to detonation, that speaks to suspicious packages all sorts of things."
Read the full article here: http://www.wtol.com/story/39150625/defending-against-school-threats/
Amy Klinger, director of programs for the Educator’s School Safety Network, which does consulting and threat assessment training, said there should be equal money spent on technology or hardware and training, and that metal detectors are proven not to work.
Read the full report here: http://dailyorange.com/2018/09/onondaga-county-plan-protect-students-school-shootings-elected-officials-experts-believe-feasible/
"We need to come to an all hazards approach to school safety so it can't just be the only thing we worry about is an active shooter," said Dr. Amy Klinger, director of programs for Educator's School Safety Network. "We really need to be prepared for all of those things and I think it's important for parents to understand there is so much that we can do, this is not a hopeless situation."
While Dr. Amy Klinger's statistics on school safety are shocking she says there's a lot to be done and it's not necessarily buying more safety equipment.
"We have to come at this from an education perspective because we are a people business so you need to invest in people not stuff and not just a law enforcement perspective, an education perspective," said Klinger.
Read the full story here: http://www.wtol.com/story/39108665/st-francis-addresses-school-safety-brings-in-expert/
“I get very concerned when we’re outsourcing that work to technology. Every school in America has a teacher in every classroom, so have we trained those folks first to do that work?” Klinger said.
Amanda Klinger, director of programs for the Educator’s School Safety Network, said the organization sees “a lot” of apps aimed at keeping students safe.
She said they can be a helpful tool but cautioned against what she said is an increasing tendency among some educators to rely on technology for school safety rather than building relationships with students, which can help students feel comfortable reporting problematic behavior to adults.
Read the full article here: https://www.newsleader.com/story/news/2018/09/17/waynesboro-public-schools-rolls-out-anonymous-tip-app-promote-school-safety/1338206002/
Specifically, Klinger said there’s been a more than 60 perccent jump in threats against schools in the last year. Of those, about 800 were bomb threats.
But just because they didn’t involve guns, Klinger said there’s still plenty of reason to be concerned.
“If every gun in America magically disappeared tomorrow, we would still have school safety issues," she said.
Much of the reason behind the huge increase, Klinger found, was due to heightened attention around school safety.
“It’s in the media more. It’s in the consciousness more,” she said.
Read the full story here: https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/local/school-threats-jump-60-percent-in-the-last-year/63-591995831
Record attendance at EdWeb webinar featuring ESSN Experts
More than 700 educators from the U.S. as well as other countries participated in a webinar today sponsored by Blackboard and hosted by EdWeb. Dr. Amy Klinger and Amanda Klinger were the featured presenters discussing “School Safety: It’s Not Just About Active Shooters”. Today’s webinar surpassed previous attendance records for the webinar series.
Amanda Klinger and Dr. Amy Klinger Featured in national radio show.
ESSN experts Amanda Klinger and Dr. Amy Klinger were featured on the EduTalk national radio show today. They discussed a variety of school safety concerns and issues with host Larry Jacobs. Click here to listen to the show.
ESSN Experts Featured in October ASCD Education Update
Dr. Amy Klinger and Amanda Klinger were interviewed for an important discussion about school safety in the October issues of ASCD’s Education Update. See the full article here.
ESSN's Amanda Klinger advises- "Educators need to be trained on assessing threats"
ESSN expert and attorney Amanda Klinger was interviewed as part of media coverage regarding an Ohio based threat. She discussed the critical need for educators to be trained to respond to threats of violence as well as incidents of violence. Read the full story here.
Dr. Klinger weighs in on "Emergency Kits"
Brockton Schools in Massachusetts have implemented emergency kits in each classroom. ESSN's Dr. Amy Klinger was interviewed on the effectiveness of these response kits. See the full article here.
"You'd better make these schools safe..."
Dr. Amy Klinger was a featured expert in Education Week's back to school coverage of school safety. Read the full article here.
Shooting threats are a national problem for schools: How is Ventura County handling them?
"There's a delicate balance because the school district has to take threats made against a school seriously," Klinger said. "But it puts the school in a tough position because a communication can cause uproar among parents."
"Having plans and policies in place before things like this happen is key so (district officials) can be sharing the appropriate amount of information so people feel safe and secure and aren't unintentionally scared," Klinger said. "... But a lot of people are winging it on a case-by-case basis. Our educators have a difficult job to address the community but not to cause panic."
Read the full article here
Klinger says part of the increase may be that incidents are being more widely reported and are taken more seriously. And, she says, social media allows threats to get more attention.
Listen to the full report here
“It is easier to buy a metal detector and stand in front of your parents and say...
...‘Hey look, we’re working on school safety,’” Klinger said. “It’s a lot more difficult to say we have trained all of our educators in how to look at red flags."
Read the full article here.
“Obviously we have a problem. Guns are a factor…but if every gun in America magically disappeared tomorrow, we still have school safety issues.”
“If you have $25,000 to spend and you’ve spent it on something no one knows how to use, you might as well have flushed it,”
“If you have $25,000 to spend and you’ve spent it on something no one knows how to use, you might as well have flushed it,” said Dr. Amy Klinger, director of The Educator’s School Safety Network. “The shooter at Sandy Hook breached the buzzer system in 30 seconds. If you don’t train people in what to do when that buzzer system does get breached you’re not any safer than you were.”
Read the full article here
Our work profiled by NPR
The small, Ohio-based nonprofit that tracks all these numbers has found itself at the center of the national conversation on school safety since February. The Educator's School Safety Network has been cited all over the news — from the New York Times to the Washington Post to NPR.
The nonprofit's only full–time staff members are a mother and daughter duo: Amy Klinger, an associate professor at Ashland University, and lawyer Amanda Klinger. It's a family business: two of Amy Klinger's other children have worked as subcontractors for the group. They lead safety and emergency response training for educators across the country — and whenever Amy has a minute, she combs through local news reports and social media to tally up the threats made to schools.
"It's just a lot of man-hours to do it, but it's really important that that data is right," Klinger says.