SAFER SCHOOLS START WITH STRONGER STANDARDS: WHY LAYER ONE SUPPORTS SAFER SCHOOLS (PASS)
Parents trust that their children will enter buildings where visitors are appropriately managed, school staff know what to do when something goes wrong, and the systems designed to protect students will perform when they are needed.
Students trust the adults around them. Educators trust the plans, procedures and technology surrounding them. Most days, none of it makes the news. And that may be one of the most important things to understand about school safety.
School safety is rarely defined by one piece of technology, one policy, or even one type of threat.
The most serious threats deserve serious preparation. But the headline is not the whole hazard picture. Effective school safety also lives in the everyday details: an exterior door that does not latch properly, an unfamiliar visitor, a communication system that has not been tested, a staff member unsure of a procedure, or security technologies that exist independently rather than working as part of a larger system.
As students return to classrooms this fall, that broader view of safety is one reason Layer One Technology Solutions is proud to support the Partner Alliance for Safer Schools (PASS).
A Framework for Safer Schools
PASS brings together expertise from education, public safety, and the security industry around a shared goal: helping K–12 schools make informed decisions about safety and security.
Its School Safety and Security Guidelines provide schools with a tiered framework for evaluating areas such as policies and procedures, people and training, architectural considerations, communications, access control, video surveillance, and other security technologies.
Importantly, the framework is not built around the idea that every school needs the same solution. Schools differ in their facilities, communities, resources, risks, and existing infrastructure. The goal is to assess those realities and make thoughtful improvements over time.
That philosophy matters to Layer One because effective security begins long before someone selects a product. It begins by understanding the environment, identifying vulnerabilities, establishing priorities, and determining how people, processes, and technology can work together.
Preparedness Without Fear
The need for that kind of deliberate approach remains clear.
The FBI’s recently released Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2025 report identified 34 active shooter incidents nationwide, compared with 24 in 2024. While the increase deserves attention, statistics alone do not tell schools what they should do next.
Few people understand that distinction better than Katherine Schweit, who created the FBI’s Active Shooter Program following the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School and has spent years studying targeted violence and helping organizations think more clearly about preparedness. In her analysis of the FBI’s 2025 Active Shooter Report, Schweit examines what the latest findings mean for organizations and preparedness.
Her message is not to build schools around fear. It is to make informed decisions about risk.
In her book Stop the Killing: How to End the Mass Shooting Crisis, Schweit makes an important distinction: safety is not about trying to predict whether something will happen. It is about being prepared if it does.
She also cautions against treating security as an all-or-nothing proposition. Assess what already exists, understand the vulnerabilities, prioritize improvements, and recognize that seemingly small changes — from doors and locks to procedures and communication — can matter.
That measured, practical philosophy closely reflects the approach PASS has built into its guidelines.
Looking Beyond the Headline
Guy Grace brings another important perspective to that work.
A longtime K–12 school security leader and member of PASS leadership, Grace has spent decades working at the intersection of school operations, emergency planning, security technology, and the people responsible for making those systems work every day.
In his recent writing, Grace has emphasized that the most visible threat is not necessarily the entire hazard picture. Schools are also managing arrival and dismissal, transportation, bullying, medical emergencies, weather, doors, radios, supervision, communication, staff readiness, student wellbeing, and countless operational details that rarely become headlines.
His point is an important one: school safety is a connected system.
That means assessing not simply what attracts the most attention, but what can cause harm — and ensuring that facilities, procedures, communications, technology, training, and people support one another.
It is also why PASS’s work matters. The organization gives schools a framework for looking at security comprehensively rather than chasing individual products or responding only to the latest concern.
Where Layer One Fits
Layer One’s support of PASS reflects that same philosophy.
Through our Layers of Protection approach, we look at physical security as an interconnected environment. Access control, video surveillance, intrusion detection, emergency communications, visitor management, and other technologies become more valuable when they are designed to work together — and when the people responsible for using them understand how they fit into the broader safety plan.
Technology alone cannot create a safe school.
But thoughtfully selected, properly integrated, tested, and maintained technology can give educators, administrators, security professionals, and first responders better tools to do their jobs.
That distinction matters.
Layer One Advances Best Practices and Builds Safer Schools.
Supporting PASS is more than an industry affiliation for Layer One. It is an opportunity to support the development and adoption of thoughtful, practical school safety guidance — and to stand alongside professionals who have dedicated their careers to making schools safer.
As another school year begins, the conversation should not be driven solely by fear or by the headlines.
It should be driven by preparation, assessment, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
Because safer schools are not built with one solution.
They are built layer by layer.
