["Anthropology &Education Quarterly, Volume 57, Issue 2, June 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis article examines the ways that school leaders used buzzwords when speaking about youth “emotional safety,” in a Chicago Public Schools safety reform aimed at reexamining the role of school policing. Drawing on observations from pandemic‐era virtual school council meetings, we suggest a recognizable register of speech developed around the topic of emotional safety, which school leaders engaged to meet the political demands placed upon them by the district and the public.\n"]