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Get the Book That’s Changing the School Safety Conversation
A New Standard for School Safety Starts Here
We can prevent casualties in school shootings—if we change how we plan for school safety. With the right system, harm in school shooting scenarios may be prevented. This field guide adapts proven high-reliability practices to K–12 security, giving school administration a consistent, equitable way to secure schools.
In Before The Next Tragedy, You’ll Learn:
A standards-based framework that prioritizes prevention over damage control and guides district policy.
A scenario library covering classrooms, common areas, entrances, outdoors, and off-campus spaces when threat assessments fail to foil a plot.
Clear criteria to translate best practices into tested controls for communications, access, and crisis response.
An actionable gap analysis to target budgets, strengthen plans, and document decisions for boards and communities.
Drill-ready requirements for SRO programs: coverage, keys and access, comms reliability, and time-to-engage.
If you’re responsible for school safety—or advocating for it—this book gives you a plan to invest wisely, document decisions, and protect every student, teacher, and staff member. Before the Next Tragedy is a disciplined, system-level approach with an emphasis on an equitable level of protection, school to school. We have the power to prevent further tragedy now—is your school ready?
“Critique 5/5: “Before the Next Tragedy: Preventing Harm in School Shooting Scenarios” by John Menna should be absolutely required reading for all school administrators, school board members, parents of school aged children, political activists, governmental policy makers, and State/Federal Department of Education personnel. Informed and informative, exceptionally ‘reader friendly’ in organization and presentation. “Before the Next Tragedy” should be a part of every K-12 school library, college/university library, and community/public library School Policies/Issues and School Safety collections and supplemental Crisis Management Counseling curriculum studies lists.”
“I recently read Before The Next Tragedy and as a school administrator I came away very impressed with the depth of layers of security mentioned throughout the book, as well as how easy the book was to read and follow. The more we can do to stop the next tragedy from happening the better! Well done Mr Menna! I recommend this book highly.”
Is your school ready for the unthinkable?
Most schools believe they have a plan—until it’s too late.
This free, interactive assessment helps you uncover vulnerabilities you may not even know exist.
What you’ll get:
- A scenario-based gap assessment tailored to real-world school threats
- Instant insights to help prioritize what matters most in your safety plan
- A smarter, system-focused alternative to vendor checklists and guesswork
Start identifying weaknesses before they become consequences.
