Present society brings increasing concerns of personal safety to all, with more and more violence continuing to play out against innocent persons all over the world. But we’re talking specifically about schools in the United States so I will try to stay on topic as much as possible. It is important to keep in mind that increased violence against innocent persons isn’t just happening in the U.S., it’s happening all over the world. The amount of hate, nonacceptance, and aggression continues to increase towards others, not just in the U.S. but everywhere. However, the subject of this article is specifically relating to schools so I am going to do my best to stay on topic. However, when it comes to school safety & security, every discussion on the subject runs much deeper than surface level statements; which is partly why it has been at the forefront of legislation and funding initiatives in the last few years, yet the critical incidents continue to occur.
So to answer the subject of this articles title, here are the top reasons I believe school districts seem to be the preferred venue of opportunity.
#1: Mental Health
If you were to review the characteristics of the aggressors that carried out or attempted school mass-shootings over the last couple of decades, you would notice similarities in all of them. These aggressors were all suffering some form of emotional pain, a social disconnection from others. Very few aggressors who actually go through with a mass-casualty attack do so on an impulsive, immediate reaction to a devastating life-event. These school-targeted aggressors usually provide enough evidence to confirm they started planning their attacks months in advance. Additionally, in most cases there was leakage-the revealing to others their feelings or intentions prior to the incident-where, after the fact, several people confirmed that the signs were there but they didn’t report it or act on their intuitions. These last two sentences reveal two things: 1) There was time to put forth every effort to intervene before the incident occurred; and 2) The aggressors soul’s were crying out to others for intervention, either directly or subconsciously.
So where does this emotional disconnection stem from? Though not that easy to answer, the high-level answer is that can be from diagnosed or undiagnosed mental disorders, the passionate affixing to radical ideologies, the physical and emotional conditions inside one’s home, or the physical and emotional conditions at one’s school. And, obviously, most of the time when there is one of these factors at root, there are others. Think of a child who is being raised in a home where their basic human needs are barely being met, if being met at all, and they are more of a burden on their parents/guardians than a blessing. Generally speaking, those children do not exactly fit in at school either. And since human beings desire relation with other humans, and they are unable to find it at home or at school, they must turn elsewhere to find it. So that child turns to a place where they may be find that connection that others in their physical environment can’t provide; which is the internet. In a fairly short amount of time, that child now has three separate and impactful pressures pushing on down on them, planting seeds of hatred and retribution in their minds.
Meanwhile, that child’s parents, peers, teachers, etc., might see minor disassociations or changes from usual patterns but think nothing more than, “They’re always a little off soo…who knows what’s going on.” Days, weeks, or months later, those same people are now saying, “I knew something was off. I should have told someone about it.” This is how it happens. Even more tragic, there are times when a troubled student is reported and seen by mental health professionals, or even put on law enforcement radars, yet these individuals still successfully carry out their actions. How can this be possible? Obviously there is still a lot of work to be done to educate, mitigate, and manage the root of these atrocities.
#1: Mental Health Solutions
1) Policy makers and school leaders start initiating deep and meaningful conversations on actionable programs, processes, and procedures to proactively work towards changing the soil composition in the ground these roots are being planted.
2) School leaders start emphasizing the need for radical cultural change within their districts and communities. It is no secret that bullying is, and always has been, a serious issue that negatively affects school cultures. However, for numerous reasons such as societal division of groups and cultures within our Nation, internet and social media access, evolving international conflicts, various ideological groups radicalization and campaigns for sympathizers, generational glorification of violence, and the increasing negative family dynamics to name a few, are factors that contribute to the changing consequences of modern bullying. Yes, bullying has always existed in schools and, in fact, has been a contributing factor in the drive and success from those bullied. However, with the impactful generational changes, so too should impactful campaigns to stop bullying in schools; if we want to uproot the epidemic of school violence and tragedy that is.
3) Federal and state funding for programs that focus on mental health in schools be established and fully supported by school leaders and staff.
#2: Easy Access & Insider Knowledge
Until the last decade or two, school campuses and buildings have been relatively easy to gain unrestricted access by anyone. As gun-related incidents and mass-casualty incidents continued to threaten school over the last twenty-years, policy makers, school leaders, and community members decided it was time to start implementing the necessary products, technologies, and protocols to prohibit such free access. However, when it comes to hardening schools, the funding requirements are much greater than the funding provided, or even available. I often say that when it comes to school safety & security, we have a million-dollar problem with a hundred-dollar budget. This includes hardening products, security technologies, and staffing requirements. Adding to the issues, the majority of districts, but not all, have very limited knowledge and understanding of protective posturing. Usually, the superintendent and/or school board appoints a staff member to oversee the districts overall security who has very little knowledge or experience in the subject matter. The result of that protective posturing is the addition of the standard and well-known implementations, such as video surveillance, access controls, visitor management systems, etc; instead of calculated, meaningful, and actionable implementations that directly enhance their school’s overall protective posture.
Additionally, every organization has insider risk, where those intimate to the organization know how that organization operates, and usually in great detail. Where schools are concerned, they are not afforded the same protocols to safeguard this risk as other organizations. At this point you may be wondering what the big deal is with insiders, relating to school security? The reason I make this point is because the majority of school mass-casualty aggressors are current or former students. This means that the majority of these aggressors know intimate details regarding processes, procedures, school schedules, building layouts, in-use products and technologies, responding force capabilities, and perhaps the most compromising of all, the schools vulnerabilities. These aggressors have the upper hand in planning and carrying out their intentions, with a confident degree of success.
#2: Easy Access & Insider Knowledge Solutions
1) School districts should engage external partners when necessary and available. Safety & security applications and theory is outside the normal scope of knowledge and know-how for education administrators and school district staff. You may assume that School Resource Officers (SROs) would be leveraged to assist in school safety & security related motions. However, my experience is that this is often not the reality. I have found that there are a few main reasons why this is: 1) Districts and local LE partners have MOUs in place that defines and guides their working partnership. This does not mean that the SRO is considered a staff member of that district or school. And like any organization, schools like to keep internal business, well internal; 2) Like many professions, there are those that excel in their professions and then there are those that, let’s just say leave more to be desired out of their performance. Said more directly, school leaders tend to have their reservations as to the extent they involve and rely on their SRO partners; and in support of their cause and in most cases, I agree with their assessment and hesitations. I have met some fully capable and knowledgeable SROs through the years, but they are most definitely the minority. This is not to say SROs aren’t essential and serve a great purpose. Rather, wearing a badge shouldn’t automatically knight one as a safety & security professional.
2) Even if a district has knowledgeable and capable internal staff to successfully manage their protective posture, they should recruit an independent third-party auditing team (or each state should establish and fund approved partners to fill the role) to act as a redundant and reinforcing layer of confidence.
3) For mitigating the risk of insiders, great disruption to accurate and precise planning can be done by school leaders simply changing up the processes, procedures, and protocols every year, at a minimum. Changes such as school start times, bell schedules, lunch and recess times, main entryways, etc., can make a great deal of difference in disrupting the level of confidence aggressors may have in planning and carrying out their illicit intentions.
#3: Generation D-Sensitized
I recently found out how much money people can make playing video games, and it is impressive. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little surprised when I found out it was in the millions. But, in that moment of surprise, I also realized how popular video games have become over the last twenty years. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman (ret) talks a lot about desensitization being a major factor in today’s school violence epidemic. Lt. Col. Grossman (ret) predicted this modern phenomenon long before the incidents started becoming a weekly, or even daily, occurrence; and time has shown that he was absolutely right. From Hollywood movies to video games, our culture has been desensitized to violence and we have been conditioned out of our moral compass. With advancements in technology, movies and video games provide plenty of violence, death, and gore desensitization that strip young, influential minds of the moral implications that real-life tragedies bring. With entertainment and radical groups encouraging the masses that, ‘it’s okay to exact revenge against those who hurt you’, because ‘your idols do it’, and ‘the world’s a better place because of it’.
To be clear, it’s not the entertainment and video games that are causing these tragic attacks. It’s not desensitizing everyone who is exposed to them, just those extremely vulnerable to their influence; which leads back into the mental health component. It’s those who feel unwelcome or unaccepted in society that are encouraged and morally purged of right and wrong by the desensitized entertainment.
#3: Generation D-Sensitized Solutions
Unfortunately, the solutions to this factor are way beyond my expertise. Desensitization isn’t just a school or local community issue, it is a society in general issue. The most impactful and actionable solutions for this factor start in the home of every child. However, as most familiar with troubled students know, their home lives are usually the main contributing factor to the emotional pain and disassociations to begin with. Therefore, requesting enhanced attention, love, understanding, and PROPER discipline would be an impossible task considering there is a major lack of it in the first place. However, if a broken home were not a factor, the advisement would be to regulate, communicate, and evaluate their children’s usage and influence from the desensitizing entertainment. The difficulty here is that, on the one hand, it’s necessary to regulate our children’s exposure to the realities of the dark and harsh world before it’s the right time. On the other hand, other societies are conditioning their children, at a young age, to these dark realities and, should the world reach the point it seems it’s well approaching, we will need our children ready to handle the dark realities much earlier. Like I said, solutions on this front are way above my pay grade. What is certain, our society’s children, and everyone, has been and continues to be desensitized.
This article is much longer than I intended so I will bring it to a close. But before I do, I want to address the most likely rebuttal to this article now, instead of as a response later. Access to firearms is NOT the reason for the school violence and tragedies that are running amok across our country. I will, however, through reasoning and common sense, agree that access to high-capacity magazines allows for more casualty and loss-of-life in a single incident than non-firearm weapons potentially could. Although, there are mass-casualty incidents carried out in countries where access to firearms is highly restricted; which proves the point that, with or without a firearm, attacks against innocent people will be still be carried out.
Again, the issues hedging the Nation’s ability to ensure safer and more secure schools are much deeper and complex than what I can write out in several paragraphs; and I don’t think anyone, including myself, have all the answers to solve these complex issues. But, it’s definitely worth putting heads together and trying to. Often what I come across when reading excerpts on school security is the bashing of products, protocols, or school leader’s for their actions, or non-actions. Very rarely do I come across an article that, not only addresses a problem, but actually provides actionable solutions leaders can take to address those problems. Moving forward, I hope to change that.