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How are Schools in America Protecting their Youth? [1]

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Date: 2022-07-08

THIS IS AMERICA & THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

It shouldn’t even have to be said….

Every school should support children’s physical, psychological, and social well-being to put them on the path to a promising future. However, for many children in the United States, school can unfortunately be the place where they experience anxiety, shooter drills and of course devastating violence in the form of mass shootings, firearm suicides, non-fatal assaults, exposure to weapons, and more. The National Association of School Resource Officers has even reported that the violence experienced in U.S. schools is unlike anything in decades.

Over one hundred incidences of school shootings have been reported across the U.S. since 2018, with 27 shootings taking place between 1st January and 8th June 2022 alone. While these incidents continue to raise polarizing debates about gun rights, stakeholders in the education sector remain terrified and are concerned about school safety.

Are schools doing enough to support students? Understanding how to protect student safety from both a preventative, proactive, and reactive effort is important. Here are a few tactics schools should be prioritizing:

Advanced Panic Alarm System

On February 14, 2018, the country witnessed one of the deadliest and most horrifying school shootings in U.S. history. The massacre, which took place at Stoneman Douglas High School, left 17 people dead and at least 14 others critically injured. According to the New York Times, the devastating death toll was partly due to failures in communication and coordination and slow response by law enforcement officers.

Following the massacre, legislation to protect schools from any life-threatening emergency was introduced and signed into law in New Jersey (February 2019) and Florida (July 2020). The legislation, which is now known as Alyssa’s Law in Florida, was named after 14-year-old Alyssa Alhadeff who was killed in the 2018 Parkland, Florida shooting incident.

According to Alyssa’s Law, public elementary and secondary schools are required to install panic alarm systems and other direct communication technologies that notify first responders and law enforcement of any life-threatening emergency.

Versions of Alyssa’s Law have been introduced and/or proposed in Texas, New York, and Nebraska. Additionally, there’s pending legislation of the same law in congress at the Federal level. This means public schools across the country can now address the issues of slow police response and communication with law enforcement by being proactive and installing advanced panic alarm systems. Schools in Florida and New Jersey are already doing it.

Online Student Monitoring Technology

Fueled by the reality of school shootings and the need to intervene and prevent school-based gun violence, the market for student monitoring technologies in the U.S. has experienced rapid growth in recent years.

Tech companies are increasingly working with public schools to not only surveil what students are writing in their chat messages, shared documents, and school emails but also monitor their internet usage, browsing history, and web searches. In some cases, schools use digital surveillance tools to view students’ screens in real-time or even track what they’re posting on social media accounts.

By adopting technology to monitor students’ online activity, schools are demonstrating that they’re proactive and taking steps to keep children safe.

It’s important to note that schools monitor and restrict students’ access to inappropriate or harmful content for a number of reasons. First, to comply with federal and state regulations. Second, to detect “potential threats” to school-wide and individual student safety. Third, to take a visible, proactive approach to managing potential threats within their respective communities.

Prioritize In-School Guidance Counseling

An integral part of ensuring school-wide and individual student safety involves taking time to know each student individually, understanding their concerns and worries, and building genuine relationships with them.

In-school guidance and counseling professionals, whose roles include vocational guidance; providing instruction on social and psychological issues; and creating a safe, engaging, motivating, and inclusive environment where each student feels accepted and supported, are essential to an effective gun violence prevention plan in U.S. schools.

Many states across the country require schools to have in-school guidance and counseling programs, which are usually funded at the state level. These programs help troubled students to address their problems, thereby promoting school safety.

Think of school counselors as change agents who get to know and interact with students in ways educators and school administrators don’t. They play an instrumental role in identifying the “red flags” or psychological concerns that may signal a particular student is at risk for potentially carrying out acts of violence.

After assessing the degree of the threat posed, the school counselors assist the student accordingly or provide recommendations and referrals to the administrators and parents.

Create a Threat Assessment Program

Another component in the country’s overall strategy to prevent targeted school-based violence is school-based threat assessment. This is a fact-based strategy that was developed by the U.S. Secret Service in collaboration with the Department of Education to help schools identify and address potentially threatening or concerning student behaviors and other suspicious activities before they lead to violence.

In Virginia, all K-12 schools are required by law to establish threat assessment programs and teams, whose focus is to appraise the risk of violence based on student actions, communications, and specific circumstances within the school. Threat assessment is also required by law in 18 other states and encouraged in many other states.

If a threat assessment inquiry within a school reveals a potential risk of any form of violence in a specific situation, the threat assessment team collaborates with the school administrators, law enforcement, juvenile justice, community mental health services, and/or courts to develop and implement a plan to reduce or manage the threat posed.

School-based threat assessment programs have been gaining traction in U.S. public schools over the years, and their accurate implementation has been shown to create a supportive and healthy school climate.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/8/2109162/-How-are-Schools-in-America-Protecting-their-Youth

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