Investment in security measures has increased over the past five years, according to a new survey. However, there are more firearm incidents in schools than ever before.
When Adam Lane became principal of Haynes City High School eight years ago, nothing could stop attackers from breaking into the school, located next to orange groves, a cattle ranch, and a cemetery in central Florida.
Today, the school is surrounded by a 10-meter fence, and access to the campus is strictly controlled by special gates. Visitors must press the buzzer button to enter the front desk. More than 40 cameras monitor key areas.
New federal data released Thursday gives insight into the many ways schools have beefed up safety over the past five years, as the nation has recorded three of the deadliest school shootings on record, as well as other more common school shootings. Causes of events have also become more frequent.
About two-thirds of US public schools now control access to campuses — not just buildings — during the school day, up from about half in the 2017-2018 school year. An estimated 43 percent of public schools have “emergency buttons” or silent sirens that connect directly to police in the event of an emergency, up from 29 percent five years ago. According to a survey released by the National Center for Education Statistics, a research agency affiliated with the US Department of Education, 78 percent of people have locks in their classrooms, compared to 65 percent.
Nearly a third of public schools report having nine or more evacuation drills a year, indicating that safety is a normal part of school life.
Some of the more talked about practices have also evolved but are not as widespread. Nine percent of public schools reported occasional use of metal detectors, and 6 percent reported using them on a daily basis. While many schools have campus police, only 3 percent of public schools reported armed teachers or other non-security personnel.
Despite the fact that schools spend billions of dollars on security, the number of incidents with firearms in schools is not decreasing. In the latest tragedy last week in Virginia, police said a 6-year-old first grader brought a gun from home and seriously wounded his teacher with it.
According to the K-12 School Shooting Database, a research project that tracks shooting or brandishing firearms on school property, more than 330 people were shot or injured on school property last year, up from 218 in 2018. The total number of incidents, which may include cases where no one was hurt, also rose from about 120 in 2018 to more than 300, up from 22 in the year of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. Two teenagers killed 13 people. People.
The rise in gun violence in schools comes amid a general increase in shootings and shooting deaths in the United States. Overall, the school is still very safe.
School shootings are “a very, very rare occurrence,” said David Readman, founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database.
His tracker identified 300 schools with gun incidents last year, a tiny fraction of the nearly 130,000 schools in the United States. School shootings account for less than 1 percent of all childhood shooting deaths in the United States.
However, the growing losses place an increased responsibility on schools not only to educate, feed and educate children, but also to protect them from harm. Best practices include simple solutions such as locking classroom doors and restricting access to schools.
But experts say many “deterrence” measures, such as metal detectors, see-through backpacks, or having armed officers on campus, have not proven effective in preventing shootings. Other tools, such as security cameras or emergency buttons, may help stop violence temporarily, but are less likely to prevent shootings.
“There’s not much evidence that they work,” Mark Zimmerman, co-director of the University of Michigan’s National Center for School Safety, said of many of the security measures. “If you press the E stop button, it probably means that someone is already shooting or threatening to shoot. This is not prevention.”
Improving security can also come with its own risks. A recent study found that black students are four times more likely to enroll in highly supervised schools than students of other races, and because of these measures, students in these schools may pay a “safety tax” for performance and suspensions.
Since the majority of school shootings are committed by current students or recent graduates, it is their peers who are most likely to notice the threats and report the threats, said Frank Straub, director of the National Police Institute’s Center for the Prevention of Sexual Assault.
“Many of these people were involved in so-called leaks — they posted information on the Internet and then told their friends,” Mr. Straub said. He added that teachers, parents and others should also watch for signs: a child becomes withdrawn and depressed, a student draws a gun in a notebook.
“Essentially, we need to get better at identifying K-12 students who are struggling,” he said. “And it’s expensive. It’s hard to prove that you’re preventing.”
“Throughout history and over the last few years, with a dramatic increase in the number of events, the most common incident has been a fight that escalates into a shooting,” said Mr. Readman of the K-12 School Shooting Database. He pointed to a growing trend of shootings across the country and said data shows that more people, even adults, are simply bringing guns to school.
Christy Barrett, superintendent of Southern California’s Hemet Unified School District, knows that no matter what she does, she won’t be able to completely eliminate the risk to everyone in her sprawling school district of 22,000 students and thousands of employees. 28 schools and almost 700 square miles.
But she took the initiative by starting a policy of locking doors in every classroom a few years ago.
The county is also moving to electronic door locks, which it hopes will reduce any “human variables” or looking for keys in a crisis. “If there is an intruder, an active shooter, we have the ability to block everything immediately,” she said.
School officials have also carried out random metal detector searches at some high schools with mixed results.
These devices sometimes flag innocuous items such as school folders, and weapons are lost when the devices are not in use. While she said the raids did not target any groups, she acknowledged broader concerns that school surveillance could disproportionately impact students of color.
“Even if it’s random, the perception is there,” said Dr. Barrett, whose neighborhood is predominantly Hispanic and has fewer white and black students.
Now all high schools in the district have a relatively general system for detecting metal in weapons. “Every student goes through this,” she said, adding that no weapons have been found this year.
According to her, there are counselors in every school to deal with the mental health problems of students. When students enter trigger words such as “suicide” or “shoot” on district-issued devices, the programs display flags to better identify children who need help.
The horrific mass shootings at schools in Parkland, Florida, Santa Fe, Texas, and Uvalde, Texas, in recent years have not resulted in increased security measures, but have confirmed them, she said.