His parents were going through a messy divorce.
He was bullied in school.
He threatened to shoot up a middle school on social media.
He missed many classes.
He had access to guns at home.
His mother called the school to warn them of the threat he posed.
These are just some of the troubling details emerging about the 14-year-old boy who killed two students and two teachers and wounded several more at Apalachee High School in northern Georgia on Sept. 4.
Tragically, these attributes are not unique; they echo the characteristics found in many previous school shootings and they continue to surface as these tragedies unfold again and again.
In a post last year, I asked, “How do Education Leaders Know They’ve Done Enough to Address School Safety?” At the time, I was an elected school board member in the district where my own children attend. Whenever the topic of school safety came up at board meetings, I would often say, “I never want to be in a position to say, ‘I wish we would have done more.’”
What more should we be doing?
School safety is top of mind for voters and families, according to recent data gathered by, well, everyone. Unfortunately, there seems to be no end in sight to these horrific events. While it is impossible to predict every act of school violence, there is much more that districts can do to reduce the likelihood of one occurring in their own community.
After the Georgia school shooting, every parent of a school-age child received a communication from their district’s superintendent. These emails followed a similar format: expressing sadness and sympathy, followed by a list of safety measures—mostly physical barriers such as locked entrances, panic buttons and district-wide communication systems—that are in place to protect students.
While well-intentioned, these emails often feel like a rush to assure the community that enough is being done. But is it really enough? Have districts assessed their safety protocols against current best practices? Are they covering the full spectrum of measures that can keep schools safe? And if not, what more should they be doing?
Shifting from reaction to prevention
Schools are tasked with creating environments where every child feels a sense of belonging. Visit the website of any school district, and you’ll see, in various forms of language, a commitment to ensuring that all students are safe to learn.
The scope of school safety, therefore, begins long before any incident occurs—it starts with fostering connections and building relationships. Schools must: ensure students have meaningful ties with caring adults, provide necessary support, physically prepare the campus to deter threats and, if the worst happens, have plans in place to recover.
A shift in mindset from reaction to prevention is critical. We should be able to send our children to school with the confidence that they will return home safe and unharmed. Until that confidence is restored, much more needs to be done. Superintendents must lead this charge—they are ultimately responsible for the safety of the students and staff in their schools.
The good news is that superintendents already possess the essential skills: strong leadership, cross-divisional collaboration and managerial expertise. Moreover, there is no shortage of resources related to school safety, including manuals, training programs, toolkits and procedures, all of which provide links to even more support. But how can superintendents determine which safety measures are most effective?
To build truly safe schools, we must understand all aspects of school safety—not just physical security measures. Schools need to rethink safety through a comprehensive framework that assesses, plans, tracks and audits safety solutions across both proactive and reactive measures. A holistic approach to school safety should include:
- Creating conditions that reduce the risk of school violence
- Providing targeted supports for students identified as at higher risk
- Preparing the school to mitigate risks and potential threats
- Developing plans for the community’s response to an incident
- Coordinating resources necessary for recovery after an incident
When students walk into school each morning, their focus should be on learning, developing new skills and spending time with their friends—not on fearing for their safety. In an ideal world, there would be a single solution to prevent school shootings. But in the world we live in, we must integrate a variety of safety protocols into a strategy that offers the best chance of keeping our children safe.
This is our call to action. We must do more—and we must do it now.
