Education To Action School Safety Seminar + Night at the Ballpark.
Join us for expert led educational sessions focused on suicide prevention, developing a plan for physical security rooted in risk, and a tabletop exercise in emergency operations planning.
Driving Community Connected School Safety
School safety is no longer a challenge that can be addressed by educators alone. The complexity of modern threats, including mental health crises, community violence, social media driven risks, infrastructure vulnerabilities, and trauma exposure requires a coordinated, public health driven approach that spans schools, families, neighborhoods, healthcare systems, universities, nonprofits, and local government.
This event brings together professionals across the school ecosystem to explore how systems thinking, public health frameworks, and community partnerships can strengthen prevention, enhance protection, and support trauma-informed recovery.
Why the Social Ecological Model Must Expand
The Social Ecological Model (SEM) has long been used in public health to understand how individual behavior is shaped by relationships, organizations, communities, and broader societal factors. Applied to school safety, SEM helps leaders recognize that risk and resilience are distributed across multiple layers of a student’s environment.
The traditional SEM layers include:
- Individual — student well‑being, mental health, coping skills
- Interpersonal — peers, family, trusted adults
- Organizational — school policies, climate, staffing, physical environment
- Community — neighborhoods, social services, healthcare, law enforcement
- Societal — culture, policy, technology, economic conditions
Why this school safety security planning must evolve:
School safety challenges now routinely cross boundaries between these layers.
- Suicide risk is impacted by digital environments, healthcare access, and family stressors, not just school factors.
- Violence prevention depends on community level supports, youth programming, and neighborhood stability.
- Emergency response and recovery require hospitals, mental health providers, law enforcement, and community organizations working in sync with schools.
- Infrastructure threats like cybersecurity, facilities vulnerabilities, environmental hazards span departments of IT, operations, public health, and emergency management.
A modern SEM for school safety must therefore expand to include whole communities, not just school based stakeholders. This event is designed to model that expanded approach.
DATE
Thursday
June 11, 2026
TIME
2:00 PM ET -
6:00 PM ET
LOCATION
Marriott Renaissance & PNC Park, Pittsburgh, PA
Introducing the Speakers
Christin Kinman
Aaron Vanatta, PSP, BTAM‑CMT
Candice Biernesser, PhD, LCSW
Zach Querry
Event Schedule:
1:00–2:00 PM — Registration & Networking
2:00–5:00 PM — Educational Program
5:00–6:00 PM — Happy Hour & Appetizers
6:00 PM — Pirates vs Dodgers Baseball Game
Each session is 50 minutes: 40 minutes of content, 10 minutes of Q&A, followed by a 10‑minute transition break. Beverages will be provided
Session 1 - Prevention
Suicide Prevention in Teens: Supporting Student Mental Health in an Increasingly Technology Driven World
Speaker: Candice Biernesser, PhD; Professor, University of Pittsburgh
As technology becomes an ever-present part of adolescents’ lives, schools are increasingly expected to support student mental health in digital spaces they did not design and do not fully control. Without clear guidance, well intentioned efforts can miss emerging risks or rely on tools that are ineffective—or harmful.
This session examines the intersection of technology and adolescent suicide prevention, drawing on current research to clarify key risk and protective factors for middle and high school students. Participants will gain an overview of the youth mental health landscape, explore how students engage with apps, social media, and artificial intelligence, and learn a practical framework for evaluating digital mental health tools based on credibility, privacy, security, and student engagement. The session also highlights freely available, evidence based digital interventions developed at the University of Pittsburgh that schools can use to support student wellbeing.
Session 2 - Protection & Mitigation
Security: Because Duct Tape is Not a Plan: Security is a Strategy, Not a Solution
Speaker: Christin Kinman, MPH, CPTED
Buying more equipment does not automatically make schools safer. When security decisions are driven by products rather than risk, organizations often invest in systems that are costly, misaligned, and ineffective.
This session examines how security decisions are commonly made and why solutions first thinking leads to overbuilt or underperforming protection measures. Participants will learn a practical framework for assessing risk, weighing tradeoffs, and selecting security strategies that meaningfully reduce harm without wasting time, money, or trust.
Session 3 - Response & Recovery
From Map to Action: A Facility Based Emergency Operations Tabletop
Speakers: Aaron Vanatta, PSP, BTAM-CMT and Zach Querry, Critical Response Group
Emergency plans often look solid on paper—until a real incident exposes gaps in coordination, situational awareness, and inclusion. This facilitated tabletop exercise uses a facility map as the foundation for decision making, challenging participants to work through a realistic crisis while accounting for all students, including those with functional impairments.
Participants will test how emergency operations plans translate into action when locations matter; information is incomplete, and needs differ across populations. The exercise highlights where traditional planning breaks down and how mapping, coordination, and inclusive design strengthen response and recovery. Attendees will leave with practical insights for improving emergency operations plans, so they work in real spaces, under real pressure, for every student.
Post Conference
Happy Hour & Pirates Game
5:00–6:00 PM — Happy Hour & Appetizers
A relaxed networking reception with speakers, vendors, and community partners.
6:00 PM — Pittsburgh Pirates Game
Pirates vs. Los Angeles Dodgers. Tickets included for all attendees and partners.
Explore new ventures, investor relations and more.
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