This paper explores spatial theory, and particularly a Foucauldian analysis of space, power, and the subject, as a frame within which to examine moves toward security in North American urban schools. We bring into play empirical data from an ethnographic study of New York City and Toronto schools where policies and technologies of record-keeping, identification-verifying, and spatial arrangements are producing altered experiences of subjectivity and the ways in which youth, workers, and researchers experience public (school) space. What is possible to know in ethnographic studies of these new high-security school sites? We argue that notions of "risk" and "otherness" in the nation state, and the exploitation of real fears in the wake of real school violence, have permitted a culture of acute surveillance that significantly alters the enterprise of school-based, ethnographic research. (Contains 7 notes.)