The hard sell to fortify schools
U.S. lawmakers buy industry fix to protect schools from guns
Security companies spent years pushing U.S. schools to buy more products — from “ballistic attack-resistant” doors to smoke cannons that spew haze from ceilings to confuse a shooter. But sales were slow, and industry’s campaign to free up taxpayer money for upgrades had stalled.
That changed last February, when a former student shot and killed 17 people at a Florida high school. Publicly, the rampage reignited the U.S. gun-control debate. Privately, it propelled industry efforts to sell school fortification as the answer to the mass killing of American kids.
Since that attack, security firms and non-profit groups linked to the industry have persuaded lawmakers to elevate the often-costly “hardening” of schools over other measures that researchers and educators say are proven to reduce violence, an Associated Press investigation shows.
The industry helped Congress draft a law that committed $350 million to equipment and other school security over the next decade. Nearly 20 states have come up with another $450 million, and local school districts are reworking budgets to find more money.
Most everyone agrees that schools can be more secure with layers of protection, such as perimeter fencing, limited entrances and hiding spaces inside classrooms.
But there’s no independent research supporting claims that much of the high-tech hardware and gadgets schools are buying will save lives, according to two 2016 reports prepared for the U.S. Justice Department. As with high-profile shootings in the past, that has not stopped industry representatives from rushing in, some misusing statistics on school violence to stoke fears that “soft target” schools could be victims of terrorist attacks or negligence lawsuits.
“School safety is the Wild, Wild West,” said Mason Wooldridge, a security consultant who helps school districts assess their vulnerabilities. “Any company can claim anything they want.”
Wooldridge knows from experience. Several years ago, he helped outfit an Indiana high school with a $500,000 security system that includes smoke cannons. Now out of sales, he says a school that wanted a system with the same level of security could get it for about $100,000, using less expensive but equally effective equipment.
Many proponents of hardening a school like an airport or police station have backgrounds in law enforcement or the military. Some have little experience or qualification. The Ohio man dubbed “Joe the Plumber” during the 2008 presidential campaign has been appearing on school safety conference panels to hawk a cheaper lockdown alternative.
Educators worry that hardening will siphon focus and money from programs that prevent bullying and counsel at-risk kids. Students have reported in government surveys that visible security measures like metal detectors and armed officers make them feel less safe.
Industry representatives say they support other solutions to preventing school gun deaths, but insist hardening hasn’t gotten the chance it deserves.
“There really needs to be a change in thinking that recognizes security is a primary need in schools,” said Jake Parker, director of government relations for the Security Industry Association, which has been central to the hardening effort. Also, he acknowledged, “The more schools protect themselves, the better it is for industry.”
Revenue for school security companies would grow even more than analysts project if the industry succeeds in plans to craft state legislation that would set minimum standards for campus equipment purchases.
There are no widely accepted, independent standards for school building security, as there are for the plumbing, fire protection systems and even athletic bleachers on campus. To fill that void, security companies have promoted their own takes on what “best practices” for school security should be. At least one state has turned such standards into law.
Industry-written guidelines set a steep price for cashstrapped districts. According to a non-profit group formed by a major lock manufacturer, for example, upgrading an elementary school with basic security equipment costs at least $94,000 and a high school at least $170,000. If all the nation’s public schools were to follow those guidelines, the cost would total at least $11 billion, according to industry calculations.
Hardening advocates acknowledge that mass upgrades would not eliminate shootings. Many shooters are students whose familiarity with a school’s layout and security could help them outsmart even elaborate safeguards.
Low-tech solutions may also work just as well. Leaders at one school district in New Jersey heard a vendor’s pitch for classroom doors that lock automatically and simply mandated that teachers lock their doors during class, saving several hundred thousand dollars.
“If we’re just expecting technology to solve all these problems, I think we’re going to fall short,” said Ronald Stephens, executive director of the California-based National School Safety Center, created originally as a federal program under the Reagan administration. “And we may not like the climate we create.”
‘EXTREMELY SOFT TARGETS’
Max Schachter was grieving the loss of his son, Alex, and became enraged when he learned of the successive failures at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
School counsellors and law enforcement had received warnings about the shooter’s worrisome behaviour. His bullets shattered standard-issue classroom door windows, providing access to victims such as Alex, as the school’s only armed safety officer hid.
With one child still enrolled and a middle schooler on the way, Schachter searched for ways to make Stoneman Douglas High safer. He found Southwestern Junior-senior High School in Shelbyville, Indiana. The campus had become known as the “Safest School in America” after the $500,000 retrofit that Wooldridge helped install for his step-father’s firm, Nettalon Security Systems.
The Indiana Sheriff’s Association, an early backer of Nettalon’s safety package, arranged a private tour. Schachter returned to Florida impressed. Putting his life insurance career on hold, he has fast become a leading school safety activist and important ally of the hardening movement.
“After 9-11, we hardened the cockpits and the airports,” Schachter testified during a hearing of the Federal Commission on School Safety created by U.S. President Donald Trump after Parkland. “The reasons these monsters are still attacking our schools is because they’re extremely soft targets.”
As horrific as they are, shooting rampages in America’s 122,000 public and private elementary and secondary schools are uncommon, though more prevalent than elsewhere in the world.
An AP analysis of FBI statistics showed 35 active shootings at elementary, middle or high schools, resulting in the deaths of 61 students and staff members, from 2000 to 2017, the last year included by the FBI. AP’S analysis shows that active shootings, defined by the FBI as a gunman trying to kill in a confined and populated area, had not appreciably increased at schools during that time. But in the first five months of this year, two major shootings — in Parkland, Florida, and at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas — left 27 students or staffers dead.
In making a case for hardening, proponents have asserted big increases in school gun violence in recent years. Some have done so by including mass shootings that happened any place, not just those at schools. Others used data that included incidents at schools that weren’t attacks on students or employees, but were instead accidental discharges, suicides or community violence that spilled onto campus, sometimes after hours.
Many experts say that schools remain among the safest places for children. Rob Evans, a retired state police captain who is the Vermont education agency’s school safety liaison, calls school shootings “lowprobability events” and noted kids are more likely to die in other ways — including, data show, crossing a street. But the horror of shootings jolts public policy, and schools race to show a nervous public they’re taking action.
“We’ve got to take the passion out of it,” Evans said. “If we’re going to spend a dollar, let’s spend a smart dollar.”
Education security revenue in the U.S. was about $2.5 billion in 2017, approximately 60 per cent generated by elementary and secondary schools, according to the research firm IHS Markit. The firm had projected anemic growth for several years but, after Parkland, revised its forecast to $3 billion by 2019.
The flow of money has created opportunities for businesses new to school security.
“Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher is working with a company that incorporated two months after Parkland to sell a $139.99 “Swiftshield” that slides around a classroom door handle so a shooter cannot enter.
The company began sponsoring panels at school security conferences that featured the one-time political star. Wurzelbacher acknowledged skepticism at those conferences but said his concern is genuine: His adult son is a teacher, and he has three children ages 5 and under.
The Swiftshield barricade device, invented by a roofer, offers schools “unparalleled” safety, the company claims. It sells for one-twentieth the cost of some bullet-resistant doors or high-tech locking systems — and about 200 districts have expressed interest, Wurzelbacher said. Companies selling higherpriced security alternatives are protecting their turf when they argue barricade-style devices violate safety codes in many states, he said.
“There’s going to be a lot of money to be made here,” Wurzelbacher said. “I think there’s a lot of people who are offering school systems an illusion of security, as opposed to real security.”
Some educators fear that increased spending on school fortifications will lead to cuts to programs that involve human intervention, such as mental health care.
Campuses are safer when students feel comfortable reporting suspicious behaviour and staff are trained in deciphering whether that behaviour is dangerous, according to school psychologists like Tricia Daniel. Armoring schools like fortresses can make students feel like they are serving a sentence, she said, not getting an education.
“None of what works involves sound-bite solutions, the purchase of a single program or security system, and quite frankly the over-hardening of our schools,” Daniel, who was inside a middle school in her Alabama district during a deadly 2010 shooting, told the federal safety commission.
The National Association of School Psychologists and dozens of other organizations endorsed a “call to action” after Parkland that advocated greater mental health services and a ban on assault-style weapons. The federal commission has shown more interest in fortifying buildings than in keeping guns away from students.
Schachter, the Parkland father, hopes the commission will adopt national hardening standards that he has been developing with the security industry and law enforcement.
In August, Schachter met privately with the four Cabinet secretaries on the commission. Then, in public testimony later that day, he praised the system in Indiana’s “Safest School,” saying it overcame the five central challenges in shootings: Authorities are immediately notified, ballistic-hardened doors shield classrooms, video cameras let law enforcement assess the scene, teachers can share real-time updates, and smoke cannons disrupt the shooter.
Those are the same talking points that Nettalon, the company that developed the system, and its law enforcement allies have used for years.
In an interview, Schachter repeated those points and objected when asked whether he knew of any research showing that hardening was the most effective security approach.
“I don’t think I need research,” he said, “to show me we need to do something differently.”
NATIONAL PLAYER
The man behind the “Safest School” is a former Army Ranger who has worked for a decade to turn his privately held company of fewer than a dozen employees into a national school security player.
Donald R. Jones Jr. says the ambushes he survived in Vietnam inform his approach, and he clocks the carnage as a school shooting unfolds. The first 911 call takes a few minutes. Police won’t arrive for several more minutes, longer in rural America. If the attacker has easy access to kids, he says, it will be a massacre. Like others in industry and some politicians, he cites global terror as a concern.