School shootings: ‘Every student’s worst nightmare’
16,000 state K-12 pupils experienced gunfire at schools since Sandy Hook
The sight of another school shooting like the latest mayhem Thursday at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita has become sadly familiar.
Since the horror unleashed in 2012 by a deranged gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, about 16,000 California students have experienced some sort of shooting at 15 schools in the Golden State.
“This is every student’s worst nightmare,” said Julia Runkle, 17, a volunteer with Students Demand Action Santa Clarita Valley. “My friends attend Saugus High, and our tears of anger and fear today will only strengthen our resolve to fight for an America where no one has to fear being shot.”
But those numbing figures stand in contrast to statistics that experts say show schools have actually become safer in the last two decades.
“On days like today, those statistics ring hollow,” said Sacramento State University psychology professor Stephen E. Brock, a school crisis prevention expert who says in reality “schools are remarkably safe places.”
School-specific data such as the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System and School Associated Violent Death Study show a significant drop in safety threats since the 1990s. The number of homicides at schools of students ages 5-18 in the most recently surveyed period, the 2015-2016 school year, was almost half what it was 20 years earlier in 1998-1999, the study shows.
While homicide is the second-leading cause of death among youth ages 5-18,
the study found, less than 2% of those homicides occurred on school grounds, on the way to or from school, or at or on the way to or from a school- sponsored event.
“You’re more likely to die from a bee sting, being struck by lightning, contracting flesh- eating bacteria or a bear in Yellowstone National Park,” Brock said.
Incidences of students getting in fights, bringing weapons to school and gang activity have significantly dropped, Brock said.
“A lot of people are viewing schools as violent places, which is entirely not so,” Brock said. “Educators have done an incredible job of making schools safer than they were years ago.”
Still, the sheer number of school shootings — and the heightened media attention they attract — weigh significantly on both policymakers and students’ psyches.
At Saugus High on Thursday, police say a student opened fire with a .45- caliber handgun on his 16th birthday, killing two classmates and injuring three others before shooting himself.
A Bay Area News Group analysis of enrollment figures at California elementary, middle and high schools that experienced shootings since 2012 found more than 16,000 students may have been impacted. Enrollment figures are from the state Department of Education in 2018 — though enrollment could have been somewhat higher or lower the year of the shooting.
• Saugus High, Santa Clarita, Nov. 14, 2019 (2,441)
• Ridgeway High, Santa Rosa, Oct. 22, 2019 (257)
• Central Elementary, Belmont, Jan. 7, 2019 (447)
• Balboa High, San Francisco, Aug. 30, 2018 (1,271)
• Highland High, Palmdale, May 11, 2018 (2,734)
• Seaside High, Seaside, March 13, 2018 (1,124)
• Belmont High, Los Angeles, Feb. 1, 2018 (973)
• Rancho Tehama Elementary, Rancho Tehama, Nov. 14, 2017 (98)
• North Park Elementary, San Bernardino, April 10, 2017 (521)
• King City High, King City, March 21, 2017 (1,076)
• Jordan High School for Equity, San Francisco, Oct. 18, 2016 (260)
• Tenaya Middle School, Merced, Feb. 14, 2015 (548)
• John F. Kennedy High, Richmond, May 14, 2014 (881)
• Edison High, Fresno, Dec. 19, 2013 (2,571)
• Taft Union High, Taft, Jan. 10, 2013 (954)
Not all of the incidents resulted in deaths. They include an incident at Seaside High last year in which a teacher was demonstrating his personal firearm in class and fired a round into the ceiling.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, accidental injury, suicide and cancer claim more young lives among those 24 years and younger than homicide.
Among injury deaths, traffic accidents, drug and alcohol poisoning and suicide kill more people age 24 and younger than homicide.
But there has been an alarming rise in students avoiding school because of fear that it is unsafe, Brock said.
That’s due in part to intense news coverage of things such as school shootings but also to wellintended measures to help protect students from them. Things like armed guards, metal detectors and active-shooter drills for kids, he said, may do more harm than good.
“It makes total sense to me for teachers and staff to be trained,” Brock said of active- shooter drills. “I don’t think they should be including children in those drills.”
Things that work are lockdown drills teaching students how to take cover in locked classrooms when police are searching for suspects in the neighborhood and having classroom doors that can lock from the inside, Brock said.
There have been only two shootings, including the 2017 Valentine’s Day massacre in Parkland, Florida, where students were killed inside a locked classroom.
“When they drill it, the kids do it and they do it right,” Brock said, “and it appears to lower anxiety about the kinds of situations we need to lock down for.”