School Violence and Crisis Prevention and Intervention

School safety is essential for students to learn and thrive. Experiencing violence and other crises can disrupt students’ rights to be educated in safe, supportive, and inclusive schools. In this chapter, school violence and crisis are contextualized under the larger umbrella of school safety. The importance of balancing physical and psychological safety is emphasized. Moreover, this chapter reviews approaches such as Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED); multitiered systems of support (MTSS) to meet social, emotional, and behavioral needs; and comprehensive planning for targeted violence through threat assessment and management. Drawing on the National Association of School Psychologists’ (NASP’s) PREPaRE model, the importance of multidisciplinary crisis teams and comprehensive emergency operations plans is highlighted. Practices to mitigate, respond to, and recover from crisis events are explicated. Culturally responsive practices are detailed, with attention to social justice connections for the field of school violence and crisis prevention and intervention.