Mike Dorn – executive director of Safe Havens International, former chief of the Bibb County (Ga.) School District Police, a former school safety specialist for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency, and author of more than two dozen books on school safety – is presenting a one-day seminar on July 23 on "Powerful Tools for Improving School Bus Climate, Safety, Security, and Emergency Preparedness." This fast-paced and interactive session will explore ways that school transportation personnel and their community partner agencies can help improve school bus safety, security and emergency preparedness while also improving school bus climate, culture and appropriate connections between staff and students.

The seminar, scheduled for July 23 from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Grand Sierra Resort, will outline how these approaches can often be accomplished with little cost and an overall cost savings for the school organization. The information covered will be based on the findings of the world’s leading international non-profit school safety center during school safety assessment projects for more than 2,000 public, private, independent, charter and parochial schools over the past two years and will emphasize concepts that have been found to work in tangible ways.

Examples of some of the specific topics covered include:

• Real time staff reaction evaluation results to identify deadly gaps in school bus crisis planning
• The fear barrier to learning
• How safety incidents eat into budget, time on task and effective delivery of services
• Assessment based approaches to school safety gap analysis
• Ways to reduce evacuation time while improving supervision of students
• Pattern recognition – a simple yet powerful tool to reduce danger and identify students in need of risk of drop out risk, danger to others, suicide and other negative situations
• Bullying, the school bus and what drivers can do about it
• Cost and time efficient training concepts that improve information retention and court defensibility

The session will conclude with an abbreviated version of Michael’s powerful bullying presentation Weakfish – Bullying through the Eyes of a Child to demonstrate the connection between school safety, climate, culture and barriers to student achievement.

“Weakfish analyses a complex and pervasive societal problem through compelling storytelling and powerful insights. A must for the youth service professional.”

R. Leslie Nichols, AIA, Vice President
Boys and Girls Clubs of America
Atlanta, Georgia

“As one of our staff put it, learning school safety from Michael Dorn is like learning literature from William Shakespeare.”

David C. Burleson, Superintendent
Burke County Public Schools, North Carolina
White House School Safety Summit Participant