Whole School Safety (WSS) Framework

Product or Programme · All products and programmes
Evidence · 7 claims (6 for, 1 mixed) · 2 studies (1 causal, 1 qualitative), q2 · 0 of 2 report an effect size · 7 claims rest on one study

Description

A Chicago Public Schools framework developed with community-based organizations that organizes school safety planning around physical safety, emotional safety, and relational trust.

Components

• Five-type spectrum of school safety approaches, from school-to-prison pipeline schools to school-to-possibility pipeline schools: The report's authors categorize schools on a five-point spectrum of safety approaches. At one end, "School-to-prison pipeline schools" are "hardened schools with a high emphasis on physical security, no guardrails to prevent the harm that physical security can cause, and little to no attention on student well-being." Intermediate types add guardrails and scale up well-being practices while scaling down physical security. The ultimate goal, school-to-possibility pipeline schools, have fully adopted practices addressing root causes of violence and removed physical security. Leaders are advised to locate their schools on the spectrum and plan next steps toward the goal. (Duchesneau et al. (2023))

Claims

• SRO removal was not significantly related to changes in student or teacher perceptions of physical safety or in Student-Teacher Trust [~M]
• CPS officials and CBO leaders intended the WSS Framework to ground safety plans in community perspectives, facilitate power-sharing, and redefine school safety [+W]
• District officials and CBO leaders viewed the WSS Framework development process as a novel, replicable approach to community-engaged policymaking [+W]
• The article argues the durability of the WSS co-design approach depends on institutionalizing authentic engagement as core practice, not a one-time initiative [+W]
• CBO leaders characterized the collaborative WSS development process as healing and restorative, applying restorative justice principles to policymaking [+W]
• District officials and CBO leaders believed WSS implementation success should be assessed along multiple dimensions including engagement, student outcomes, district resources, and experiences [+W]
• CBO leaders cautioned that assessing WSS outcomes without accounting for district inputs obscures how resource allocation determines policy success [+W]

Related Products and Programmes

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Key Sources

• Arneson, A., Hinze-Pifer, R., Franklin, K., & Johnson, D.W. (2024). Removing police officers from Chicago schools: Trends and outcomes. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. https://consortium.uchicago.edu/publications/removing-police-officers-from-Chicago-schools

Page metadata

Field	Value
type	product
id	whole-school-safety-wss-framework
title	Whole School Safety (WSS) Framework
description	A Chicago Public Schools framework developed with community-based organizations that organizes school safety planning around physical safety, emotional safety, and relational trust.
status	review
moved_from	theory/whole-school-safety-framework-cps
product_kind	framework
generated	by process:sweep-kinds on 2026-10-10
trust	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources	1 — arneson-2024

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