Creating safer schools begins with listening.
That’s the philosophy behind hot spot mapping, a student-centered approach to school safety that is helping schools better understand where students feel safe, where they don’t, and what they believe will make their schools better.
In the Boulder Valley School District (BVSD), this work is being led through a partnership with Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence (SPAN). Rather than asking adults to guess where problems exist, SPAN works directly with students to identify areas of concern and elevate their recommendations to school leaders.
The result is a collaborative process that gives students a meaningful voice in shaping safer, more welcoming school environments.
Listening to the Experts
Students experience every hallway, courtyard, restroom, and common space every day. They understand the social dynamics of their schools in ways adults often cannot see.
During SPAN’s hot spot mapping sessions, students receive a map of their campus and identify areas where they feel:
- Green (“cool”) – places where they feel safe, welcome, and included.
- Red (“hot”) – places where they feel unsafe or uncomfortable.
Students also complete a questionnaire that explains why they feel that way and offers ideas for improving those spaces.
The process isn’t just about identifying problems.
“We celebrate the places where students already feel safe,” explains Abbie Lewis, SPAN’s Director of Education. “Those spaces tell us what’s working and highlight the teachers and staff who are helping students feel welcome and included.”
Understanding why and where students feel safe is just as valuable as understanding where they don’t.
Looking Beyond the Map
Patterns quickly emerge.
Restrooms often appear as recurring hot spots, not simply because of the physical space, but because students associate them with behaviors like bullying, vaping, or a lack of adult presence.
Other locations may include hallways during passing periods, cafeterias, outdoor gathering areas, or school entrances.
Instead of making assumptions, SPAN encourages students to explain exactly what makes those places feel unsafe.
Those conversations reveal the everyday experiences that may never appear in an incident report but have a significant impact on students’ sense of belonging and well-being.
Student-Led Solutions in Action
One of the strengths of the hot spot mapping process is that students don’t stop at identifying challenges, they help design solutions.
During a previous mapping project at a BVSD high school, one location appeared repeatedly on student maps: the courtyard.
Many female students shared that they experienced catcalling during passing periods while walking through the space. Because the courtyard connected multiple classroom buildings, avoiding it wasn’t an option.
Rather than simply reporting the concern, students proposed a practical solution. They recommended assigning rotating teachers to the courtyard during passing periods to increase adult visibility and accountability. It was a simple idea that came directly from the students who used the space every day.
After each mapping session, SPAN meets with school principals to review the findings, discuss recurring themes, and explore how student recommendations can be implemented.
Why Youth Voice Matters
For SPAN, hot spot mapping is about more than school safety.
It’s about ensuring that young people are active participants in decisions that affect them because students are the ones navigating today’s school environment every day.
As Abbie Lewis emphasizes, “We want to amplify youth voices. Adults can make assumptions about what students need, but every generation experiences school differently. We want to hear directly from students about what would actually make them feel safer.”
That perspective allows schools to make meaningful, systemic changes rooted in the experiences of the people who know the campus best.
A Research-Based Approach
The work happening in BVSD is grounded in decades of school safety research.
School safety researcher Dr. Ron Avi Astor helped pioneer hot spot mapping after discovering that bullying and violence often occur in specific, lightly supervised locations rather than inside classrooms.
His research shifted school safety from reacting to incidents after they occur to identifying areas where students already feel vulnerable and addressing concerns before they escalate.
Since then, hot spot mapping has become part of evidence-based violence prevention efforts across the country, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Shifting Boundaries program.
Building Safer Schools Together
School safety is about more than policies, cameras, or supervision schedules.
It’s about creating environments where students feel heard, respected, and supported. It also requires shared commitment from everyone involved to create lasting changes: students, educators, school administrators, families, and community partners.
Through hot spot mapping, SPAN and BVSD are demonstrating what that collaboration looks like in practice. Students share their experiences and ideas, SPAN facilitates meaningful conversations that amplify youth voices, and school leaders work to turn those insights into action.
Violence Prevention Education
At SPAN, we believe in the power of prevention.
Through evidence-based violence prevention education, we promote healthy relationships and community safety. We focus on preventing harm before it happens and providing support for young people who have been impacted by unhealthy relationships.
Learn more about SPAN’s violence prevention program here.
