Visitors to the AASA Exhibit Hall at the 2025 National Conference on Education in New Orleans, can visit the School Safety & Security Lab, a space in the exhibit hall that will provide resources to help school leaders on the path to safer schools. 

This is the second year the School Safety & Security Lab is operating at the conference, and it will add many features and interactive components. Attendees can walk through the lab in any direction to learn about the four pillars of school safety: prevention, mitigation, response and recovery.  

They will be able to learn about actionable strategies within each of these four pillars to take home to their districts. Available information will be more detailed than last year’s lab. 

The safety center, located at Booth 137, will be open during exhibit hall hours: 7:30 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. Thursday, March 6, and 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Friday, March 7. 

The Lab will include a sit-down area with a video presentation from the Department of Homeland Security along with details on the redesign of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. 

Panels will feature school safety related questions such as “Do you have a crisis management plan?” and “Does your district have a documented safety and security plan?” Post-Its and pens will be available to encourage people to write their answers. Results will be collected and tallied each day. There will also be a survey via QR-code, and participants will receive the results after the conference. 

Several partners and sponsors will have representatives to provide key insights on school safety. Sponsors of the School Safety & Security Lab are, at the Gold level: Curalinc Healthcare, Navigate360 and PowerSchool; at the Silver level: Rhombus and Transfinder; and at the Bronze level: BadgePass, Center for Supportive Schools, Crisis Prevention Institute, Equature, GeoVisions, Hawkeye S3, Inquisitive, Linewize, Qube Money, SchoolMint, SmartPass, Sophia and Sponse. 

(Jacqueline Hyman is managing editor of Conference Daily Online and assistant editor of AASA’s School Administrator magazine.)