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What should families know about active shooter prevention in schools?

Families should know that prevention and response are not the same thing. Most schools have response plans, lockdown procedures, drill protocols, and emergency communication systems. Far fewer have genuine prevention infrastructure: behavioral threat assessment teams, anonymous reporting systems that students trust, and staff trained to recognize warning signs weeks or months before an incident occurs. Research shows that the vast majority of school shootings had observable warning signs beforehand. The PRO Model™ is built around intercepting those warning signs before they become events. That is what families should be asking about and expecting from every institution responsible for their loved ones’ safety.

Are active shooter drills helping or harming children?

The research is nuanced but concerning. A 2020 study found that anxiety, stress, and depression among children and parents increased by 39 to 42 percent following active shooter drills. The August 2025 National Academies report recommended trauma-informed, developmentally appropriate approaches and cautioned against hyperrealistic simulations. Several states, including New York and California, have already moved to reform how drills are conducted, requiring advance notice to families, banning realistic simulations, and building in mental health support. Experts broadly agree that the answer is not to eliminate preparation but to build the prevention infrastructure that makes drills the last line rather than the only line of defense. Lockdown drills with prior notice and trauma-informed delivery are far less harmful than surprise simulations and far more effective at building genuine preparedness.

What is behavioral threat assessment, and how does it protect families?

Behavioral threat assessment is the discipline of identifying individuals who may be on a pathway toward violence based on observable behavior, communication patterns, social withdrawal, expressions of grievance, and other indicators, and intervening before that pathway reaches an irreversible point. In schools and communities, this means training staff, teachers, and community members to recognize these patterns and providing a structured process for evaluating and acting on what they observe. Sandy Hook Promise’s anonymous tip line has intercepted 18 credible threats through 328,000 tips; every interception is a prevention outcome. The PRO Model™ builds the behavioral threat assessment infrastructure that makes that kind of outcome systematic rather than occasional.

How does anonymous reporting protect children in schools and communities?

Anonymous reporting removes the most significant barrier to violence prevention, the social and personal cost of speaking up. Students and community members who observe concerning behavior frequently do not report it because they fear retaliation, social consequences, or being wrong. An anonymous reporting system that is well-publicized, trusted, and consistently acted upon changes that calculation. When people know their report will be taken seriously and acted upon without identifying them, they report. And when reports come in before a situation becomes critical, intervention is possible. The PRO Model™ builds the anonymous reporting culture, the training, the infrastructure, and the leadership commitment that makes this work in practice rather than in theory.

What questions should parents ask their child’s school about active shooter prevention?

Ask whether the school has a behavioral threat assessment team and what their process is for evaluating concerning behavior. Ask whether there is an anonymous reporting system that students know about and trust. Ask whether staff training covers behavioral warning sign recognition, not just lockdown procedures. Ask whether the school’s safety infrastructure was built from a site-specific assessment or a generic template. Ask whether the school has reviewed its safety plan with local law enforcement and whether both parties have practiced together. And ask what the school’s documented outcomes are. Have there been situations where prevention worked? The answers to those questions tell you far more about a school’s actual safety posture than any drill schedule.

How can communities build active shooter prevention infrastructure?

Communities build prevention infrastructure by making the PRO Model™ decision: to invest in prevention before an incident rather than response after one. That starts with a community assessment, an evaluation of existing safety posture across schools, workplaces, houses of worship, healthcare facilities, and other gathering places. From there, the PRO Model™ is implemented in layers: behavioral threat assessment capability, anonymous reporting culture, physical security infrastructure appropriate to each environment, and trained leadership that sustains the program over time. The goal is a community where every organization has done the prevention work, where the destination is genuinely #NEVERHERE™. Contact us at aspppro.com/contact-us to start.

How do I know if an active shooter prevention program is actually building prevention or just selling training events?

Ask one question: how many documented saves do they have? A save is not a completed training session. A save is not a positive review. A save is a real situation that was intercepted before violence occurred, with a timeline, with specifics, and with law enforcement involvement. The Active Shooter Prevention Project, LLC has three. A manufacturing facility. A corporate environment. A service company. Real threats. Real people who went home. If an organization cannot answer that question with specifics, they are selling training events. For the families who depend on the infrastructure those programs leave behind, the difference is everything.

What should a school or community ask before hiring an active shooter prevention consultant?

Ask whether their approach is built around prevention or response. Ask whether they conduct site-specific assessments or use a template. Ask whether they build an anonymous reporting infrastructure or just train staff on the theory of it. Ask whether their training covers recognizing behavioral warning signs, the weeks and months before an incident, not just the moment it begins. Ask what infrastructure remains after the engagement ends. Ask whether they have experience working with your specific environment, such as school, community, healthcare, or corporate. And ask about their documented outcomes. The PRO Model™ was built to answer every one of those questions with specifics and evidence.

Our school already has a safety plan and does drills. Is that enough?

A safety plan and drills are the response infrastructure. They describe what to do after a threat arrives. Prevention infrastructure is different; it is the capability to identify and intercept threats before they arrive. Most schools that have drills do not have behavioral threat assessment teams. Most do not have anonymous reporting systems that students actually know about and use. Most have not conducted a site-specific assessment that identifies the vulnerabilities of their actual building and population. Having a drill schedule is not the same as having prevention. It is the starting point, not the finish line.

How can a parent advocate for better prevention in their child’s school?

Start by asking questions at the school level, the principal’s level, the safety coordinator’s level, and the school board meeting. Ask specifically about behavioral threat assessment, anonymous reporting, and whether the safety plan was built from a site-specific assessment. If those things do not exist, ask why and what the timeline is for building them. Share information, bring data from the National Academies report, from the research on anonymous reporting outcomes, and from the PRO Model™ documentation. Advocate for the school to engage a qualified prevention expert rather than a one-day seminar vendor. The communities that expect more than response training are the communities that build #NEVERHERE™ infrastructure.

Does the PRO Model™ work for schools and community organizations or only for corporations?

The PRO Model™ was designed to be tailored to any environment, which is what the Options component of Prevention. Response. Options. means in practice. The principles of behavioral threat assessment, anonymous reporting culture, and layered physical security apply whether the environment is a school, a house of worship, a healthcare facility, a retail location, or a corporate campus. The site-specific assessment process adapts the framework to the actual conditions, population, and risk profile of each unique environment. The PRO Model™ has been delivered across 28 states and 4 countries in environments of every type. The mission does not change based on the setting, only the prescription does.

Where do we start if we want to build genuine prevention for our school or community?

Start by contacting the Active Shooter Prevention Project, LLC at aspppro.com/contact-us. The first conversation is an assessment of your current state, what exists, what the gaps are, and what the most effective path to genuine prevention looks like for your specific environment. The PRO Model™ is then built in layers that are practical, sustainable, and matched to your community’s needs and capacity. You do not have to wait for a mandate. You do not have to wait for an incident. You can build prevention now because the families who depend on the infrastructure you create deserve to be protected before they ever need to use it.