Parents Can Do More For School Safety
Written by Deborah J Thomas
Filed under: Administrators, High School, K-6, News, Parents, People Involved, School Grade Level, School Safety Issues
That is the finding of the National Crime Prevention Council, a few days before the 10th anniversary of the Columbine school shooting. In fact, their exact words are that “parents are not engaged in school safety and prevention efforts at their children’s schools.” The group recently conducted a survey, with some disappointing results. Check this out: one in three (that’s 33%) parents have not talked to school authorities regarding safety issues such as bullying or weapons brought to school. The data about the other 67% who have talked to school authorities is not very encouraging either. According to the survey, these parents have only talked to school officials once in a year, on the average!
Needless to say, I find this information very very disconcerting. Since parents whine and get mad when “bad” things happen in school, you would think that they would exert more effort in helping to ensure school safety, wouldn’t you? I totally agree with what NCPC President and CEO Alfonso E. Lenhardt said. He stated that parents tend to be more concerned about other issues such as “getting along with others.” He continued to say that in order to prevent many incidents, parents are need to cooperate and participate more as many of these incidents can be thwarted with the help of information that only parents can determine.
It made me think of the school shootings we have heard of in the past years. It seems that the perpetrators have given off some kind of signal – chat room messages, strange behavior, and so on. I cannot help but wonder…if the parents were able to detect those warning signs, could something have been done? Perhaps, perhaps not. There is no use in crying over spilt milk BUT I do know that in the future, something could be done.
There are some bits of information that might cheer you up, though:
• Nearly nine in ten (87 percent) of parents say their school requires visitors to check in or sign in at a designated location.
• More than half of parents say their child’s school requires parental involvement in school safety activities (59 percent).
• Fifty percent report that their child’s school has a school safety officer such as a security guard or police officer (50 percent).
This data tells us that parents at least know what is going on in schools. I guess what we really need is more active involvement. What are you willing to do about this?
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Research has determined that from the Moment of Commitment (the point when a student pulls their weapon) to the Moment of Completion (when the last round is fired) is only 5 seconds. If it is the intent of a school district to react to this violence, they will do so over the wounded and/or slain bodies of students, teachers and administrators.
Educational institutions clearly want safe and secure schools. Administrators are perennially queried by parents about the safety of their schools. The commonplace answers, intended to reassure anxious parents, focus on the school resource officers and emergency procedures. While useful, these less than adequate efforts do not begin to provide a definitive answer to preventing school violence, nor do they make a school safe and secure.
Traditionally school districts have relied upon the mental health community or local police to keep schools safe, yet one of the key shortcomings has been the lack of a system that involves teachers, administrators, parents and students in the identification and communication process. Recently, colleges, universities and community colleges are forming Behavioral Intervention Teams with representatives from all these constituencies. Higher Education has changed their safety/security policies, procedures, or surveillance systems, yet K-12 have yet to incorporate Behavioral Intervention Teams. K-12 schools continue spending excessive amounts of money to put in place many of the physical security options. Sadly, they are reactionary only and do little to prevent aggression because they are designed exclusively to react to existing conflict, threat and violence. These schools reflect a national blindspot, which prefers hardening targets through enhanced security versus preventing violence with efforts directed at aggressors. Security gets all the focus and money, but this only makes us feel safe, rather than to actually make us safer.
Some law enforcement agencies use profiling as a means to identify an aggressor. According to the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education’s report on Targeted Violence in Schools, there is a significant difference between “profiling” and identifying and measuring emerging aggression; “The use of profiles is not effective either for identifying students who may pose a risk for targeted violence at school or – once a student has been identified – for assessing the risk that a particular student may pose for school-based targeted violence.” It continues; “An inquiry should focus instead on a student’s behaviors and communications to determine if the student appears to be planning or preparing for an attack.” We can and must assess objective, culturally neutral, identifiable criteria of emerging aggression.
For a comprehensive look at the problem and its solution, http://www.aggressionmanagement.com/White_Paper_K-12/
For more on school safety, check out http://detentionslip.org . It’s the #1 source for crazy headlines in education.