CASS: Creating a Safe School™ is a multifaceted change process that brings together a community of caring adults (administrators, teachers, staff, parents) with students to work together to change the social culture in a school or school district. Its primary goal is to positively impact the social norms in a school community by recognizing and addressing the hurtful, covert behaviors of peer aggression and identifying, teaching and modeling a more positive set of normative behaviors for educators, students and parents.


We recognize that the entire school community must be involved in the mission of creating an emotionally, physically and socially safer school environment. CASS: Creating a Safe School™ actively involves administrators, faculty, students and parent groups who work together over a period years to develop action plans to change social norms.

We look at student safety with more than just a physical consideration. Peer aggression includes relational aggression (RA), which is behavior that is intended to harm someone by damaging or manipulating her or his relationships with others (i.e. spreading malicious rumors, exclusion, emotional bullying).

CASS: Creating a Safe School™ empowers older students as trained mentors to their younger classmates and model positive social interaction and courageous intervention.

CASS: Creating a Safe School™ targets our cultural attitudes and beliefs about peer aggression that silently support hurtful, aggressive behavior.

Have your school's social climate assessed with CASS: Creating a Safe School ™. Contact The Ophelia Project at 1-888-256-5437 or visit our Programs and Services page.