By Lauren Eib, Symposium Moderator
Director, Risk Management and Safety Services
Tucson Unified School District
This article is brought to you by The Public Entity Risk Institute (PERI). Visit their website: www.riskinstitute.org
This PERI symposium “Confronting Violence in Our Schools: Planning, Response, and Recovery” is extremely timely as school shooting incidents have again been in the national news. During the first week of January 2007, two shootings occurred in different parts of the country. On January 2nd there was a school shooting in Fayetteville, NC and one day later there was another one in Tacoma, WA. There have been approximately 600 documented shooting incidents in the last 15 years in America’s schools. And the perception to students and the public is that it can happen at any school any time as these two incidents in 2007 reinforce.
So, are America’s schools safe? I have found that parents and citizens in general believe that schools have a duty to keep children safe from harm; that school administrators have a public trust that the school embraces when students enter the school grounds. Of course the short answer is that students are safer at schools than elsewhere in their environment, but schools are also seen by the public as having a higher duty of care than other places that a student might frequent such as the local mall or even a friend’s home.
Dr. Delbert S. Elliott, Director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, agrees that schools are safe environments, but he also stated the following: “We are seeing a change in the trends around youth violence nationally...We enjoyed a decade of declining involvement in violence on the part of young people, and declining violence at school. But the last two years we have seen a reversal of that trend. Gang activity is on the increase again. The number of school-related deaths in the last two years is twice what it was in the two years prior to that. We know that 6 percent of 12 to 18 year olds attending school reported that they carry a weapon to school in the last 30 days. We are seeing the highest proportion of students reporting that they were threatened or injured at school that we have seen since CDC started collecting that kind of information. So we are seeing an increase in the risk of violence at school and more generally on the part of young people.”
The violent student may be one that can be identified early in life but we now know that there is another group of students at risk whose problems don’t appear until or after puberty. The Secret Service study talks about the set of risk factors and behaviors one should look for. They have developed a threat assessment tool that is available for use by schools and law enforcement. They are now doing research on the by-stander. But they have done no research on the adult shooter in a school. Before the current model (post-1996) in which a member of the student body would go into their own school and kill fellow students, the pattern was one of outsiders - often adults - going into schools and killing students.
GUIDANCE FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY AND THE FBI
And what about the terrorist threat at schools? After the Beslan school incident, the Secretary of Education sent out a letter on October 6, 2004 to all school districts with information from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security on lessons learned from the Soviet incident. The recommendations made in the letter to help protect U.S. schools are good general school security measures in today’s environment.
Short-Term Protective Measures
Short-term protective measures include reviewing procedures to safeguard school facilities, students, and others within them. The recommendations in the DHS-FBI bulletin include:
1. Review all school emergency and crisis management plans. Helpful guidance can be found at www.ed.gov/emergencyplan/.
2. Raise awareness among local law enforcement officers and school officials by conducting exercises relating to school emergency and crisis management plans.
3. Raise awareness among school officials and students by conducting awareness training relating to the school environment that includes awareness of signs of terrorism.
4. Raise community awareness of any potential threats as well as vulnerabilities.
5. Prepare the school staff to act in a crisis situation.
6. Consider a closed-campus approach to limit visitors.
7. Consider a single entry point for all attendees, staff and visitors.
8. Focus patrols by law enforcement officers on and around school grounds.
9. Ensure that school officials will always be able to contact school buses.
10. Ensure that emergency communications from and to schools are working.
11. Download the Red Cross brochure, Terrorism: Preparing for the Unexpected, at http://www.redcross.org/services/disaster/keepsafe/terrorism.pdf and provide a copy to students, staff and faculty.
12. Report any suspicious activity to law enforcement authorities.
Long-Term Protective Measures
Long-term protective measures include physical enhancements to school buildings. Among the measures schools should consider are the following:
1. Install secure locks for all external and internal doors and windows.
2. Install window and external door protections with quick-release capability.
3. Consider establishing a safe area (or safe areas) within the school for assembly and shelter during emergencies.
4. Apply protective coating on windows in facilities that face traffic. That and other helpful information on school facilities can be found at www.edfacilities.org/.
Potential Unwelcome Surveillance of Educational Facilities
DHS and the FBI also provided a list of activities to watch for. While these indicators alone may in fact reflect legitimate activity not related to terrorism, multiple indicators could suggest a heightened terrorist or criminal threat. Activities to watch for include:
1. Unusual interest in security, entry points, and access controls or barriers such as fences or walls;
2. Interest in obtaining site plans for schools, bus routes, attendance lists and other information about a school, its employees or students;
3. Observation of security reaction drills or procedures;
4. Increase in anonymous telephone or e-mail threats to facilities in conjunction with suspected surveillance incidents;
5. Foot surveillance involving individuals working together;
6. Mobile surveillance using bicycles, scooters, motorcycles, cars, trucks, sport utility vehicles, limousines, boats or small aircraft;
7. Discreet use of still cameras, video recorders, or note-taking at non-tourist locations;
8. Use of multiple sets of clothing and identification or the use of sketching materials (paper, pencils, etc.);
9. Questioning of security or facility personnel; and
10. Unexplained presence of unauthorized persons in places where they should not be.
WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE ON SCHOOL SAFETY
On October 10, 2006, just days after the Amish school shooting in Pennsylvania, the White House held a conference on school safety. Video and transcripts from the conference can be found on the White House Website (http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/education/schoolsafety/). It provides a good discussion and is an excellent supplement to this Symposium.
There were a number of topics discussed at the conference that I found of interest such as the Watch D.O.G.S. (Dads of Great Students) and a safe school inter-agency program that is being done in Florida. The inter-agency agreement that is in all the schools in Colorado brings the schools and law enforcement together with mental health and social services. It promotes a confidential environment where information is shared to allow for early intervention with children that show evidence of a problem in this area.
THE PERI SYMPOSIUM
The emergency response for violent incidents is very emotional but follows the same four phases of the emergency management model:
- Mitigation/Prevention;
- Preparedness;
- Response; and
- Recovery.
Therefore, we have used this model to help organize the presentation of papers in this symposium program. We will spend part of Thursday and all of Friday on recovery because this phase, which tends to be discussed and planned for the least, is actually the longest phase for a school and its students, parents, and staff.
In their study of school shootings, the US Secret Service found that the vast majority — 80% — of these shooters are suicidal. Loren Coleman, who will present a paper on Monday, believes that all of them are suicidal, “Homicide, as Freud said, is suicide turned outward, and that’s exactly the model that is being followed. Suicide is also homicide turned inward.” Coleman’s paper will discuss the copycat effect. He observes “that every year is different and a fresh view must be considered based upon observations that are right in front of our eyes.”
The Secret Service study examined violent incidents that occurred at schools since 1974. Eric Shoemaker’s paper, which will be presented on Monday, discusses an incident from 1924 as well as the threat of al Qaida to American schools. On Tuesday, facilities mitigation/prevention strategies will be discussed by Mike Dorn and Chris Dorn, and Vijay Ramnarain. On Wednesday, aspects of handling the violent student will be discussed by Dr. Dewey Cornell, Dr. Diane Smallwood and Gary Klugiewicz. This discussion will continue on Thursday with Dr. Sara Salmon.
On Thursday and Friday, we will present papers from people that have direct experience with school shootings. Cathy Kennedy Paine and Betsy Thompson represent two schools districts that have been through a tragic incident. Cathy Kennedy Paine, from Springfield Public Schools in Springfield, Oregon directed response and recovery efforts after a fatal shooting in 1998 where a student shot 50 rounds in the school’s cafeteria where 300 students were located. Betsy Thompson responded to the Columbine incident and participated in the recovery effort for the schools in Jefferson County. Also on Friday, Holly Colonna who works on the bullying program and the recovery efforts for the Tucson Unified School District, will discuss various programs available to schools. And, from a financial perspective, Genesis will discuss insurance and recovery efforts.
We encourage you to share your thoughts and questions using the Symposium Center’s online message board during the week of January 8-12, 2007. Please contact me or Pam (pmarino@riskinstitute.org) with any questions, concerns, or comments you may have during the Symposium. We look forward to your participation as we go through the various papers and topics throughout the week.
In January 2006, PERI held a free online symposium to explore strategies for addressing violence in our nation’s schools. The program, entitled “Confronting Violence in Our Schools: Planning, Response, and Recovery,” offered practical advice for dealing with school violence — not just the high profile incidents that make headlines but the real issues of school violence that schools and communities face everyday.
The Public Entity Risk Institute (PERI) is a nonprofit research organization that provides education and training resources on topics related to risk management and emergency management. PERI’s website, www.riskinstitute.org, offers free E-Training programs and a Publications, Tools, and Resources library with information on emergency planning and response, disaster recovery, school safety, workers’ compensation, and other key topics in risk management. PERI’s also maintains a national database of public sector liability and workers’ compensation claims data for benchmarking and performance measurement. The Data Exchange is a voluntary program that allows participating organizations to compare their liability and workers’ compensation losses with their peers and learn from other jurisdictions.
