School safety

On December 14, 2012, twenty-year-old Adam Lanza drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and fatally shot twenty children and six educators. He had already shot and killed his mother, Nancy, at their Newtown home, and as police arrived at the school, Lanza shot himself in the head. It was second only to the 2007 Virginia Polytechnic Institute massacre, which was the deadliest mass school shooting by a single person in US history. While neither death toll surpassed the 1927 Bath School bombing in Michigan, the aftermath of the Newtown tragedy—especially because it involved the senseless deaths of so many young children—fueled the debate over gun control and school safety measures, which divided the nation along ideological lines as never before. While then-President Barak Obama proposed and Congress debated gun control legislation, citizens and state legislatures pondered the best methods of ensuring the safety of the nation’s students.

Background

The deadliest school mass murder in US history took place on May 18, 1927, at the Bath Consolidated School in Bath Township, north of East Lansing, Michigan. School board treasurer Andrew Kehoe methodically purchased explosives, fixed them with timed detonators, and planted them on his farm and under the school. On the morning of May 18, he set off explosives on his farm and almost simultaneously at the school. As rescuers rushed to the school, Kehoe drove his truck filled with shrapnel up to the school and stopped. Using his rifle, he detonated dynamite inside the truck. The blast killed the school superintendent and several others, including Kehoe, and injured many bystanders. The death toll in the Bath School disaster was thirty-eight elementary school children and six adults, with at least fifty-eight more injured.

Decades later, the country was gripped by another tragedy, which took place at Columbine High School in Colorado on April 20, 1999. Seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attacked the school in a coordinated, highly armed raid, killing thirteen people and injuring twenty-four more; the siege ended when the pair committed suicide. The ensuing public debate centered on gun laws and cultural violence that may have precipitated the event.

The second deadliest school mass murder happened on April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia. Senior Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed thirty-two people and wounded seventeen others in two separate attacks about two hours apart before he committed suicide. The Virginia Tech massacre created increased awareness of campus safety across the United States with many people arguing that twenty-first century massacres were uniquely horrific.

In their book The School as a Safe Haven, authors Rollin J. Watson and Robert S. Watson examined thousands of documents and incidents and argued that US schools have always faced multiple threats from multiple sources, with mass killers comprising only a small part of the dangers. They pointed out that school fires, civil rights issues, gangs, and drugs have posed serious threats to schools, and that many school killings took place well before the massacres in the 1990s and 2000s.

School Safety Today

The Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres provoked nationwide debates over gun control, mental illness, and campus security. The multiple school shootings after Virginia Tech seemed to underscore the increasing violence and danger that had seeped from the society at large into US schools and the desperate need for enhanced school safety.

After the Newtown massacre, President Barak Obama, gun control proponents and opponents, ordinary citizens, and state officials all weighed in with their opinions on school safety. Shortly after the Newtown massacre, the National Rifle Association (NRA) introduced a plan for armed security officers in every school. Many educators criticized this plan, and after Virginia governor Bob McDonnell suggested arming the state’s teachers, Dennis van Roeke of the National Education Association (NEA) and Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) issued a joint statement saying that “guns have no place in our schools.”

A month after Newtown, President Obama proposed a combination of gun control measures and increased school security. His plan called for banning military-style assault rifles and strengthening background checks, but also provided additional funds for guidance counselors and armed school resource officers trained to work in schools. He also advocated mandating schools to adopt emergency plans and beef up mental health services to identify students needing help.

Guns are already partially used in about one-third of US schools. According to National Center for Education Statistics, 75 percent of public schools had at least one security guard, resource officer, or law enforcement officer at their school in 2019. In the early 2000s, the federal government helped pay for security officers through a Cops in Schools program, which granted police departments up to $41,666 a year to hire them, but funding for the program stopped in 2005. President Obama’s plan favored awarding existing Department of Justice grants to police departments hiring school resource officers.

In February 2013, the Arkansas legislature passed a bill giving the state the power to determine whether its schools were equipped to respond to violent acts. Shortly thereafter, South Dakota became the first state to pass a law designed to make schools safer by allowing teachers, administrators, security guards, and community volunteers to carry guns on school grounds. It was the only state that specifically authorized teachers to carry a firearm in a K–12 school at the time.

According to the Council of State Governments, at least thirty-three states submitted bills regarding arming school employees in 2013, but, by 2023, only twelve states actually enacted laws. These laws varied in their applications but all required armed staff to have concealed carry permits or training. In some states, including Utah, adults with a permit can bring firearms onto school campuses without having to report it to school or police authorities. In Arkansas, a Clarksville high school began training and arming staff through a law permitting armed security guards on campus.

The National Institute of Justice announced in early 2014 that it would be supplying millions of dollars in grants for the purpose of researching the causes of school violence and developing technologies and policies to improve school safety. This program is known as the Comprehensive School Safety Initiative. The following year, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released its initial report on saftey in public schools.

According to a 2022 survey from the Pew Research Center, about 98 percent of public schools controlled access to school buildings during school hours in the 2019-2020 school year, while schools using security camera technology increased to 91 percent. As for preparedness in the event of a shooting, 96 percent of schools reported having a written emergency plan and 98 percent had condcuted a lockdown drill.

Another deadly shooting at a public high school, which occurred on February 14, 2018, in Parkland, Florida, reignited discussions and debates regarding what measures to take to ensure that children and young adults can feel safe on school grounds. Ex-student Nikolas Cruz opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, killing seventeen students and teachers before discarding his weapon and attempting to escape by blending in with fleeing crowds of scared students; he was apprehended shortly after. As the attacker once again used a military-style assault rifle, several surviving students immediately began calling for changes to gun control laws, planning protests and walkouts to lobby for legislation while others, including President Donald Trump, resurrected the controversial proposal to arm teachers. The president also held a televised discussion about school safety policies with Stoneman Douglas students and their families. In the wake of the shooting, several other states had renewed their focus on school security measures.

Even with the vast majority of American school implementing increased safety measures, the possibility of future school shootings did not disappear. On May 24, 2022, a teenage gunman entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and fatally shot nineteen children and two teachers. Later investigations criticized the delayed police response to the incident, indicating that lives would have been saved if the police followed the proper procedures.

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