Making our schools safe and orderly is a shared responsibility. School administrators, teachers, staff and parents must work together, but that is often not enough. The behaviors we see in schools reflect the behaviors children see in the surrounding community. To create safe and orderly schools, we need to bring business, religious and civic groups into our schools to help us develop a positive school climate. Of course, we also need to make sure that teachers and school staff, through their unions, play a key role in establishing effective discipline and safety policies.

Encourage the union to establish a labor/management school-safety committee, urge your negotiating team to push for measures in the next contract that support safe and orderly schools as well as effective professional development. Or ask your state legislators to introduce or support school building legislation. Consider collecting your own data on violations of school discipline codes and polling your members on their experiences with school safety and order. Contact your union, your school district, your legislator and share AFT's solutions for safe and orderly schools with them. School safety should be on everyone's agenda, and every member of a school community can play a role.