The very act of prevention is by and large less sensational than response. The examples are endless. Staying out of the sun to prevent skin cancer, flossing to prevent cavities, replacing your roof before it leaks. Yet, sending water bottles and generators to a community recovering from a devastating hurricane remains the normalized approach to saving lives after a natural disaster. As the most effective lifesaving approach, we have yet to normalize investing in more risk-resilient infrastructure during the rebuilding phase, or applying equitable recovery principles into federal processes such that resources are more justly dispersed across all communities and populations.
One of the most horrific, yet most frequent examples, of prevention being less sensational than response is in the space of targeted violence. For a myriad of reasons that undoubtedly warrant greater discussion, seeing a SWAT unit swarm to take out an active shooter is simply more captivating than establishing a social service and public health care network around families and communities. The goal should be preventing someone from becoming violent before they start. Our society has normalized tactical responses as the most effective response to stop an active shooting in progress…yet it does nothing to prevent it.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but 9/11 was a pivotal moment in my life, and led me to pursue a career in national security. Many of my cohorts were galvanized by the same events. While less civic-minded people turned to an unconscionable level of nationalism, the attacks bolstered my patriotism. I felt compelled to engage, and this passion has propelled me along very unexpected paths in my career. Prior to joining OTHSolutions, a national security consulting firm based in the Washington, DC area, I’ve spent the majority of my career at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and White House National Security Council. While I’ve worked on the most diverse groupings of security programs imaginable, there was always an underlying theme: Prevention is truly the best form of protection.
Today more than ever, I’m reminded of how our nation has yet to meaningfully embrace and normalize prevention as the best form of protection. Although I am not a mother, I am a “bonus mom”, a Godmother, and an “Auntie” to 10 beautiful humans. I am also a daughter, sister, friend, and neighbor – which are enough in and of themselves to care the extent that I do about targeted violence prevention. As back-to-school activities commence for the 2023-2024 school year, I find myself triggered. One needn’t scroll too far in their news feed to see evidence of the need for stronger social services and public health care networks for K-12 families and communities.
I look at K-12 school safety through the same lens from which I look at many other security risks. Elementary schools, once a hub for local communities, now lock their doors at all times. Locker time has been replaced with lockdown drills, and new weapon detection and alerting systems continue to receive more funding than the programs needed to create supportive school cultures and ensure the availability of other prevention-oriented services. While these precautions are a reflection of our current reality, they do nothing to change reality itself. A locked door will not fix the broken person who feels compelled to commit an act of violence. As a society, we will never be able to arrest and prosecute our way to safety.
While prevention is unequivocally the best solution, it’s also the most complicated. Not only because of the general lackluster nature and lack of funding discussed earlier, as those are merely symptoms of the problem. The problem is that our nation’s decision-makers have yet to embrace, normalize, and invest in prevention as the best form of protection. While there is certainly a need to empirically understand this problem much further, that is neither an easy nor quick discussion.
My goal here is to simply share a few thoughts on a topic that we all care for deeply. If, like me, you find yourself triggered by back-to-school festivities, you are not alone. All we can do is share ideas and a commitment to keeping our children and the K-12 academic community safe as best we can. I offer three quick considerations from a national security practitioner and ally – in hopes of inspiring local action and cascading national culture change from the walls of your school to the halls of Capitol Hill.
First – Follow the Money: We must unite to shape, amplify, and improve the federally funded products and services currently available to all communities. Every April 15, we pay for tools, grants, information products, and other capabilities designed to help K-12 academic communities advance their safety awareness and security programming. Let’s join forces and become even more responsible consumers of these goods. Not only will we foster more equitable distribution of capabilities across all communities, it provides justification for greater resourcing in the future and ensures the ongoing design and development of these capabilities are done with your direct feedback. In the universe of uniting to build whole-of-society solutions to some of our greatest national security challenges, K-12 safety and resilience is the first among equals. Leveraging, informing, and expanding upon products and services already available is something we all can do immediately. From grant funding (beyond buying more locks and security systems) to safety and security best practices (on topics including cybersecurity, infectious diseases, and emergency planning), SchoolSafety.gov is an extensive collaboration between federal government Departments and Agencies providing K-12 communities actionable recommendations, resources, and opportunities. Their goal is to create safe and supportive learning environments for students and educators, and a one-stop-shop for easy access. Direct engagement and feedback can only make this a more useful and productive program. Perhaps your local school district has a parent/teacher organization or association with a safety committee who may find this information useful. If one doesn’t exist, perhaps this is an opportunity to mobilize. Check it out!
Second – Representation in Security: We must adopt a larger world view that opens our aperture to more than our experiences and academic training enabled. This happens when we hire experts with diversity in background, age, physical abilities, gender, cultural experience, and real-word training. Not doing so for the purposes of checking the proverbial diversity box, but to genuinely establish a shared understanding. We need to fully realize the value of expanding our apertures and evolving our previously accepted norms and barriers to entering the education system. We have to create, incentivize, and foster a workforce pipeline of education professionals and staff to sustain the demands of our country. This can’t happen if we continue on a path of divisiveness, and expect teachers, school resource officers, counselors, and administrative staff to do more with less. How does your school, district, or county recruit, retain, and ensure continuous vetting and training of teachers and staff? There is no shortage of empirical data you can find with a simple Google search on why and how increasing diversity in the K-12 academic pipeline is beneficial. It not only makes schools stronger but increases school climate health which leads to preventing targeted violence.
Third – Get Smart on Cyber: Whether understanding child exploitation risks on social media, or the complex dependencies on cyber systems in your district, there are many ways this over-simplified statement can become noise vs useful tips. As I am sure many of you do, I spend a significant amount of time on Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube trying to stay current on the latest trends that the 10-19-year-olds in my life are most susceptible to. There are also a number of free resources online discussing cybersecurity best practices and safety tips to help keep kids connected while safe. With persistent exposure to sensationalized “casual” violence on social media and in Hollywood, real-life violence, lock down drills, and violence in gaming, one can easily surmise our society is becoming apathetic and desensitized toward violent behavior. Communities differ on how K-12 teachers, administrators, and staff understand the use of social media as it impacts student health. Some behavior is mere affectation, while more malevolent tendencies may belong to students who fly well below the radar. This, in addition to increased virtual environments from hybrid and asynchronous learning, creates an even larger smokescreen for K-12 staff to detect and address anomalous behavior. In the world of prevention, identifying changes in activity and behavior is key to saving lives.
In my lifetime, I never imagined students having to practice active shooter drills. School was my safety net and one of my favorite places to be. I can still name almost every one of my K-12 teachers and remain in touch with a small handful who left lasting impressions… and never miss an opportunity to give a shout out to Mr. Allen and Mr. Tomlinson! K-12 is at the crux of our social construct. Can I imagine a world where the U.S. isn’t a bastion of mass shootings? It’s difficult to remember who we were before Columbine and 9/11. But I know we are stronger than we project today, and that the status quo is unacceptable. This constant swatting in the air is not preventing the already-laid eggs from hatching. While not a swift fix, prevention holds tenets accessible to all in some way, and are the most effective in achieving the zero causality results only desired by protection. The security cycle has become a maxim in my profession: Prevent, Prepare, Respond, Recovery. My career has touched every phase of this cycle, with prevention my increasing focus.
And for people such as myself who are deeply invested in public safety, my belief in the real power of collective action to change our current culture around prevention. This offers a sense of hope. ❦

About the Author

Nabeela Barbari is the Executive Vice President of OTHSolutions, Inc., a national security consulting firm where she leads strategy and growth operations. Prior to joining OTHSolutions, Nabeela was a federal civil servant for 15 years, most notably serving as the Director of Resilience and Response at the White House National Security Council and Associate Chief of Policy at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

During her DHS tenure, Nabeela also served as the Deputy Associate Director of Strategy and Resources for the CISA Cybersecurity Division and on a team that stood up the National Risk Management Center. As Senior Advisor to the Secretary at the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and to the Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection, Nabeela spent years advancing programs that delivered a range of federal resources and services to communities nationwide.

Building coalitions and multidisciplinary approaches to preventing violence is Nabeela’s passion and priority. She is committed to creating safe spaces for government, social service and health care providers, emergency managers, community-based organizations, academia, and law enforcement to engage for the shared purpose of optimizing security and preparedness.

Nabeela is a life-long learner with degrees from the US Naval Postgraduate School, George Mason University, and Virginia Commonwealth University. As an active member of her community, she is a mentor, school volunteer, and guest lecturer. Nabeela was born and raised in the DC area where she resides today.

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