Do We Need To Rethink School Security?
While I was in my eighth period class a few weeks ago, there was an announcement that came over the intercom asking for a student from each class to come to the main office.
A few minutes after the announcement, one of my classmates returned from the office with a letter that said that a student’s knife had found in the school’s library.
I go to a public high school where the bathrooms regularly smell like weed, you get called gay for not being in a relationship and hecklings are a daily occurrence, but even for me, this was alarming.
School is supposed to be a safe place for students, a place where we can come and learn and not have to worry about being hurt, but that’s not the case, and it hasn’t been for a long time.
Many school districts, including mine, have responded to these incidents by throwing money at security measures like metal detectors and security guards in the hopes that it will make schools safer. It’s at the point where even the average kindergarten now conducts bag searches and pat downs of their students at the beginning of the school day.
The question is, are these security measures actually making students safer, or do we need to look at some alternative options?
The Current Methods
Let’s start by saying that violence in schools is a real problem. In the 2015–2016 school year, there were more than 1.4 million violent incidents in schools across the US, meaning we do need security in place to stop these incidents from happening. Unfortunately, what we have now might not be the best option.
Take metal detectors. They’ve become ubiquitous in schools, and they seem like a reasonable way to maintain order and keep students from sneaking in weapons, but studies have suggested otherwise.
The Journal of School Health conducted a literary review that examined the effectiveness of metal detectors in curbing rates of negative behavior at school, such as weapon carrying and physical fights.
The review found that, on average, weapon carrying rates at schools with metal detectors was only 6% lower than schools without them, and there was no difference on rates of theft and physical assault.
The same can be said for SROs, or school resource officers.
A study by the Eastern Kentucky University looked at the impact of SROs on rates of criminal violations in schools, and found no difference between schools with a full time SRO and schools without an SRO at all.
This is especially concerning when you consider that, according to The Washington Times, 42% of schools in the US currently have a full time SRO, meaning that a lot of schools are buying into ineffective security.
Unfortunately, that’s not all. Along with being ineffective, our current security is also having detrimental effects on students.
The earlier study by the Journal of School Health also examined how metal detectors impacted student perceptions of school safety, and the results were concerning.
They found that students at schools with metal detectors were more likely to report feeling unsafe in school, as the introduction of metal detectors was seen as evidence that their school was unsafe.
Security is also usually overwhelmed. Five hundred students have to be managed by maybe five SROs and two metal detectors, which prevents security from being able to stay on top of everything and keep the school safe. This is how the incident at my school happened, despite the fact that we already have metal detectors and SROs.
We also need to consider the cost. The average metal detector costs between $4000 and $5000, and the salary of the typical SRO is around $38,000 a year.
To see how this looks on a larger scale, my school district spent $3.9 million on security equipment and personnel in 2019, which is a lot of money going to something that isn’t effective and is actually making students feel less safe.
Alternatives
Obviously, we can’t do away with school security altogether.
While the current methods don’t work, we still need something in place to stop what happened at my school from happening again, and there are quite a few good alternatives.
One of them, which is proposed by the CDC, is a school-based violence prevention program.
School-based violence prevention programs are programs that “provide students and school staff with information about violence, change how youth think and feel about violence, and enhance interpersonal and emotional skills such as communication and problem-solving, empathy, and conflict management.”
Essentially, they are a proactive solution to the problem of school security. Instead of having security in place to address an incident when it happens, they teach students how to deal with violence and handle conflicts to prevent the incidents from happening in the first place.
That may sound a little idealistic, and there is an argument to be made against it. One such argument is that those bent on causing harm will be unaffected by these programs, as they lack empathy or self control, which are skills these programs are trying to teach students as a means of violence prevention.
While that is true, you have to acknowledge that the truly violent aren’t being stopped by our current security either, as most of it can be easily circumvented with the right tools. All of the problems you’ll find in school-based violence prevention programs already exist in our current security, and in most cases, they’re a lot worse.
Also, unlike what we have right now, these programs have actually been shown to work.
The Task Force of Community Preventive Services found that school-based violence prevention programs contributed to an average 29% reduction in violent behavior in high schools, 7% reduction in middle schools, 18% reduction in elementary schools and 32% reduction in kindergartens and preschools.
That is already far better than the effects we’ve seen with our current security, and these programs also don’t make students feel like their school is less safe.
Already, many schools across the US offer some form of these programs. 77% of high schools, 77% of middle schools and 86% of elementary schools currently have violence prevention units as part of the curriculum in required health classes, and that is a good start, but they should be expanded.
To work properly, these programs need to be more than just a class, but a school-wide effort to educate students on how to deal with conflicts and prevent them from resorting to violence. Adopting these in more schools and phasing them in more at the schools that already have them would be the first logical step to maximize their effect.
Conclusion
The most basic component of our schools must be safety. If our students can’t go a day without fearing that they’ll be assaulted or robbed, we can’t effectively educate them, and therefore our schools can’t do their job.
We’ve tried to make our schools safer with metal detectors and SROs, and while they seem logical, they aren’t working in practice. Studies have shown that what we have is ineffective and actually harmful to our students, along with diverting a lot of school funds from more important endeavors.
We need to get rid of what we currently have and instead go with a more proven solution, school-based violence prevention programs.
While our current security attempts to address symptoms of the problem like fights and weapon carrying, these programs get to the root of the problem by fostering a school environment that prevents students from getting violent in the first place.
If we want to create truly safe schools, we need to introduce these programs on a national scale and integrate them as a daily part of student life. That will allow for us to stop worrying about violence in our schools, because instead of having a security system that reacts when tragedy strikes, we’ll have security that prevents tragedy from striking altogether.
Sources Cited:
- “Fast Facts: School crime.” National Center for Education Statistics, nces.ed. gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=49. Accessed 19 Apr. 2019.
- Hankin, Abigail. “Impacts of Metal Detector Use in Schools: Insights From 15 Tears of Research.” Journal of School Health, Feb. 2000, www.edweek. org/media/hankin-02security.pdf. Accessed 16 Mar. 2019.
- “SUPPORTING SAFE SCHOOLS.” Cops Office, cops.usdoj.gov/supporting safeschools. Accessed 16 Mar. 2019.
- Sullivan, William John. “Kentucky SRO Programs: An Examination of Impact on Reported Criminal Violations and Board Violations.” Eastern Kentucky University, Jan. 2013, encompass.eku.edu/cgi/view content.cgi?article=1138&context=etd Accessed 16 Mar. 2019.
- Sherfinski, David. “Percentage of public schools with resource officers on the rise: Report.” The Washington Times, 29 Mar. 2018, www.washington times.com/news/2018/mar/29/percentage-public-schools-resource-officers-rise-r/. Accessed 17 Apr. 2019.
- “Do Metal Detectors Make Sense For Your School District?” Total Security Solutions, 20 Dec. 2017, www.tssbulletproof.com/blog/metal-detectors-schools/. Accessed 18 Apr. 2019.
- “What Is the Average School Resource Officer Salary by State.” Zip Recruiter, www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-School-Resource-Officer-Salary-by-State. Accessed 19 Apr. 2019.
- “2019 Final General Fund Budget/Capital Projects Budget.” The Board of Public Education of the School District of Pittsburgh, 2019, www.pghschool s.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashxmoduleinstanceid=931&dataid=14186&FileName=2019%20Final%20General%20Fund%20Budget.pdf. Accessed 16 Mar. 2019.
- “School-Based Violence Prevention.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, June 2018, www.cdc.gov/policy/hst/hi5/violenceprevention/ index.html. Accessed 17 Mar. 2019.
- “Violence: School-Based Programs.” Community Preventive Services Task Forces, Dec. 2004, www.thecommunityguide.org/findings/violence-school-based-programs. Accessed 17 Mar. 2019.
