USA TODAY International Edition
Return to school brings caution
Schools, kids fully aware in era of shootings
Lesley Kluchin, who taught school for 36 years and still volunteers at her grandchildren’s elementary school, is struck by the singing.
The kindergartners and first-graders have special songs that help them remember what to do if their cheerful classroom suddenly becomes a danger zone and where to run if their school is next in a seemingly endless string of mass shootings.
“These children are growing up so that they sing a little song and they get into hiding places – it’s just terrifying to watch,” Kluchin said, describing the frequent active-shooter drills in her grandchildren’s school in Florida. It’s not far from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, where 17 people lost their lives in a shooting in February.
“I think what scared me the most is being in my granddaughter’s kindergarten classroom,” she said. “And all these babies, literally, hugging me, terrified.”
Kluchin isn’t alone this back-toschool season. As parents pile school supplies into shopping carts, students troop into new classrooms and teachers put finishing touches on lesson plans, concern over school safety in an age of mass shootings is at an all-time high.
Roughly one-third of today’s parents fear for their child’s safety in school, according to a poll by Phi Delta Kappa, an educators’ association. That’s the highest proportion since 1998 and a steep increase from 2013, when that number was only 12%.
Schools are taking action as they confront the reality that they easily could be the next target. From sophisticated surveillance technology to programs that train and arm staff, many school boards have developed safety measures that make schools feel increasingly like ballparks, airports and museums.
“Twenty years ago, we weren’t even trained to do active-shooter drills in the school,” said Curtis Lavarello, executive director of the School Safety Advocacy Network, which helps schools assess their vulnerabilities and develop safety plans. “Our primary goal now in law enforcement is to make sure that the school is equipped to handle the very worst of the worst.”
Each high-profile tragedy to hit headlines in recent years has sparked fury and cries for change. But the shooting in Parkland Feb. 14 – and a burst of activism by the shooting’s survivors – cemented gun violence in the public conversation for longer than usual.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas students began a campaign for changes in gun laws, drawing thousands to Washington, D.C., for the March For Our Lives. The Trump administration formed a commission to address school safety, headed by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and Florida passed a law funding more resource officers and a program to arm some teachers.
“I’ve never seen this phenomenon,” Lavarello said. The Parkland shooting “happened last February, and it still seems as fresh in everybody’s mind today as it did right after it occurred.”
Lavarello said requests for help with safety plans jumped more than 60 percent since this time last year, and at this summer’s national school safety conference, attendance was 45 percent higher. The vendor hall at the conference last year had about 50 exhibits; this year, there were more than 110.
“It’s gotten to the point where I don’t have enough staff or people to go out and do every school that we’re expected to do,” Lavarello said.
As each mass shooting chips away at the sacred safety of the classroom, families and teachers have slowly adjusted to a new reality: regular active-shooter drills, debates over security plans, heartbreaking conversations with kids about what to do if their classroom suddenly becomes dangerous.
“It’s just part of their lives at this point, which is sad,” said Jim Sanches, who teaches at a charter school in Sacramento. “Sometimes you’re in the classroom, and you’re getting notifications that one is happening right at that moment.”
A generation of children are growing up in an age when gun violence is a real threat for schools of every kind, and teachers say the mounting concern distracts students from the task of learning itself.
“Instead of knowing the three branches of government, they’ve got to know which codes are going to save their lives,” Kluchin said.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said the threat of gun violence “just makes a teacher’s job even harder than it’s ever been.”
“You cannot teach kids when they are afraid,” she said. “It’s an epidemic, it’s a public health crisis.”
When Miller heads back to school for her senior year on Sept. 4, she’ll try to avoid thinking about the possibility of a school shooter. She’s focusing instead on planning a back-to-school rally on Sept. 8 meant to highlight the threat of gun violence as the school year begins.
“We’re going back to school, and we’re still unsafe in schools,” she said. “We should be going to learn – we shouldn’t be worried about getting shot.”