School Safety Event

WestConn’s CT Center for School Safety and Crisis Preparation to host statewide inclusive school safety event focused on students with disabilities

As school districts continue to strengthen emergency preparedness and threat assessment protocols, experts caution that students with disabilities remain significantly overlooked in statewide and national school safety conversations. Despite representing roughly 15 percent of the student population, these students often encounter safety procedures that were not designed with their needs in mind. According to Professor Dr. Gabriel Lomas, founder of the Connecticut Center for School Safety and Crisis Preparation, “students with disabilities haven’t been taken into consideration,” and current systems “have not crafted protocols to meet their needs.” He noted that the world of emergency management was not initially designed for schools, and didn’t initially take kids and kids with various abilities into account, creating gaps that can have serious consequences during high-stress, high-trauma events.

To help address these longstanding disparities, the Connecticut Center for School Safety and Crisis Preparation at Western Connecticut State University, in partnership with Southern Connecticut State University, will host a statewide professional event on Tuesday, April 28, focused on advancing inclusive school safety practices for students with disabilities.

The full-day program, held at the Michael J. Adanti Student Center at SCSU, 345 Fitch St. in New Haven, will bring together educators, school mental health providers, school resource officers, disability advocates, and other school safety professionals. The event will highlight evidence-based strategies for inclusive safety planning, equitable threat assessment, and effective cross-disciplinary collaboration.

“We have not done enough for kids with disabilities when it comes to safety protocols,” Lomas said. The concern reflects a growing recognition among school safety experts that many emergency procedures, threat assessment models, and crisis‑response systems were never designed with disabled students in mind. In practice, this means that during drills, emergencies, or high‑stress incidents, students who rely on mobility supports, communication devices, sensory accommodations, or individualized behavioral plans often face disproportionate risks. The gap is not the result of a lack of effort by schools, but rather the legacy of safety frameworks originally built for general populations, frameworks that have not kept pace with the diverse needs of today’s students. Lomas’ observation underscores a systemic issue: without intentional, disability‑informed planning, even well‑designed safety protocols can unintentionally exclude the very students who may need the most support.

Nationally recognized leaders in school safety, disability inclusion, and mental health will present throughout the day, including:

· Dr. Christina Cipriano, Director of the Education Collaboratory at Yale and Associate Professor at the Yale Child Study Center

· Michele Gay, M.S., Co-Founder and Executive Director of Safe and Sound Schools

· Dr. Dewey Cornell, Developer of the Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines (CSTAG) and Professor of Education at the University of Virginia

· Dr. Stephanie Leite, Clinical and Forensic Psychologist, Forensic Intelligence, LLC

· Elisabeth Morel, M.Ed., C.A.G.S., Director of Accessibility Services at WCSU

Sessions throughout the day will examine inclusive safety planning models, CSTAG case studies involving students with disabilities, best practices for police interactions with autistic students, and a student-led panel on accessibility and school safety. A closing plenary led by Dr. Cornell will review current research and emerging best practices in threat assessment for students with disabilities.

For more information, contact schoolsafetycenter@wcsu.edu or pr@wcsu.edu.