State of Independent School Safety Report: What We Found

But welcome.

So, Aura team, who is going to be driving your slides today? Who would like to be the designated person? Yeah, I'm going to drive initially, and then I think I'm going to throw to Paul.

So can we have two drivers? Absolutely.

Give me just a second.

We're going to go ahead and fix that for you guys.

Aaron, it looks like you are currently the host, so if you don't mind making Matt and Paul co-hosts, I'd appreciate it, or change the permissions just with sharing tools.

Either way.

So while we're working on those logistics, welcome everybody.

We've got an exciting one for you here today.

So we're going to be talking about state of the industry and looking at some findings.

So it's a really great one.

So Aura, we're so excited to have your team with us here, and Matt, if you want to kick it off for us and get us started today.

Sure thing.

Hi, everyone.

Welcome.

I will see if...

It still seems like I can't share my screen, so I'll just give that another 30 seconds now I'm the co-host.

Perfect.

Yep.

Should be able to now.

All right.

Okay, what screen are we seeing? The State of Independent School Safety Report? So we see like a Word document.

That's no good.

Sorry.

No worries.

It's daily shifting between Teams, Zooms, Google Hangouts.

We feel for you on that one.

It's a skill unto itself.

For sure.

All right.

That looks great, Matt.

All right.

Does that look like a slide deck? Yes, looks fantastic.

Awesome.

Well, welcome everyone.

I'm Matt Varley, CEO of Aura.

Today we're going to be sharing some of the findings from our 2026 State of Independent School Safety Report.

It's been a joint research project between Aura and then with the assistance of ATLAS to survey a lot of the ATLAS members to come to these findings.

The reason we did this research is because we believe that independent schools deserve that same rigor around safety data that bring to academics enrollment fundraising.

So we wanted to take a step back and really look at where everything stands.

We had the pleasure of also doing this a couple of weeks ago in Columbus at the ATLAS conference, which was super fun, and we were talking about that earlier at how good the conference actually was and the enjoyment of being in Columbus.

So a little bit of information on the research and how it was conducted.

It wasn't surveying our own Aura customers and telling you what we wanted to hear.

It was designed by an external research agency called True North Research.

And then obviously we partner with ATLAS to get the survey out there and then have an independent research do the analysis and build the report for us.

We deliberately kept our hands off the methodology so the data could speak for itself.

And then what I'm presenting today are our findings from the report and not our opinions.

So in terms of the data and what came in, we had 85 US independent schools that responded.

Obviously sounds modest amount, but for a sector that's this specialized, it's a meaningful cross-section, particularly of the ATLAS community, which I believe was about 50 to 55 of those 85 responses.

The field work ran from February through to March of this year, and we deliberately went broad.

So we wanted to touch on things like governance, decision-making, emergency preparedness, incident history, daily attendance, accountability routines, the technology landscape, where the schools are spending or planning to spend.

But then we wanted to really hone in on the role that IT directors played, or don't play in some scenarios, in being at the table to lead that school safety discussion.

So let's jump in.

We've got a few of the findings here.

So the first insight that we took away from the research is that incidents are not theoretical, and it's a generic kind of statement, but the data back this up.

So I think there's a tendency in the sector to think of safety incidents as something that happens in other schools, larger schools, public schools, schools in different neighborhoods.

But this slide really brings home, it doesn't always necessarily need to be a lockdown or that sort of severe incident, but there's medical emergency, severe weather, unauthorized campus access, and then lockdowns.

So 76%, three in four of the schools experienced a safety incident in the last 12 months.

The most common, obviously being medical emergencies, think anaphylaxis on a field trip, concussion at practice, student having a seizure in the dining hall.

These aren't edge cases.

They're just a normal day in a school.

So when we talk about school safety, we're not talking about the hypothetical here.

We're talking about something that the majority of you have already dealt with this year.

The question is whether the school is ready to face that incident and ready to account for those students in the event of that occurring.

I should have said at the start, please, if there's anything, I'm not looking in the chat, so, if people want to come off mute or put things in the chat and read it out to me, please interrupt me at any secondSo the second key finding here was emergency response is generally slow.

So, 93% of schools run drills regularly.

So the intent is there, the schools are running the practice.

But that drill is only as good as the outcome it produces.

So when we asked how long it took to confirm the safety of every student during an emergency, the numbers were very different.

Only 21%, so one in five of the schools can do it under four minutes.

And then 2% doing it under two minutes.

Obviously, in the report, which I'll provide a link later in the webinar, it depends on the school size, right? You've got more students, it takes longer to account for the students, and it breaks it down by that school size.

42% are taking more than six minutes, and then 13% being north of 10.

So, imagine a lockdown.

Parent gets notification, they call the school, the switchboard usually goes off.

They want one answer, "Is my child safe?" The drills are obviously in a simulated situation, but improving those systems can help.

The thing that sort of struck me was the lack of measurement in emergency response time.

So a lot of the survey respondents weren't actually measuring how long, or sort of had some form of measurement where they could improve on that.

And we know the old adage of what measures matters and what gets improved.

So that whole measurement of response time in the drills was something that really stuck out.

So most independent schools don't know where the students are.

So only 41% said that they were highly confident that they knew who was on campus at any given moment.

And obviously that image to the right there, there's just so many different scenarios.

We've counted sort of 83 in the work that we've done.

And I'm sure there's plenty more at a school where, for 15 minutes, a student may be at the nurse's office.

They've got a hall pass, excused from the classroom.

And in the event of emergency, they're unaccounted for if there hasn't been that handshake at the nurse's office or when they come back to class.

So this one, this stat was a real interesting one.

Again, not alarming.

They're somewhere on campus usually, but in that event of an emergency, that stat can come back.

So the average time that it took for a school to account for all students in emergency was 6.3 minutes across the survey data, and 42% take longer than that.

The number that kind of really stood out to me, though, was when a student has an unexcused absence.

They don't show up, no parent call, no explanation.

56% of schools do eventually confirm the student is safe.

But it took an average of 32 minutes in that case.

32 minutes, think about what can happen in half an hour.

A student could be in distress.

They could be somewhere they shouldn't be.

They could be in danger.

And it's 32 minutes that should be accounted for in that student's day.

When I was with a school in the sort of Washington, DC area, just a couple of months ago, talking about a student in distress, that they used Aura to track down and account for that student, someone that was on a watchlist.

So it's not always just about the emergency, it's about that duty of care and understanding where the students are at any given point in time.

So this slide, we asked, "When a student is absent without explanation, do you confirm they're safe?" 44% said they attempt to contact but don't consistently confirm.

And then 6% were saying that they don't have a consistent process at all.

So nearly half of those schools are making the call.

They're not closing the loop.

They ring the parent, they leave a voicemail, and they move on with their day, because they've inherently got a lot on their plate, and they need to move through.

It's an attempt, but it's not a confirmation.

So, adding in the 27% who are unsure of their own process, you're just left with half of the schools who can say with confidence, "Yes, we know that that child is safe." So not a technology problem, not a budget problem, but more of a workflow problem.

And it's one of the most fixable gaps in this entire data set.

So, school safety decisions don't happen in isolation.

Before we talk about who's making the decisions, it's worth acknowledging the reality that safety leaders operate in.

There are four forces that every safety decision in an independent school.

Obviously, the regulatory and compliance requirements.

You've got the board and legal oversight, leadership oversight, sorry.

And then, inherently, a lot of the schools that we talk to, there's budget and resourcing constraints.

But the interesting one, and this generated a good discussion topic in Columbus in the room, was balancing safety with school culture.

So there was a big discussion about you can put all of these things in place, but ultimately, it comes back to the parents and their view on the big brother sort of type scenario of how closely do we track students versus how much freedom do we give them just to roam on campus.

And there wasn't any straight answer there in the room at the Atlas conference this year, but just more so a very nuanced conversation about school by school is obviously going to make their own decision depending on what they stand for and their values as a school in terms of how far they go down this tracking and accountability side with students.This stat's a great one, given that we're talking to technology leaders specifically here at Atlas.

But when IT is involved in safety decisions, every metric improves.

Perceived safety effectiveness goes up 4.5%, visibility confidence, knowing where the students are, and perceived resource constraint goes down.

The last one is a bit counterintuitive there.

You'd think adding another voice to the table means more complexity.

But when IT leaders bring that systems thinking and they connect tools that are already in place, they reduce duplication, and they make the budget go further.

And only, and this was quite sobering, 41% of independent schools currently include IT in safety decisions, so under half are included in that.

And again, this was another really rich conversation in Columbus, where some of the IT directors in the room were sharing that they don't have that seat at the table, and they want that seat at the table.

And being able to bring a report such as this, but also some of the ideas circulated on that day around this being seen as a consolidation exercise possibly of technology or being able to audit specific workflows within the school to drive that discussion rather than it being siloed either off in the safety department, which historically has always thought more about physical safety around barriers, CCTV cameras, and bringing more of a systems thinking view to it.

Kind of jumped ahead here, but obviously mentioned that it's siloed, and only 41% of IT directors are involved in those safety decisions.

But the key thing here, with only 5% operating from agreed safety plan or framework.

So I think IT directors have got a really strong role to play within their school in terms of bringing this to the forefront.

Obviously, IT systems, data, and how this all syncs together, has got a huge role in solving some of the human workflows that exist in independent schools as of today.

So a couple of kind of key next takeaway items before I throw to Paul, who's going to quickly run through the Aura platform.

The next slide will have a download QR code link for the school safety report.

Auditing safety tech, so taking a step back and seeing what platforms are in place across not only where are the students and school safety, but physical alarm systems, CCTV, and looking at what's being currently taken in the CIS in terms of attendance or other location data, whether there's separate bus management solutions, drill or security safety management solutions, and just having a look at what the playing field is there.

And then, this was, again, something out of Columbus that some of the IT directors really took away strongly, was convening that meeting with key stakeholders and illuminating some of these key blind spots.

What happens when a student leaves the classroom? Do we have hall passes? Are they still paper? Where's the handshake at the other end where the student says that they are going to the nurse's office? Do they take a detour via the bathrooms and meet up with their friends and spend 40 minutes there before coming back to the classroom? So having a look at all those different manual blind spots that currently exist in your school, bringing those, brainstorming it with the widest school stakeholders, and then having a really productive conversation.

So there is the QR code that I'll keep up here for the next 30 seconds or so.

There's a link there as well.

You can just come to the Aura website if you missed the QR code.

I know there's going to be quite a few people watching back the webinar here as well.

So download the report.

There's a whole lot more data and insights there beyond what I've discussed and shared today.

We'd love your feedback as well.

So we aim to run this research report annually, every year.

So if there's questions that we've missed or insights that we haven't gained that you would love to see run in our next report, which will be around that Feb-March period of 2027, please do get in touch.

We will add those questions to the report, and if there's any questions about the data or some of the insights that we've generated, then again, just get in touch.

We're more than happy to have the conversation.

All right.

I'm going to pause there.

Stop sharing.

Come back, so I'm actually on screen.

Paul, I'm going to throw to you to open up and have a bit of a demo of the Aura platform, and then we'll come back to have a bit of a Q&A.

Great.

Thanks, Matt.

So I'm just going to...

Oh, one sec.

I do have a deck as well to run through, and then, yeah, in that I'll weave in some of our product.

So can you all confirm, can you see my screen? Yeah.

Yeah.

Your not alone slide? Yeah.

Great.

Yep.

So yeah, just kind of picking out some of the things that Matt mentioned from that report.

So 56% of the schools, that we interviewed at least, confirm the safety of absent unexcused students.

So 44%Don't actually do it.

But the ones that do it, takes 32 minutes on average to try and track that student down and confirm that they're safe.

6.3 minutes it takes on average to account for all students during an emergency, and then 42% of the participants take longer than six minutes.

I think it was more like 10-- between the 10 and 20.

And then 46% of school safety leaders say that better student accountability is a top priority for the next 12 months.

That kind of frames the conversation here.

But where Ora kind of comes in is we help you answer that question of where a student is right now, where our students are right now.

We started out in boarding schools.

You'll see there's a tab here.

And so that's a 24/7 kind of environment where they need to know where their kids are.

So we built customization that I think is just unique to schools right now.

But we offer a lot more.

And so we've got emergency management, and so in some ca- in some cases, you'll see we'll be compared in a head-to-head situation there.

But we have the full kind of school day.

So we've got after-school management absences as well, late arrivals, early dismissals, hall passes, dismissals, and then obviously attendance and the SIS two-way sync too.

So ultimately, schools want to cut down the time it takes to respond in an emergency and account for their kids.

So like I mentioned, the traditional muster, on average, it's six, but the remaining, we're doing it sort of 10 to 20 minutes.

And then we've got multiple schools reporting now using Ora.

They're able to account for their kids in under 90 seconds.

And the main reason for that is because we have that live view for student location, when you do or if you have to trigger an emergency, it's going to pull that live location data into the same role and the same app that you're using for attendance and everything else.

So this is specific to Blackbaud, but it can basically sub in your SIS.

And you've got granular attendance automations, which I'll show you in more detail.

You can capture student movements outside the classroom.

We've got mobile attendance tracking, so taking attendance outside the classroom on your phone.

And then attendance compliance, so actually getting teachers to take the roll can be a difficult one for a lot of our schools.

So we've got alerts to remind teachers, but then we also have functionality to allow students to check themselves into class as well.

And then live location awareness, and faster emergency response is another reason why people use Ora in conjunction with their SIS.

So attendance follow-ups and alerts.

So we think the time it takes to reconcile and figure out where a kid is or if they're safe is too long.

And so this piece here allows you to collect this into your SIS, whether it's, yeah, Veracross, Blackbaud, FACTS, and start to surface some of the insights.

And then automate alerts to go out to students based on different trends.

It can also send text messages out to the parents to quickly reconcile if a kid was supposed to be at school and they just forgot.

All sorts of kind of insights you can pull from this page, too.

But where a lot of our schools will use this is actually more around, like, attendance policies.

So let's say a student has missed English class three times or they've been late twice in a week.

You can have follow-up workflows to kind of chase that down and nip it in the bud.

Capturing student movements, so outside the classroom.

And in that first screen there, you've got inside the classroom.

So we've got a Chrome extension.

We've got the mobile app that your teachers can take the roll through, but it's all writing back to your SIS.

Yeah, whether that's any of those three, Veracross, Blackbaud, or FACTS.

We have the self-serve iPad kiosk, so you can have them in, you know, the health center or a study hall, different places on campus that the students can check into.

They can use a QR code now to do that.

And then we also have, like, the mobile app for coaches to take the roll.

Taking kids out for a field trip, all of that can be done, too.

And then, like I mentioned, that last piece there where kids can mark themselves as present for attendance in class.

This is more on that note there, but, essentially, you can have a QR code printed onto your student IDs if you have them.

We have got in the works the ability to have RFID, like, fobs, I believe it is.

Right, Matt? But essentially, the idea here is that they don't need to have their phones.

So most of our schools are going phoneless for their kids, so they can have some form of authentication method that doesn't require their phone.

On the right-hand side, one of our recent case studies from a school in Florida.

There's Donna Klein here, who has, yeah, iPads set up in all their different classrooms, where kids are checking themselves in, and it's all writing back into Blackbaud for them.

We have recently released dismissals for lower schools, so that last kind of handoff back to parents is that last kind of point of care that we make sure to handle in Ora.

So when students' parents arrive, they can get scanned with a QR code.

That pings the teacher or updates the dashboard to let them know that they can be let out and which zone to go to.

And then you also have, yeah, quickly who's still awaiting and who's been dismissed.

So if there is-- Hope there isn't, but if there is an emergency after school, you can kind of quickly tell as well, because it's feeding that live ledger in real time, who's already left and who's still here.

There's no kind of lag or sync delays if you're just clicking it into the regular SIS.

We also had to add-- Well, we didn't have to, but we wanted to add this signature piece here.

Most schools-- Sorry, most states, if there's students under the age of five, I think it's five or four, I can't remember, have to have an actual signature from the parent to pick them upSo, to summarize, we've counted, there's about 83 scenarios throughout a school day that impacts a student's location.

You don't have to put them all through Aura.

A lot of schools won't.

But there's pen and paper being used, there's different systems.

But essentially, we can provide all those tools to capture all those moments where a student's location is updated or changed.

Now we work with over 500 independent schools around the world.

The majority are here in North America, and on the right-hand side here, we've got an example of one of our schools in New York, I believe.

They were getting an accreditation done where they pulled four kids out during an emergency response scenario, and the school was able to account for everyone and identify who those four missing kids were within 90 seconds because they use us throughout the whole school day.

That's everything on my side from the slides.

So I think we're going to move into some Q&A now, right? Yeah.

Yep.

Thanks, Paul.

No problem.

Yeah.

So I'll ask if there's any questions from anyone that's joined this webinar, please just put them in the chat.

I'm assuming they'll come through and I will see them.

Paul, were you going to show something in the platform, given that you're sharing screen, or? No, just any of the questions that you have I can kind of address and- Okay Yep.

Yeah.

So, whilst I wait and see whether there's any questions that come through, obviously, Paul and I have a few kind of common things that we hear or questions that we get typically when talking to schools.

So I'll ask you, Paul, why do schools need Aura and a SIS when the SIS can take attendance anyway? Yeah.

So we had this come up a bit.

I'd say the main reason is, if I could share my screen here.

Can you all see that? So you've got a Google Chrome extension coming out.

Yep.

Yep.

So we pull the schedules in from the SIS, one of the main three SISs, and that allows teachers to take the roll through here.

That's updating the ledger or the student locations in real time.

If you use the SIS alone, then most standalone emergency tools will pull that information on a polling system.

So that's usually out of date.

And then same thing with passes or check-ins and outs.

That's all feeding the live ledger or the class roll in real time.

So most people will end up using or buy Aura to be the system of action for where students are, and then their SIS is still where it all ends up for academic transcripts.

Thanks, Paul.

And got a question here.

Thanks, David, for the question.

Does the dismissal component include license plate readers or other camera systems? Not at the moment.

It's a great question.

We will get there.

The intent is very much to get into the license plates reading with cameras as well.

Yep.

At the moment, it's RFID in terms of sticker- Mm ...

can be read via RFID or QR code, in terms of the way of quickly scanning or identifying which cars are coming through the car line.

Yep.

But yeah, we'll keep you posted on the license plate reader side of things.

I think super important, especially with schools that have got a lot of cars that need to move through a car line in a very quick period of time.

Mm-hmm.

No worries, David.

Thanks for the question.

Paul.

Schools that have already got an emergency platform in place, again, sort of similar to the SIS side of things- Mm ...

how does Aura fit in if they've already got an emergency platform in place? Yeah.

We've got a bunch of schools that still use us alongside their emergency platforms.

So we're going to help you tidy up and streamline your attendance processes to have that live location understanding.

And then if you end up, once that's all embedded and things are working really well, then emergencies being run through the same platform that you do attendance just is kind of more of a seamless fit.

So there's actually really good, there's great emergency products on the market.

And so the only difference, I'd say the big difference that we provide is that we have that live kind of full day understanding of where students are.

Yeah, and can you just touch on day attendance and period attendance? Because I know that comes up quite a bit as well- Yep ...

and the difference between the two.

Yeah.

So in here you can see all my different periods that I have, both classes and activities pulling in from the SIS.

But if you're a lower school, day attendance is obviously where teachers would live.

But again, if they're pulled out for an appointment throughout the day, if they've gone to the health center, all of that is updating a student's location.

So day attendance is more used for our lower schools, and you can report on that and do all sorts of alerts and insights on those.

And then middle or, and upper schools, we use period by period, which we can do as well.

Awesome.

I'll just check the chat, and again, open it up if there's any other questions from anyone on the call, then please let us know.

Probably final question here.

What struggles do you hear when it comes to implementation? When someone decides to take Aura, and then is implementing.

Yeah.

When we first rolled it out, there's no hiding from it.

It was getting our integrations with the SISs right.

Mm.

I think we're getting to the other side of that, and the main...

thing that we help schools with, or where we've seen the best outcomes, is when there's lots of communication to the community early and often.

So let's say June is a note that might go out to all returning students and their families just to let them know that, hey, we're transitioning to AURA.

We're not going to use the SIS anymore for receiving absence requests or appointments and things like that.

We're all doing it through AURA.

And it's a security platform, or it's a school safety platform.

And so really communicating the why has been super important, too.

When we've seen that early and often, like I said, to teachers and the community, parents, it's gone really, really well.

Awesome.

So yeah, sorry, if I was to name the main problem, it's just if it's a surprise or a shock to the teachers or the parents, I think that can...

Like all of us, if Matt was to change my CRM tomorrow, I'd be a bit freaked out.

So yeah, just making sure we're communicating it early and often.

Yep.

Correct.

It is a bidirectional- That's useful ...

it is, besides for David, it is bidirectional SIS sync, correct.

Yeah.

I would say that's probably been one of the most complex things, to your point, Paul, right, is to get right and- Yep ...

iron out all those kind of edge cases of making sure that the write back into either Blackbaud, Veracross, or FACTS- Yep ...

is perfect.

It ultimately then allows you to run whatever other processes that you've got off the back of your SIS in terms of academic reporting or- Yes ...

before, as you were saying, Paul, you could still have another emergency platform sit on top of the SIS that's pulling attendance.

From there, we write that back, so- Yep ...

you can still run those other systems.

Totally.

Okay.

Is there anything else, Paul, that you want to run through? Otherwise, we might...

I don't know whether Ashley's going to join us back- Yes ...

on the stage, and we might sort of start to wrap.

You've got something quickly here? Yeah.

Just quickly, I'd just say that we're a total school safety platform, so we do have behavioral notes that's used by plenty of schools across North America, communications.

So I suppose because we're modular and we have so much functionality, you can kind of adopt and grow as your needs grow or as you kind of see more success with AURA.

So I guess it's just to mention that, yeah, we're not limited to just attendance.

We have a lot, but ultimately, attendance is where everything starts.

So yeah, just wanted to add that in there.

Thanks, Paul.

And before I hand back to Ashley, I just want to say thank you for the opportunity, with Atlas.

Again, great conference a couple of weeks ago in Columbus.

It's always the best conference of the year, turning up with the Atlas community, just that sense of everyone being involved and the good vibes during the couple of days that we're all together.

So, looking forward to again next year when we all get together.

Back to you, Ashley.

Thank you so much, Matt.

Well, you all, if you missed it, be sure to check out the link that Tiago posted in the chat.

It's where you can access the entire school safety report.

And I tell you, this is a really, really great resource.

So definitely be sure to download that, check that out.

I want to thank AURA for being here today and sharing these high-level trends.

And please, you all let us know if you have any questions.

But AURA, thank you guys so much for being here and sponsoring today's webinar.

We just have one more question, if that's okay.

Came in from David.

Of course.

Please.

"Will our instance of AURA communicate with Alertus or Bright Arrow for emergency communicate?" So, again, they're not really a direct competitor of ours, but you can actually absorb- we can do the emergency alerts through AURA.

I think Matt and I have discussed the potential for integrating with those other systems.

Yeah.

That's a potential in the future, but we can also do a lot of the alerts through SMS text and push notification ourselves.

So happy to follow this up afterwards, David, if you'd like.

Yeah.

We've got an integration with InformaCast single wire that does something similar, and it's not through lack of will or want, but it's just more of an integration.

But yeah, happy to look at both of those platforms and see whether it can be integrated.

Awesome.

Thank you guys.

David, any more questions? Or audience, anything else that you would like to ask them before we go? Looks like he's setting up a demo with you guys.

That's awesome.

Thanks, David.

All right, you all.

Yeah, thanks for the question.

Appreciate it.

Yeah.

We're officially going to end the recording.

If you have anything else that you want to hang out and ask, we'll stick around for a minute.

But thank you all, and have a great day..