From Crisis Response to Crisis Prevention: Lessons from Education Leaders

Three districts, one shared lesson

The districts making the most progress on school safety are not the ones best prepared to respond to a crisis. They are the ones training every adult to prevent one.

That was the through-line of our latest Safety-Care Live panel, From Crisis Response to Crisis Prevention: A Conversation with Education Leaders. Three leaders from three different states joined us to talk about student behavior, staff training, funding, and state regulations:

Lorie Coates, from Davis School District in Utah, serving 80,000 students that brought Safety-Care on board roughly 16 years ago
Leah Hunter, from Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas, which serves about 100,000 students and trains more than 2,000 staff in Safety-Care each year
Patrick Mulick, from Auburn School District in Washington, which serves just under 18,000 students who speak more than 100 languages

Each district started in a different place. Lorie’s began with specialized classrooms facing significant safety risks. Leah’s switched from a previous program because staff “fell in love” with how much time Safety-Care spends on de-escalation. Patrick’s district took a hard look at its numbers during the pandemic. As Patrick put it, “We were looking at our numbers related to restraint and seclusion, and we weren’t happy with them.”

Where they have landed, though, sounds remarkably similar.

What the panel is seeing, and how they are responding

De-escalation is for every adult, not just special education

All three districts started crisis prevention training with special education staff. All three are now pushing training into general education classrooms, administration, transportation, and security teams.

Patrick was direct about why: “De-escalation, it’s not a special education thing. This is about all kids.” Auburn now trains building administrators and security officers, and the results have been significant. “We actually tore down our last seclusion room in April of 2025 and aren’t going back.” The district is also discontinuing some behavior programs because staff in home schools are better equipped to meet students’ needs.

Lorie’s district followed a similar path. It now trains all transportation staff, gives every resource teacher at least a portion of the Safety-Care curriculum, and has a general education behavior team training behavior support personnel inside schools. The goal, in her words, is “What we’re trying to do is just help teachers feel more confident in being able to work with minor to bigger challenging behaviors in the classroom.”

Leah’s district is earlier in that journey but heading the same direction. Teacher feedback is a big reason why. Leah says, “They love that they can walk away from the training and feel like they have something to implement tomorrow.”

Younger students, higher intensity, and a lot that is new

Asked about the biggest challenge heading into the school year, every panelist named the same thing: young learners with intense behaviors, many of whom have not been identified for special education services.

Leah described the calls she gets: “Hey, I have this student that’s never been in school before and he’s shutting down a classroom. What are we gonna do?” Without prior interventions in place, she noted, “It’s really hard to implement interventions when we’re in that fight or flight or crisis mode.”

Patrick pointed to both intensity and volume, noting the quantity of students they have with high needs, as well as the older students still carrying the effects of the pandemic, often struggling with coping and regulation skills.

Even the most experienced leaders are seeing situations they have never encountered. “This is my 34th year in education, and you would think by this point I have seen it all. I have not,” Laurie said. “What I love about my job is it taxes my creativity.”

Patrick added that a growing share of hard-to-reach students have mental health needs. “Time and time again, it’s students who have some degree of mental health needs,” he said, which is pushing Auburn to supplement its training with mental health resources across the board.

Funding follows culture

Training is a real investment. Leah’s district has 32 trainers and Lorie’s has 30. Yet none of the panelists described funding as a fight.

Patrick explained that Auburn goes further than Washington’s requirement, which applies to any staff who must use physical management or seclusion. “Our stance is if you are responding and supporting escalated behaviors, which includes physical aggression, elopement, breaking up fights, etc. you need to be trained in this.” He also pointed to savings that are harder to put on a spreadsheet: fewer out-of-district placements, fewer staff injuries, and better retention. “We have the highest staff retention rate for teachers in our area. And I would like to think part of that is that people feel more safe.” At this point, the value is simply understood. “People just know it is just a common fact that this is needed, and we pay people to get trained, period.”

Lorie’s district began with IDEA and professional development funds. New Utah legislation now requires crisis management training for all school staff, and board members have been highly supportive. Her view is, “Let’s do it right and let’s do it in a way that is safe and humane.”

In Leah’s district, when other departments were asked to cut their budgets by 10%, the Safety-Care budget was protected. Because their trainers also work on district campuses, staff always have someone nearby to turn to.

Staying ahead of state requirements

Each state handles physical management and seclusion differently, and requirements are tightening:

Texas does not allow seclusion, requires every physical management incident to be reported to the state, and requires same-day verbal notice to parents followed by written notice. Every campus must also have a trained core behavior response team that includes an administrator or designee.
Utah now requires parent and administrator notification within 15 minutes of an emergency safety intervention, daily state reporting, and audio and video recording in seclusion rooms.
Washington prohibited building any new seclusion rooms as of this June, and planned physical management interventions now require sign-off from a medical professional. Auburn has schools in its district serving as state demonstration sites for reducing these restrictive practices as part of a broader Reducing Restraint & Eliminating Isolation project.

Patrick reframed the purpose of training entirely. “We’re getting people trained not because they’re using restraint, we’re getting them trained so that they don’t have to use restraint.” In other words, “You take a de-escalation training, not to get the license to restrain, but really to get the license to refrain.”

He contrasted Safety-Care with other programs he had seen. “In Safety-Care, the grand finale isn’t the restraint piece, it’s role-playing the de-escalation strategies that you would use so that you don’t ever have to go use those physical management pieces, which people really appreciate and the results speak for themselves here.”

Confidence comes from practice

The panelists were candid that confidence is not automatic. Lorie noted that her staff feel strong in prevention and de-escalation skills, but the moment of deciding whether physical management is needed remains hard, especially under increased state scrutiny. Her district now uses a trainer committee and when staff are unsure, trainers role-play the situation with them.

Leah’s team builds de-escalation scenarios from real situations staff describe, and all 32 trainers practice together every grading period. Consistency matters: “I don’t want to be giving a different message than the trainer right next to me”. She tells new trainees that discomfort is part of learning. “When you’re uncomfortable, it means that’s when the best learning can happen, right?” And she models it herself. “It takes practice, and just like any skill, you have to practice it.”

Patrick shared a line he had heard earlier that day: “Engagement is the first intervention.” That applies to adults in training, too. Trainers who reflect the roles in the room, and role-plays that raise anxiety a little, prepare staff for real moments. The reason, he said, is that “as human beings, when our anxiety goes up, our ability to empathize and seek to understand goes down, and then we just go into automatic mode.” He has watched attitudes shift. “I would say a decade ago, if I would have told the group to go role play the de-escalation of the student, they’d be like, ‘What?'” Today, role-play is expected. “You want us to go play, but that’s one of the best ways to train people.”

Laurie closed this part of the conversation by referencing Safety-Care’s Technique of the Week program, and how it is helping shape staff confidence between annual trainings. Her district uses it in weekly staff meetings and RBT supervision. “We have 21 RBTs that we supervise every week and we practice a technique of the week, every week.”

One piece of advice for leaders planning the year

We closed by asking each panelist what they would tell a leader building a behavioral safety approach in their district for the school year.

Lorie: “Make it a priority”, she said. Without that commitment, the skills will not last for staff. And the payoff is clear. “The better staff are equipped to handle things, the better outcomes for kids and that’s what we all want.”
Leah: Lead with belief, and think proactively. Staff take their cue from leadership. “If you don’t believe in it as as a leader then your people are not going to believe in it either.” From there, she encouraged leaders to ask, “How can we set up our buildings to think proactively instead of reactively?”
Patrick: Start with the adults. “Having regulated students, that starts with having regulated adults.” That means adults who feel supported, whose needs are met, and who feel equipped to work preventively instead of always reacting. “So, it starts with the adult behavior and it starts with adult regulation.”

From responding to preventing

Three states, three regulatory landscapes, and three very different district sizes. The same pattern held across all of them: crisis prevention works best when it is part of the culture, reaches every adult who works with students, and is practiced constantly, not just once a year.

Thank you to Laurie, Leah, and Patrick for sharing your experience so openly.

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