School Safety

I am conflicted, and so I will think out loud with you.  I have been asked to develop proposals to make our schools safer and submit them to the Board for approval.  We have held two workshops and consulted law enforcement and I still struggle.  This is why I struggle.

Just like after Columbine, we are spending a lot of time and thought and thinking about spending a lot of money to enhance school safety after the tragedy in Newton, Connecticut.  And as always, I wonder if this is what we should be doing.  So, I decided to crunch a few numbers (I know, this will be referred to as my math period.) 

There are 132,656 schools in the U.S. including public, private and charter¹.  Most schools serve kids on a 180 day instructional year.  So, we have 132,656 x 180 = 23,878,080 instructional days per year in our country.  Three years would be 71,634,240 days (23,878,080 x 3.)  With me so far?

In the past 3 years there have been 27 incidents of active shooters on school campuses.  These incidents resulted in death and/or injury.  I used 3 years because the data varies from 9 to 16 incidents during those years, so this appeared to be a safe way mathematically to talk about risky behavior.

So, the question is how likely is any one school to experience an active shooter during any given school year?  The answer is 27 incidents ÷ 71,634,240 school days = .00000037, or .000037%.  Since probabilities range from 0 to 1, this is a very low probability.  To determine the odds of this happening we would divide .00000037 by 1-.00000037 and get an answer that looks like .00000037 ÷.99999963 = .00000037, or the odds of this happening are 1 in 3.7 million.  (I am not a math whiz, so if I made errors please tell me.)

Interesting.  The odds of getting struck by lightning are 1 in 1 million.  The odds of a large asteroid, a planet killer known as 2011 AGS, hitting earth in the year 2040 are 1 in 625.  The odds of getting hurt playing high school football are 1 in 2.85 (with 1 million players and 350,000 injuries per year²).  And yet, we are spending an incredible amount of time and energy seeking ways to make our schools safer.  School superintendents and school boards everywhere are holding meetings, consulting law enforcement and safety experts to develop new and enhanced safety plans so their schools will not be a Newton or a Columbine.  Clearly, we want our schools to be safe places.

They are safe!  There are few places safer than schools.  Kids are more likely to get hurt if we let them drive, play football, or be a cheerleader than going to school and being shot by someone on campus.  It is more risky to fly on an airline than to go to school.  It is more risky to take a cruise than to go to school.  It is more risky to be a poor African American male in an urban setting than to go to school.  One could easily argue that schools are so safe any tinkering with the fundamental safety model may make schools less safe. 

I happen to believe that some of the new safety enhancements being enacted by some school districts will forever change the campus climate and in fact make schools more risky.  Adding a law enforcement officer to a school may make it safer in the short run, but will not help kids believe that we adults in the system really care about them.  It is tough enough for some students to deal with compulsory attendance without having to arrive on campus and find an armed officer on duty.  I think that contributes to the resentment kids have for school and in the long run contributes more to possible violence.  We must rely on kids in a mutually trusting environment to tell us what is brewing on campus and in the minds of other students.  This will not help.

Allowing adults to transport and maintain weapons on campus is not likely, IMHO, to make the school safer.  I think it will make the school less safe.  All the arguments regarding an armed faculty serving as a deterrent to school shootings assumes the active shooter adheres to logic and does not want to die himself.  (I say “him” because few females engage in this behavior.)  It is not like I wake up one morning, decide I am going to take my legally purchased semi automatic assault rifle to a school and kill kids and staff and then die myself in a blaze of glory, but I won’t go to this school because a teacher has a gun in a lockbox or hidden on their belt.  That reasoning is seriously flawed.

Yes, we have security and emergency plans, and yes, we need to review and update those plans.  Yes, we need to be sure that all the adults know what to do in time of crisis.  Yes, we have security cameras everywhere.  Yes, we need to be alert to people on our campuses that do not belong there.  Yes, we need to continue to pay attention to the safety of the children in our care.  The odds are, however, more of them will be hurt participating in our athletic programs than by an active shooter.  I do not want to take any steps that make campuses more risky using the argument we need more security.

The shooting at Newton remains a deep tragedy.  Same is true of Columbine.  We should remain alert; we should faithfully conduct fire drills, tornado drills, lockdown drills, etc.  We should not dramatically change the school climate to prevent an incident that is very unlikely to occur, especially when some of the strategies are likely to increase the violence at schools.  Unless we build fences around our schools, have one entry point with metal detectors and an armed guard, then we are not likely to really enhance school safety.  I do not believe any of us want that.  I believe schools are safe.  The data supports that.  In my community of 6,000 good souls and 1,500 students we are very quick to recognize someone askew on our premises.

On the other hand, our community seems to want us to do something, implement some strategy that will guarantee the safety of our kids.  They see other districts implementing all kinds of strategies from officers on campus, staff with guns, panic buttons, security cameras, etc.  We should respond to those concerns.  Telling our public, our parents, that their kids are safe already is little comfort for those who fear the worst.  In fact, all that we are currently doing does not guarantee student safety.  I am not sure we can ever guarantee that.  But, what should we do?

I remain conflicted.

1.      National Center for Education Statistics, http://nces.ed.gov

2.      Risk Factors for Injury in High School Football Players, Sean D. Turbeville,*† PhD, Linda D. Cowan,* PhD, Willis L. Owen,* PhD, Nabih R. Asal,§ PhD, and Mark A. Anderson,‡ PhD, From the *Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, College of Public Health, and the Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitative Sciences, College of Allied Health, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and the §Department of Health Policy and Epidemiology, College of Medicine, University of Florida,Gainesville, Florida).