How Security Professionals Help Schools Find Weak Points

Welcome to the secured podcast. Today, we have with us Andrew Callis. I'm Mike Matranga. Andrew Callis is with us from M6 Global Defense. Andrew is a former, educator for twenty five years. And now is branched over to the security space. Andrew, got a question for you. Now that you've made the transition from education over to the security space, from an educator's perspective, what do you think is most needed in the k twelve space? Well, I think more is needed. A lot of the times people feel like that it's training overload and people really don't take the training seriously. So relevant training is needed in order for things to be moved forward. Since I've been in this space, this safe security space for the last two years, it's been a situation where I've noticed a lot of people being very careless on campuses. I've, currently, I've been on over two hundred campuses And a lot of the things rain true. When there are things that aren't going right on those campuses, it's just because someone is not doing their job. Gotcha. You talk about carelessness. Regardless of carelessness, can you give us some examples of what that looks like, within a campus? And how we can rectify those situations. Well, so when I go to a school, I look for a vulnerability. I look for a weak point look for an opportunity to breach a school. And, I've been in some areas to where there weren't very many people that looked like me in the school bill. And one of my most alarming examples is I walked around a building for upwards of sixteen minutes. And I got lost a couple of times. So two of the instances where I got lost, I walked past the campus security officer or the or the camp well, really the campus police officer. And I was within six feet of him. And after I finished my assessment throughout the day, I realized that I had not observed anyone on that campus that looked like me. And so at no point, did he feel like that it was relevant for someone to ask me anything. The first person that even inquired about my while I was on campus was this student who was escorting me to the office after I decided to self report. K. Do you think that it's just, an environmental thing within the K twelve space that people become complacent I know you talked about training being an issue. Where do you think the breakdown is? Is it is it lack of training due to the educational environment pulling schools or or or educators, you know, and focusing on solely academic which, you know, that's the priority. We obviously know that. But what do you think the breakdown is? Why do you think that of your you've done two, three hundred, audits now at this point. What do you think it is? Not quite three hundred. Yeah. Well, two hundred plus. Yeah. What do you think that the biggest, problem is within the K12 space? Is it complacency? Is it, the mindset of the individuals that are on campus. What do you think that is? Self. Self. And and I say itself because we're more concerned about ourselves than the job at hand. Okay. Because there's no way in the world that people are able to move freely around campuses without identification and not be questioned if they're not part of the daily school day. When you think about me saying that itself, it's business as usual for someone. They they have their own schedule, and anything that's outside of that schedule is not necessarily a concern of theirs. Right. That's why I say self. Do you think that alone SRO is enough for a campus to be secured. I don't think that the SROs are the solution. I think that they're relevant because their presence is needed, but, realistically coming from the background being a former administrator, I think that it's just staff and student awareness. We always talk about see something say something. Engage people. If you are a professional, you are a degree professional, you have the mindset. You have the knowledge in order to be able to talk to someone like an adult. And be able to see exactly where they are. And if it's a situation where they're coming in hot, and you may not feel like that you have the confidence to engage them, tell someone. But at some point, you have to be responsible for your day because the job of an administrator is to make sure that everyone gets to school safely and everyone gets home so they can wake up and do it all over again. Right. Now, we talked about, and we've both experienced this, that, We talked about the foundational component of school security being, in the behavioral analysis of students, and the the the pattern of behaviors within students. One of the most impactful things that I think that we're not leaning early on is our staff. We have some very good staff that are situationally aware of their surroundings, what's going on. We have some that that are not so aware and a little bit complacent, but what I will say is the common ground is is that they all know what students are more likely to be in crisis, whether it be from a break up, whether it be from, you know, parents, going through a divorce, something issue that's that's spilled over to school from home. How important is it for parent for teachers an educational staff to be actively engaged in knowing what their kids are going through. And then once they identify a kid in crisis, how important it is it for them to have a resource to relay that information and have a resource to touch base with that kid to find out what's going on? No. Naturally is very important But what happens is those educators that may have those relationships, they have those relationships with those students, and they don't start the conversations with the relevant people until it's too late. Because a lot of the times, though, those relevant people on on campus, when you're not necessarily doing a threat assessment, you're not gonna know the whole student. As the administrator, you don't know that whole student. As a counselor, you don't know that whole student, there are different components throughout the school that will give you an opportunity to give the true picture of what that student -- Right. -- what and who that student is because at the end they is not just is is not just one thing. And the instructional piece is so important, but we have to make sure that we can take care of these things so we can to the main thing, which is driving instruction and building productive people and trying to bridge this gap in education that we have. Right. Because there is a definite gap last question, you know, you've been working with M6 Global and ASAP for quite a while now. What do you think separates us from other people in the industry. I like to call it variety. There's, there's a grab bag of talent within within this structure. This is something that's, that's new to me, actually, because Mike Montif and I were talking, and I was just talking about making sure that I'm able to be able to continue to be a sponge, like I was in the educational realm. I'm a lifelong learner. So being able to be a sponge learning from different people, learning from different walks, so like being able to to gain that knowledge from someone else when we're when we're doing a vulnerability assessment, being able to look at the technology components in order to be able to expand on the audit process to give people a real picture when I'm writing those narratives up when we're able to drive the conversation toward that and let administrators and and all of the stakeholders know that we're really doing this so we can get back to the main thing, which is educating students. Right. I'm a lifelong learner, and being able to branch out into the safety and security space, sure I missed the classroom, sure I missed the building. But I was speaking with a, friend who's an educator, and who's a building principal. And I was really expressing the fact that, you know, I although I'm enjoying being in the safety and security realm, being able to make those safe faces for the for the masses, I still missed the building. And he told me something that was very frightening. He says, there's less and less to miss about the building. And it shook me because that means that at this point, our job is more important than ever, being able to make those places safe, being able to pro provide safe spaces for people in order for those moments, those things that I missed to return.