What students say makes schools safe

Walk into a California school and you can see it immediately: single points of entry, vape sensors in bathrooms, active-shooter drills, visitor badges, perimeter cameras. Over the last decade, schools have hardened their campuses. This became the first wave of modern school safety. These changes matter, and there is a reason they were prioritized first. But they are not what students describe when you ask them what it means to feel safe.

There is another form of school safety that is much harder to see. The second wave is less visible but no less important. It is built through relationships, trust, and belonging — the daily experiences that determine whether students feel connected, supported, and willing to seek help. Unlike the first wave, it cannot be installed. It has to be cultivated, and it may be just as consequential for school safety.

In 2023, the Sonoma County Office of Education created the Department of School Culture and Partnerships to support school safety efforts across the county. The department was formed in the immediate aftermath of a fatal stabbing at a high school in our county. When we analyzed data from that school’s student and staff surveys, measures of school culture and connectedness were among the lowest in the county. There were multiple signs that something was wrong: Both students and adults reported that violence was imminent, and anonymous reporting routes were not monitored.

Those findings led us to examine the picture at the county level, where a striking pattern emerged. Most of the survey domains — school culture, academic challenge, engagement, relationships, student agency, safety, and DEI — were so tightly correlated that strong performance in one area almost always predicted strength in the others. Research reflects the same pattern: Positive school climate is associated with stronger academic outcomes and lower rates of school violence (Berkowitz et al., 2017; Steffgen et al., 2013).

Within that broader picture, belonging stands out. Most school-level factors are associated with one or two outcomes; belonging is linked to a remarkable range of them, including academic achievement, engagement, attendance, mental health, and reduced violence, with effects that persist into adulthood (Korpershoek et al., 2020; Steiner et al., 2019). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has formally identified school connectedness as a protective factor for adolescent health and safety. That broad impact is what makes belonging a leadership issue, not just a climate initiative. It is the central lever our department was built around.

Our most recent project examined what high-safety, high-belonging schools were actually doing on the ground. We identified 11 schools in Sonoma County that scored in the top tier on the “Belonging” and “Safety” domains of the annual YouthTruth survey administered to nearly 40,000 students. Staff interviewed 129 students across grade levels and demographics with one simple question: What does this school do that makes you feel like you belong here?

Their answers rarely involved locks, badges, or cameras.

“This school is amazing because you actually get to be yourself and it feels good to be here.” — Middle school student

“Tell kids they can talk to you and you’re like a ’safe space.’ It helps kids talk to the teacher and trust them.” — Elementary student

This is the second wave of safety. It is not the architecture of the building. It is the architecture of daily experience. It is what students actually mean when they say a school feels safe. Unlike the first wave, this kind of safety is built through daily interactions with adults and peers.

Before turning to the interviews, consider what happens when belonging is absent. In countywide behavioral threat assessments, one pattern appears repeatedly: Students referred for assessment often describe feeling disconnected from school, peers, and adults. Belonging is not solely an individual responsibility; it is built collectively. But when disconnection becomes chronic, it can evolve from a climate issue into a safety concern.

Students were remarkably consistent in describing what built trust and what damaged it. Taken together, their responses point toward a series of leadership questions. The questions below focus on relationships, voice, fairness, identity, and protection because students consistently identified these as central to feeling safe at school.

1. Are there structures that create sustained relationships? Every one of the 11 schools had some version of a structure that put students in regular contact with the same adult: advisory, looping, morning meetings, or recurring check-ins.

“My teacher makes sure to check in with me once in a while which makes me know that she sees me and cares about me.” — Elementary student

“Our teacher, no matter what grade you are in, is always welcoming students into her classroom. She listens whenever I need her. I feel comfortable with her.” — Middle school student

2. Do students have a meaningful voice? Students at high-belonging schools described voice as something embedded in how decisions were made, not a suggestion box or an annual survey.

“Our teacher gave out improvement slips (what can she do better?), and it was clear she put the recommendations to practice.” — High school student

“Students are able to make a change in the way the school is being run, or class is being taught; students have a good voice here.” — High school student

3. Is a student’s identity reflected in daily school life? Students who saw their backgrounds reflected in curriculum, school events, and classroom practices reported markedly stronger belonging.

“They do a big Diwali celebration … It makes me feel like I’m at home.” — Elementary student

4. Are there clear norms of kindness and protection? Students in high-belonging schools described peer cultures where kindness was expected and cruelty was socially discouraged.

“If someone is being mean they defend you, they are kind to you.” — Elementary student

“Yes. There are no mean people here. Nobody would make fun of you.” — Middle school student

5. Is there a reporting system students believe in? Students at high-belonging schools knew where to go when something went wrong and trusted adults to respond appropriately.

“Students will report when they see the staff care and be responsive.” — High school student

What undermines belonging and safety? This distinction matters because schools often focus on adding programs that promote belonging while overlooking routines that quietly erode it. Students described trust as something built gradually and damaged quickly. As john a. powell writes, some actions bridge and others break (powell, 2019). Schools must do both: Create conditions that build connection and remove practices that damage it.

6. Are there whole-class consequences for individual behavior? Punishing the whole group for one student’s behavior was the most commonly cited classroom practice that damaged belonging, even at otherwise strong schools.

“It would be better if the one student only was the one to face the consequences. It’s not fair that the whole class is held accountable for one student’s misbehavior.” — Elementary student

7. Is discipline perceived as inconsistent? Students notice how adults respond to similar behavior from different students, and they notice when race, gender, or social standing appears to change the outcome.

“The disruptive white girls got to go first, but me (Mexican Asian) and my friends (boys) had to stay back.” — Elementary student

8. Are adults trained to respond to bias and harassment? When students hear stereotyping or slurs and adults nearby do not respond, students read the silence as endorsement, and trust in the school as a whole drops.

“Once I heard a kid say, ‘Oh he’s Hispanic … he had to learn to be smart. We are just born smart.’” — High school student

“I’m Jewish and Black. I hear a lot of people saying crazy stuff … They say crazy stuff about my skin color and my religion.” — Middle school student

9. Are students allowed to be isolated? Students described lunch, recess, and passing periods as the moments when isolation and harassment were most likely to occur, especially for students without an established friend group.

“I feel really sad sometimes because I have to go somewhere by myself so no one worries about me … Trying not to cry because I am really sensitive and sometimes I can’t help it and I just feel lonely.” — Elementary student

How leaders can promote belonging The first wave of school safety relies largely on systems and protocols. The second wave is a leadership challenge.

Schools will still need locks, cameras, threat assessment protocols, and emergency plans. But students consistently describe safety in relational terms: being known, protected, listened to, included, and treated fairly.

The schools in this study did not create belonging through a single program. They created it through daily routines, adult behaviors, peer norms, and systems students learned they could trust. If the first wave of school safety focused on securing campuses, the second wave may depend on whether schools can create the conditions where students feel they are part of the community those campuses are meant to protect.

That lever appears to be moving. The 2026 YouthTruth results show belonging gains at every grade span, with elementary and middle schools now at or above the 60th percentile nationally and high schools at the 64th percentile. Relationships climbed as well, most sharply in middle school (16 percentile points) and high school (10 percentile points). Families noticed too: Reported confidence in school safety rose at every level.

Students are telling us what works. The next wave of school safety may depend less on what we install in buildings and more on what we build between people. The challenge now is to lead with the same urgency around connection that we have brought to physical security.

References

• Berkowitz, R., Moore, H., Astor, R. A., & Benbenishty, R. (2017). A research synthesis of the associations between socioeconomic background, inequality, school climate, and academic achievement. Review of Educational Research, 87(2), 425–469.
• Korpershoek, H., Canrinus, E. T., Fokkens-Bruinsma, M., & de Boer, H. (2020). The relationships between school belonging and students’ motivational, social-emotional, behavioural, and academic outcomes in secondary education: A meta-analytic review. Research Papers in Education, 35(6), 641–680.
• powell, j. a. (2019). Bridging or breaking? The stories we tell will create the future we inhabit. Nonprofit Quarterly (Winter 2019 issue).
• Steffgen, G., Recchia, S., & Viechtbauer, W. (2013). The link between school climate and violence in school: A meta-analytic review. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 18(2), 300–309.
• Steiner, R. J., Sheremenko, G., Lesesne, C., Dittus, P. J., Sieving, R. E., & Ethier, K. A. (2019). Adolescent connectedness and adult health outcomes. Pediatrics, 144(1), e20183766.
  

Louis Ganzler, Ph.D., is assistant superintendent of the Department of School Culture and Partnerships at the Sonoma County Office of Education.

Note on quotes: All student voice excerpts are drawn from the SCOE Department of School Culture’s 2025–26 belonging interview project (n=129 across 11 high-belonging schools). Identifiers anonymized.