Robbinsville – “Statistically, public school is the safest place in America,” said Graham County Schools’ Assistant Superintendent Robert Moody.
Moody – who also directs the district’s Safe School program – recognizes that with the current spotlight on school shootings, the possibility of an active campus shooter is on everyone’s mind.
“But at the same time, the chance of something like that happening is very, very low,” Moody said. “Of course, we do everything we can to protect students and staff, but statistically, schools are already very safe places.”
Moody’s claim is borne out by both statistics and experts in the field.
“Especially in the younger grades, school is the safest place they can be,” said Melissa Sickmund, director of the National Center for Juvenile Justice.
The numbers
Last year’s joint report by the Bureau of Justice and Department of Education found that 99 percent of homicides of school-age children occurred somewhere other than a school campus, usually in a private home, on the street, or inside a vehicle.
Yet the sheer number of child gun deaths in this country feeds the anxiety about school safety. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, gun violence is the second most common cause of death for children in the U.S., with only vehicle accidents outpacing guns as a cause of child mortality. In 2016, the latest year for which national tallies are available, 3,143 American children died as a result gun violence, including homicides, suicides, and accidents.
Though the number of children killed in American schools was four times higher in the 1980s and overall gun deaths have declined since then, the national rate of gun fatalities stand at 4.43 per 100,000, a rate far exceeding that of countries such as Syria and Yemen, developing nations currently in a state of war.
David Repeik, consultant on the psychology of risk perception, cites the chances of a K-12 student being shot and killed on campus as 1 in 614,000,000, yet the focus on school massacres continues to heighten. With 2018 seeing the highest rate of school gun violence ever, parents’ fear about school safety also reached an all-time high.
Safety measures
Even with increasing pressure to keep schools safe, Moody pointed out that “there is no federal or state money to keep schools safe.” In spite of the lack of funds, Graham County has managed to implement a number of safety measures in past years, with the money coming from both the local budget and donors, from the PTO to anonymous gifts.
Measures range from changes in procedures to alterations to school facilities. Graham County schools have recently installed special classroom window shades and supplied emergency “go” backpacks for teachers, while practicing routine soft and hard lockdowns, as well as one state-mandated full evacuation per year.
Moody cites the lessons learned from a bomb threat experienced 10 years ago as “a huge learning experience.
The chaos of a full evacuation due to a bomb threat taught us so much.”
The chaos of that one day even prompted the construction of the second road in and out of the high school, which is due to open to traffic this Tuesday.
Graham County Schools continue to add cameras, both inside and outside campus buildings as well as on school buses.
“Cameras have been crucial,” said Moody.
He also tout the district’s anonymous tip line as a valuable resource.
“Communication is the key,” Moody said.
While experts emphasize that the relationship between students and school staff remains the most effective way to prevent violence, the 1999 Columbine massacre triggered the growth of what has become a $3 billion school security industry.
Kenneth Trump, president of the National School Safety and Security Services, consults with school districts regarding security. Administrators striving to make their schools safer are “ripe for exploitation,” according to Trump.
“The security industry has dominated the policy response to school shootings, drowning out subtler conversations about issues ranging from mental health to gun control in favor of a rush to adopt costly, and largely unproven, methods to harden schools,” Trump stated.
Trump described the school security industry as “the Wild West,” with new products going to market not only untested, but possibly violating fire codes or building codes, creating a different type of danger.
As the industry pushes for “hardening” schools and aggressively markets to school districts, Trump insists that “the most effective school safety measures are less visible or even invisible when compared to the trendy, quick-fix fads.”
Reality check
While psychologists have only begun comprehensive studies of the effect of active shooter drills on children, preliminary research has reported increased anxiety among schoolchildren of all ages. Across the country, grade schoolers have soiled themselves and written their own wills during active shooter scenarios. As school administrators attempt to balance preparing for the worst with the possibility of inflicting psychological damage on students, the push for more drills, more technology, more “hardening the target” continues.
A local teenager, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that “school shootings just feel inevitable to me. I understand adults wanting to do anything they can to keep us safe, but the truth is, if a student, and it’s almost always a student, right? If a student comes into school with a gun, there is very little anyone can do about it. The run, hide, fight thing? It’s nice to think that’ll help, but me versus someone with an automatic weapon? I resigned myself to it a long time ago.
“If there’s a school shooter, I might die.”
While such cynicism among a generation that grew up in a post-Columbine world may be understandable, there is one proven technique that prevents school shootings: communication.
Counselors, teacher training and a low student-teacher ratio help build trust and communication in the school environment. This increases the chance of recognizing potential shooters before they carry out their threats.
Just last week in Los Angeles, middle-school students informed teachers that a fellow student had threatened to shoot students and staff.
Administators notified the authorities and sheriff’s deputies identified the suspect as a 13-year-old boy in possession of an AR-15 rifle, 100 rounds of ammunition, a hand-drawn map of the school and a list of names.
Deputies arrested the boy, and the school praised students for reporting the potential shooter’s statements, possibly preventing a massacre.
“We can’t prevent every incident, but we can minimize the damage,” Moody said.
“The most important thing we can do is build relationships.”