ASCD Poll: School Safety

In the ASCD Poll, we asked you to tell us the most effective way for schools to be safe and secure. If you haven't taken the poll yet, please vote now.

What else can schools do to be safe and secure? Share your comments on school safety with your peers.

Comments

[S. Josephs]

Fostering mutual respect in schools or connecting students to a caring adult would have done NOTHING to stop the carnage in the Amish school or the latest shooting in Colorado. As harsh as it sounds, we need security cameras and metal detectors to make sure that the people coming in from the outside are not there to harm our children. As a former assistant principal in an inner city school, the students were not our biggest security issue. It was parents and outsiders. Our on-campus police officers were our partners who worked hand in hand with the school administrators to keep our children safe and help promote a secure feeling for students and teachers alike. Without that, no amount of love, respect or understanding of each other could keep the students safe.

[Hugh O'Donnell]

The sad fact is that today we need to implement all of the options. People have great mobility in our culture and the "local" community is really not local anymore. The dangers are commensurate.

[LINDA SLOVER]

WE NEED TO TEACH PARENTS HOW TO LOVE THEIR CHILDREN. WE LIVE IN A FAST-PACED WORLD WITH BOTH PARENTS WORKING TO MAKE ENDS MEET AND IT IS PROBABLY GOING TO GET FASTER. ASSUMING WE ALL LOVE OUR CHILDREN IT TAKES TIME AND SACRIFICE TO RAISE CHILDREN,TWO COMMODITIES SORELY LACKING IN TODAY'S FAMILIES.

[Douglas Levin]

For additional information and resources for school leaders seeking to better prepare for and respond to school emergencies, please see the Fall 2006 edition of Cable in the Classroom's Threshold journal (www.ciconline.org/threshold). This special edition (produced in partnership with the Council of Chief State School Officers) offers several practical and up-to-date articles on this very topic - and all of the content is available at no cost on our website.

[Kenneth S. Trump]

The poll left out an important option: Taking a combination of the listed approaches. It also narrowly defined security as metal detectors and cameras. Schools have to take a comprehensive approach which is balanced with prevention, security, and emergency preparedness. Schools must have basic security measures in place to create a secure environment in which relationship building, prevention, education, and other programs to be implemented. The first and best line of defense is a well-trained, highly alert staff and student body.

[Susan Coakley]

The only way to prevent the kind of random violence we see so much today is to get firearms out of the hands of the average citizen. There is no sane reason for ordinary people to have handguns, assault rifles and machine guns.
Gun control is not a controversial topic - it's the only way to maintain a safe society as population continues to grow.

[Kate Redmond]

The most profoundly scarey line in our district's Emergency Procedures (which I helped to develop when I was on the school board) is that in the event of a fire alarm (not a drill), instead of exiting to the parking lots immediately, teachers should scan the area to make sure everything "looks normal" before leading the kids out. Bad times.

[Sandra Dawson]

Start with everything mentioned in the ASCD Poll and add to it limited accessibility to all but one entrance of the school. Halls and bathrooms need to be cleared at the end of each passing period or time when students might be in the halls. Parking areas need to be controlled by "key" only access, with public parking off campus. Schools with "open air" halls, rooms opening to the outside, need to have screens or walls added. And it will all start looking like what many students have claimed schools to be, prisons. Let's face it, that is the only way schools might hope to be safe. It won't come cheap, but what price do we assign to the life of one child?
Living in rural Colorado, we have always felt extremely safe. We are approximately 60 miles from Bailey, Colorado on the same highway. What took place there could just as easily taken place here. Our schools are embarassingly open to the world and most assuredly are not secure. Convincing local administrations and school boards to restrict assess to schools will be difficult because of small town culture, but it is a necessity. Maybe if we did a better job of addressing the emotional needs of children in school, they would not grow up to commit the heinous crimes which have taken place during the last few weeks.

[Alec I. Ostrom]

The absolute best way to increase the security and safety of our students is to transform the organizational structure and working relationships in our public schools.

We need to abandon the outmoded, disconnected, isolated, and failed "assembly line" organizational model of public schools with its one-size-fits all, institutionally centered culture.

We need to implement small schools with small learning communities - teams of teachers working with teams of students in applied teaching and learning processes that are directly connected to the learning and performance requirements of real life.

Our students need to be in small learning communities where they are engaged in learning that is relevant, demanding, open and creative. Our students must be supported, nurtured, challenged and held accountable to their fellow students and to very high level performance expectations.

We need to shift the organizational culture of our public schools so it is focused and centered on the emotional needs and learning requirements of our students and their perceptions of value-added learning.

Until we make these changes all of the metal detectors and security guards and TV cameras in the world will not make our students safe and secure.

[Jennifer]

Safety and security needs to always be a factor in our our environments. We need plans, 'with it-ness' and systems to support reasonable responses.

However, we also need to put all these things into local contexts and cultures. Have some of our reactions over the years fostered environments of fear and mistrust further isolating our children and communities?

Sadly, there will always be successful preditors. Menatl health and systems will fail us. The Amish choose a response based on Christian compassion. One of their spokesmen commented on not turning hurt in to hate. Gandhi once said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth makes the world blind and toothless."

We need to learn the disciplines and practices of active non-violence. We need to reconcile our fear and pain and not let the predation suck the life out our our schools, homes, and communities.

[Michelle]

In order to have security in schools, one must look at the inner structure. A secure school creates a proactive environment in which the student does not feel inhibited to express his feelings and share his thoughts with the adults. Many teachers know how to relate to the "normal" school population--the students who fit the student mold. Unfortunately not as many try to figure out the students that need the extra patience and audience. Many times and especially on two occasions I have seen students who I felt were going to go down the wrong path. Eventually they did. One is in jail for pushing percosets and operating a very extensive prescription drug ring and the other just died from a heroine overdose. Both were 18 years old. This is a form of quiet violence. Both have done something to affect the lives of others and themselves without shooting one gun. Parental counselling seems to be an issue we should be looking at. I once had a health teacher,
who used to be a nurse in World War II, who said, "Ladies, there are no illegitmate children, just illegitimate parents." I think this rings true today. Children, do you know where your parents are?

[Carole Bieshaar]

It is vital that schools begin to address the "whole" child. When I was running an alternative high school for at-risk students, this meant training everyone in conflict resolution skills--parents, students, teachers, custodians, security people, secretaries, and the administrator. It also meant being certain students were fed, had coats, had medical care, had dental care, had bus tokens, had a safe place to sleep, had emotional support, had a caring place to learn where their future plans were key to what they studied. PE class addressed life long physical fitness issues--bike riding, golf, running, walking, etc. Art and music classes fed their spirits. Math and language classes addressed real life issues--writing stories for elementary children, filling out forms, designing houses, doing income tax, budgeting, financial planning, etc. Home economics addressed parenting issues/child care, meal planning, sewing, etc.
The students learned to mediate problems,look out for each other, and no one new entered our school without someone letting me know. Students must have functional "family" somewhere. When they felt they were a part of our school, they were not willing to let anything harm that relationship.

[Mary]

If the suggestions included in this poll actually worked, we wouldn't be having so many incidents of killings in our schools. Most of these have been practiced in schools for years now. Unfortunately, until people wake up to the fact that schools and teachers cannot possibly solve all the worlds problem, we won't even begin to focus on the ills of our society that contribute to the problem. Only then will we actually begin to address the solutions that begin at a child's birth rather than applying a bandaid as suggested by this list of "solutions". When are the school stakeholders and the legislators going to wake up and cease with the "politically correct" nonsense that prohibits a direct attact on the core problem (which pretty much any educator can identify).

[Kerry Roberts]

I've read the blogs and read the poll questions. To be truly safe you will need metal detector's and cameras. Education is great, training is great, conecting with an adult and community is great...all of the ideas are great and help...but to truly stop someone you have to go to the next step...like the airlines.

[Laura Collins]

Truancy: The root of all school safety problems!

“No child falls through the cracks. They are dropped through or shoved through by lazy, emotionally immature adults and unethical professionals”

After the Columbine shootings I made this statement during an interview on national television. The reporter asked if I really believed that statement and I replied, “absolutely!”

But you may ask what this statement has to do with the issue of truancy? Simple, truant children – who are routinely late or absent – come from dysfunctional homes. Those homes in my experience are lead by caregivers who are more concerned about there own pleasures and convenience than the welfare of their children. Some may say that this is an unkind assessment. My response to them is simple, visit these homes and you will see that this is not an aberration.

While some caregivers have a difficult time because of poverty, work schedules or transitioning to a single parent household; the majority simply refuse to exercise self control or basic order in their homes.

And this assessment is supported by various national studies. Research from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the U.S. Department of Education have found that child neglect and family disorganization are major factors in truancy. The OJJDP also found that “Truancy has been clearly identified as one of the early warning signs of students headed for potential delinquent activity, social isolation, or educational failure via suspension, expulsion, or dropping out.”

More disturbing is a document that I have used for many years in criminal profiling, the Juvenile Sex Offender Assessment Protocol (J-SOAP-II). In this well respected assessment tool, caregiver issues and truancy become connected as impetuses for teen sex offender development:

Inconstant and instable caregivers before the age of 10. Multiple changes in caregivers and living situations.
Chronic truancy, fighting with peers or teachers.
Dr Gerald Patterson sums up the issue this way, “Parenting plays a critical role in the development process of children. Early discipline failures are a primary casual factor in the development of conduct problems. Harsh discipline, low supervision, lack of parental involvement all add to the development of aggressive children”

Bullying, sexual harassment, negative behavior cliques and aggression towards staff are all done by children who come from dysfunctional homes. But beyond the home environment, schools have a big stake in controlling truancy. Not only is it a major part of NCLB compliance but it affects all school safety issues. The US DOE has tracked the following school issues that directly contribute to truancy.

· Lack of effective and consistently applied attendance policies.

· Poor record-keeping, making truancy difficult to spot.

· Teacher characteristics, such as lack of respect for students and neglect of diverse student needs.

· Unsafe environment, for example a school with ineffective discipline policies where bullying is tolerated. [5 percent of students in grades 9 through 12 skipped school because they felt unsafe at school or on their way to or from school.]

Truancy happens in rural, suburban and urban schools and all classes of families. School must take control of their truancy problems or they are bound to be overtaken by it.

A well managed school is a safe school!
www.seraph.net

[Bill Barbin]

These 2 dads have come up with a bullet proof backpack. At first it seemed scary, then I found out about the drills going on in schools and I realized that this bookbag is a step in the right direction.

[Bill Barbin]

The bulletproof backpack is all over the media right now. Check these guys out at www.mychildspack.com