School is the place where children spend much of their time every day. The school environment should be safe from any violence and danger. The question, “Do school buildings in Michigan provide safe environments for children and teachers?” has been asked by many community members. Our team of environmental design faculty and urban planning faculty members at the School of Planning, Design, & Construction at Michigan State University collected data to answer this primary question and proposed major design guidelines for school buildings.
Since C. Ray Jeffery’s Crime-Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) and Oscar Newman’s Defensible Space Theory were introduced at the beginning of the 1970s, three main principles to improve safety in various physical boundaries have been emphasized (Jeffery, 1972; Newman, 1973). These include offering territoriality, controlling access, and improving natural surveillance.
Based on these theoretical background and practical efforts by architect and environmental designers, some countries have set rules to require all new public school buildings to comply with the safe school design guidelines. Their safe school design guidelines emphasize three aspects: the school building should enable its occupants to spot visitors quickly, prevent unauthorized people from entering the building, and provide a safe evacuation route for children in an emergency. Their overall guidelines are strict, and the requirements for designers are strong, although private citizens are not allowed to own firearms in those countries.
In the United States, shootings and incidents of school violence have led states to require schools to have crisis plans with mandated lockdowns and fire drills, anti-bullying policies, and other measures to address potentially violent behavior and situations (O’Meara, 2014). However, little attention has been paid to the schools’ physical environments.
In Michigan, crime-free or safe school environments have been discussed among diverse community members. However, empirical evidence to show if current physical conditions of public schools are safe from crimes is rare. Community members’ opinions regarding safe school environments for children have rarely been collected. It is hard to find any practical design guidelines for creating safe school environments. Because it is almost impossible to predict the exact timing of school violence, the school environment itself should be designed and maintained more appropriately to protect the children from any violence.
Our research team proposed the main research question: Are schools in Michigan designed to prevent violent crime and protect their students? To answer this question, this research aimed (1) to assess if current school buildings and campuses comply with safe school design guidelines and (2) to conduct the State of the State Survey and focus groups with various community members to collect their input for creating safer school environments.
