Big bucks could be headed toward academic acceleration, special education and Title I schools in the 2024 education budget unveiled by President Joe Biden this week—but its outlook is dim in the face of a Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a sharply divided Congress.
Federal investigators have requested numerous records from the Four Rivers Special Education District, including details of every student discipline incident for the past two school years at Garrison School in Jacksonville.
"The school districts that got the call, there were a lot of different reactions and responses to it and they all did great," said one spokesman. "Sometimes people think if an incident happens, everyone should follow this and it's just not reasonable. What's good for one district might not be good for another."
Over the past six months, many districts have fallen victim to falsified threats. According to one safety expert, they appear to be linked to one another and originate from international sources.
Swatting hoaxes this week led police to crash their cruiser through one school's front door while Vermont's governor likened the deeply disruptive pranks to terrorism.
At issue is a 2004 law -- and a lack of compliance that apparently went unnoticed until recently. Federal law requires that special education aides who help instruct students at Title I high-poverty schools meet certain state-determined education requirements.
"The secret is out: K12s are a target-rich and resource-poor sector," says TJ Sayers, cyber threat intelligence manager at the Center for Internet Security (CIS). "Maintaining complete, secured, and offline backups is the single-most effective way to recover from most attacks, including ransomware."
In the aftermath of Uvalde, two of the state’s top Republicans have signaled certain school safety measures will be a priority in this legislative session, making some lawmakers more hopeful about passing bills they’ve been unable to in the past.
New data from the National Center for Education Statistics reveal that an overwhelming majority of schools have extensive security measures in place. For example, at schools with a full- or part-time SLEO or SRO, 92% of them routinely carry a firearm.
The shooting of a first-grade teacher by a 6-year-old boy has plunged the nation into uncharted waters of school violence, with many in the Virginia shipbuilding city where it happened demanding metal detectors in every school.
