It seems that a month doesn’t go by without news stories of violence in American schools. There is a considerable amount of that violence that does not rise to the level of a National news story. Incidents occur daily that never make the six o’clock news. The violence perpetrated against students take on many forms. There are assaults committed against students by coaches and teachers. There are student on student assaults. There are also assaults by outside third parties in and around school property.

All too often the remedy for these assaults comes after-the-fact. One of the most exhaustive post incident studies occurred in the wake of Columbine. Remember Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold carried out a shooting rampage, killing 12 fellow students and a teacher, as well as wounding 24 others, before committing suicide. It is considered to be the deadliest school shooting incident and the second deadliest attack on a school in United States history.

Most recently, in Massachusetts a fifteen year old student was stabbed to death by a special needs student according to a recent Boston Globe story (www.boston.com). As with most serious incidents, the police, school officials and parents will try to develop recommendations to make sure this tragedy never reoccurs.

The question becomes “Why do we need to wait for serious injury or death to occur before we protect the kids?” Why are school districts reticent to go outside their comfort zone to enlist security professionals from the private sector? 

The recent attack in Massachusetts is not representative of some unanticipated anomaly.  On October 1, 1997, 16-year old Luke Woodham stabbed his mother to death. He then took a rifle to his school, Pearl High School (PHS). He shot and killed his ex-girlfriend and another student while maiming another seven. Six other boys were later arrested for allegedly conspiring with Luke in the school shooting, although all but one was cleared of all charges. The assistant principal of Pearl High, Joel Myrick, pulled a gun from his office desk, intercepted Woodham and held him until police arrived. Fast-forward to PHS in 2005, the schools are patrolled with police officers, every hour on the hour. This was to help break up fights, prevent violence from escalating, and stop unauthorized visitors into the building. Also, many new dress-code bylaws have been enacted to prevent the instigating of violence.

Another example in Paducah, Kentucky, on December 1, 1997, a 14-year old boy named Michael Carneal carried five loaded guns to Heath High School about 10 miles from the city. He shot at a group of fellow students in the school's lobby as they were leaving a prayer group before school. Three girls were killed, and five other victims were wounded; one of the wounded was left a paraplegic. Five of the victims were shot in the head, and three were hit in the upper torso.

Some SSO observations
Has anyone noticed that these events of horrendous aggression seem to come in bunches? That would seem to suggest there are many other would-be student perpetrators out there on the verge of acting out. Once the act is committed in one part of the country it would seem some sort of triggering effect follows.
We here stories every day about youth violence and gang warfare in the inner city, yet very few these cases drawing national attention involve inner city schools. Why is that? Are inner city schools more proactive in dealing with threats? Are their faculties more tuned to the incipient behavior that could escalate into violence?

Schools tend to use 20/20 hindsight to figure out what went wrong. They tend to examine policies rather than better understanding incipient behavior. Effective security programs in any environment must be proactive, anticipatory and preventive. Security professionals in the private arena have been studying and deal with a plethora of workplace violence issue with great intensity for at least the last 25 years. Yet, do we see school district tapping into this expertise? Policing alone is not sufficient.

In almost every case of pronounced school violence, the telltale signs were existent well in advance of the act, sometimes years in advance. If schools were to tap into the security expertise in the private sector they would soon discover that more police and security officers will not mitigate the problem. More locks, uniforms, and closed circuit TV will not make the problem go away. The private sector understands that effective security programs do not exist in a vacuum. They understand that security is the job of every employee and they backup that notion with training and constant reinforcement.

Teachers and all school employees must understand the root causes of this aberrant behavior. Schools must be encouraged to track all behavioral anomalies that occur both in the classroom and elsewhere throughout the school campus. Computer based tracking programs facilitate identifying emerging trends. Staffers need to be trained to identify potential violence while it is still incipient. That may mean paying closer attention to anomalies in K-6. If greater attention were paid in the early years, many of the outbursts that occur in middle school and high school could be averted. Remember that in the wake of many of these cases substantial lawsuits follow.