Parents and grandparents are key to safer schools!

Mother walking child to school holding hands.

Eyes on the School. Hearts in the Community.

The Foundation for Safer Schools’ Signature Parent Involvement Program

Grandmother lovingly hugs two grandchildren on couch.

The Best Part is it is FREE!

The Most Powerful Safety Tool Is Free

A parent or grandparent standing outside the front door of a school. A bright yellow vest. A radio in hand.

That’s it. No expensive equipment. No new construction. No added burden on school budgets.

What it does is simple and powerful: it tells anyone approaching the building that someone is watching, someone is paying attention, and this school is not an easy target.

Parents on Patrol (POP) puts trained, vetted, caring adults where they matter most: at the doors and around the perimeter of our schools.

Woman in safety vest with clipboard standing near a van.

Why Awareness Is the First Line of Prevention

At the Foundation for Safer Schools, Awareness is a core pillar of everything we do. Prevention starts long before a crisis. It starts with someone noticing.

The research makes the case clearly. A 2026 study by Texas State University’s ALERRT Center, the nation’s leading active shooter response training center, analyzed 54 school shootings from 2000 to 2025. Researchers found that the most common way an attacker got in was not by breaking a lock. It was by walking through a door that should have been secured but wasn’t:

69% of successful perpetrator entries were through an unsecured door, as nearly two-thirds (61.7%) of doors involved in incidents were found unlocked or intentionally propped open. securityinfowatch
In active shooter incidents in schools, casualty likelihood was three times higher when doors were unsecured, compared to secured doors. securityinfowatch
Nearly 50% of attacks were initiated in hallways (24.1%) and outside areas (24.1%). securityinfowatch
In elementary school incidents, none of the perpetrators were current students. All were outsiders. securityinfowatch

In many of these tragedies, no one was standing at the door. No one noticed the door propped open. No one was watching the parking lot.

POP changes that. A visible, trained adult at the entrance and on the perimeter means a propped door gets closed, an unfamiliar visitor gets noticed, and concerns get reported to school staff in real time.

The U.S. Secret Service agrees that people are the key. According to a Secret Service report, vigilant community members attuned to warning signs were instrumental in thwarting many school attacks between 2006 and 2018. ktvz