SafetyIssues Schools

Making Schools Safer
Ronald Porep, Chicago Coresspondent

Volume 2 Issue 15 February 2003

Two female students in an Alaska high school are caught passing notes about how they will kill specific fellow students and teachers. Other documents in the girls’ homes and lockers detail who will be slaughtered, how they will be killed, when and even where.

A kindergartener punches a pregnant teacher in the stomach almost causing her to lose her baby.

An 8-year old pupil of a Maryland elementary school has a detailed plan to burn down his school including where to pour the gasoline to do the most damage and kill the most people. And, a pervert with a knife sneaks into the female locker room of a high school to abduct a student.

School has become a dangerous place. The danger is coming from a variety of sources. Gangs, Sexual predators, students themselves, and even terrorists – both domestic and foreign in origin. But police and school officials are taking steps to make schools safer.

There are also new methodologies and technologies which are putting safety back in our schools. And, some old fashioned common sense actions are preventing school disasters. The methods work even though some may seem to infringe on the spirit if not the letter of the law protecting our civil rights. Here are some of those basic methods. Anonymous tip hotlines are being used by schools to fight danger. This strategy has been used very successfully by police to fight crime but is just starting to be used by schools.

A student or teacher calls the number and – without giving his or her name – tells of a potential danger in school such a student carrying a gun in his backpack. School officials check out the student and his backpack. If no weapon is found then no harm is done. If a weapon is found though, a school disaster may have been prevented and a troubled child will get the help he needs to avoid being a killer.

Character instruction is an old fashioned way to combat school violence. If you are old enough, you may remember old school readers with stories stressing right and wrong – specific character traits. This type of instruction has fallen out of favor largely due to fear that it was bringing together church and state in our schools. Character instruction, though, does not have to be taught from a religious standpoint. Most cultures would agree that certain traits are needed to be a good person – calmly instead of violently handling a problem for example. Because today’s children will not just accept an adult’s views anymore, the instruction has to be highly creative to get students to even listen. One way is to have students discuss violence in their neighborhoods and how the violence could have been prevented – bringing the instruction right into where the students live.

Identification tags are a good way to know who is in a school and what are they doing there. The best identification tags incorporate pictures of the persons allowed in the school whether staff, students or visitors.

Who wants to sneak into schools? Gang members recruiting new gang members from the student body. Perverts wanting to sexually assault staff or students. Or terrorists – both domestic and foreign. A good identification system helps keep those threatening school safety out of school.

In conjunction with identification methods, many schools are mandating school uniforms for students. While this might seem a violation of student freedom of expression, the requiring of school uniforms has two good purposes.

School uniforms allow the spotting of strangers – such as non student gang members trying to recruit – very easily. Uniforms also prevent gang violence in school by not allowing students to wear so called gang colors which can start fights between rival gangs in school. This may seem an infringement on student expression but what is more important – a minor expression of student individuality or student lives?

Fencing and locked doors are another way schools are keeping students safe. Everyone enters and leaves school through one door – giving control over who gets into a school. This can get expensive but how much is a child’s life worth?

Many schools now have police officers patrolling the school inside and out. Schools have had security guards for decades in certain areas but police can carry weapons and deal with criminals on the spot while guards usually do not carry weapons as they are not trained in their use and have to hold violators for police.

Security cameras are watching students and others in hallways as well as the exteriors of classrooms. With students wearing uniforms and students and staff wearing photo identification tags, those watching security cameras can easily identify people who do not belong in a school as well as spot problems. Now, this method can be taken too far. A few years ago, workmen at a Chicago suburban junior college found a security camera in the bathroom of a college building. In another school, workers installing a clock found a security camera in the teachers’ lounge. Both actions are a clear violation of personal privacy so before cameras are installed, schools need to create policies of how and where security cameras can be used in school.

And, schools are creating characteristics of violent students. The other name for this method is violence profiling. Profiling has gotten a bad reputation with police largely because it is used incorrectly. The wrong way to use profiling is to assume that just because a certain group of people may statistically be most likely to commit a certain crime, police should focus on that group to prevent members of the group from committing that crime.

The right way to use profiling is without ethnic or racial prejudices. School administrators can have psychological experts create a profile of potentially violent students and distribute that profile to staff and teachers. If a student displays characteristics in the profile, staff or teachers should bring the student to the attention of his or her parents and school experts who can help determine if the student needs help and, if so, what type of help. The profile should not panic a teacher into believing that a student displaying certain characteristics is a potential killer who will soon wipe out the teacher and her class.

Those are some of the basic methods schools across the nation are using to keep staff and students safe.

In future articles on Safety Issues, we will tell you about specific methods and technologies schools are using to prevent violence. Many educational experts point out that schools are still one of the safest places a child can be. School security experts counter with statistics such as personal assaults in schools doubling in the past few years that action must be taken to keep schools as safe as they are and make them even safer.

This column is published each weekday by Safety Issues to help you live a safer life. Please email us column ideas and questions.

Neither Safety Issues nor its affiliated companies are responsible for any opinions expressed in this column.

Thank you for reading this column.