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The Daily Signal
Here’s How
School Security Should Be Improved in 4 Easy Steps
Steven Bucci & Peter Bucci
July 27, 2018
Since publication of an earlier commentary on four steps to achieving
better school security, many organizations have been in contact to
offer excellent additional ways to reach this desired end state.
Again, there is no simple solution. We cannot just ban guns, or hand
them out willy-nilly, and expect our kids to be safe. America must get
beyond the political theater and posturing and do the hard work of
making our schools secure places for kids to learn and grow.
What is needed is a true system of overall security.
The American people must determine that schools are a big enough
priority to take action. Some groups have done so. Organizations like
the FASTER (Faculty/Administrator Safety Training and Emergency
Response) Program founded in Ohio, or the National Rifle Association’s
School Shield program, offer training and support relating to physical
security and first aid for any school district that wants it.
There are others as well. The University of Southern California’s
Rossier School of Education has developed an entire construct of steps
to add psychological security measures to achieve balance among the
students affected. They do this in their online master’s program in
school counseling.
The experts at Defend Systems in Nashville called for a much-increased
emphasis in emergency first aid, particularly for trauma wounds. They
were spot-on, and this is a great additional call. Defend Systems
provides local schools with that critical skill set.
There are still four steps that must be taken to increase security in
our schools and decrease the likelihood of a shooting and the number of
children who will be harmed. Those steps are really four interconnected
pillars: pre-emptive response, access control, hardening classrooms,
and on-site incident response.
1. Responding Pre-emptively
In order to pre-emptively stop school violence, it is vital to
establish an environment that provides solid psychological security. A
promising track is to develop relevant and up-to-date forms and modes
of psychological first aid.
Psychological first aid should be a national strategy used as a
preventative measure for dealing with more serious psychological
trauma. Currently, the development of psychological first aid can be
highly effective in smaller sample populations such as schools, a
workplace, or a religious or social association, and can be put into
practice in everyday life.
As it pertains to schools, and school-age kids, the initial action is
to involve the students. Using them as an informational resource can
make all subsequent actions more effective. Survey their experiences
and then use the information openly (but anonymously) so they can see
the follow-through.
Additionally, put students in as many leadership positions in the
process as possible. This grows them, and will provide a wealth of
insights that the adults might have missed.
All of this will build trust and inclusion that will empower the other
pre-emptive actions. The students will be your best source of
information. This generation of young people lives in near-constant
communication, but it is not always transparent to the staff and
faculty. Given that there were warning signs before almost all of the
recent school shootings (many of which were stopped), making the
students a part of this process is a key.
That said, these warning signs must provoke immediate action. The
majority of the shooters have had some mental health or social
interaction issues, and people noticed. The Parkland shooter was
flagged multiple times, yet no one took action.
This was egregious, but not that abnormal. Police and school officials
have to respond to red flags on social media or in overheard
conversations. This response must be immediate and highly public. That
way, we can stop what we know about, and deter what we don’t.
Teachers must follow due process, but fear of overstepping one’s bounds
must not be allowed to obstruct intervention. Worries about giving a
student a “black mark” must be swept aside. Troubled individuals—and
all those around them—are much better served by stopping them from
doing something potentially drastic and deadly. Action must be taken
before shots are fired, if at all possible.
2. Control Access to the School
The second pillar is firmly controlling access to school facilities. If
a person does not belong in the school, or is attempting to bring in
prohibited items such as weapons, they must be denied access. Schools
must have limited points of entry (one or at most two), each of which
should be monitored and controlled by personnel that can turn people
away when needed.
School personnel and students must not be able to “cheat” by opening
doors for friends or for parents. Worse yet is opening doors for a
stranger, just to be “nice.” Convenience must not be a factor. If a
shooter is blocked from entering a school, they are unlikely to do much
harm, or at least a lot less.
Controlling access to a school is particularly critical at the
beginning and end of the day, but also applies during the remainder of
the day. The question, “How did the shooter get in?” is always a
pivotal one.
How people enter the building and who monitors the access process are a
key set of decisions. They must be tailored to each specific school.
Too much security, or too heavy-handed a footprint can add
psychological insecurity to the student body, which can do harm even if
a shooting never takes place.
A balance must be found and maintained. This decision cannot be driven
from outside the school. It must be seen as part of the school’s
central “culture.” If students see it that way—which will require
research, education as to the reasoning, and a deft touch with both
students and parents—they will be far more likely to buy into the
practice.
3. Hardening the Classroom
Next, we must do a better job of securing (or hardening) classrooms as
potential targets inside the school. Classrooms are often chosen to
shelter-in-place, particularly for the youngest kids who are very
difficult to move quickly.
All classroom doors have windows to allow observation (and protection
for the children), but in an active shooter situation, this becomes a
liability. There needs to be a low-cost, fast way of blocking the
outside view through the window. Likewise, the doors must be lockable
from the inside by the door’s organic lock, and with some sort of very
simple, quickly applied additional blocking mechanism.
Within the classroom, teachers must be able to provide their students
both cover (protection from gunfire) and concealment (a place to hide).
The courageous teacher who hid her young pupils in storage cabinets and
then faced the gunman in Sandyhook gave her life, but her quick
thinking saved the children.
There are now bulletproof sanctuaries that can be put inside classrooms
and can double as “story corners.” While these may be beyond the
budgets of most schools, it’s a good model to provoke the imagination.
We must devise the best cover and concealment we can find.
As a last resort, teachers and older kids should also make a
determination as to how they might actually fight an attacker with
improvised weapons available in the class.
The best mode of attack must be specified for each individual
classroom, grade level, and teacher. Teachers should first be briefed
or taught by an expert what is expected of them. Then, the teachers
should devise a specific plan of action for their own classroom. This
should be reviewed and, if need be, adjusted so that it provides the
maximum protection and the minimum of psychological insecurity.
Once the plan is approved and set, it should be “published” in writing
so it is not just in the teacher’s head. (Any substitute teacher should
be required to review these plans.)
Lastly, drills should be conducted, first with the teacher alone, then
with adults role-playing as the kids, and finally with the actual
students. Older kids (high schoolers) can be told what the drills are
really for, though teachers should characterize them for younger
students as something like “stranger” drills, to avoid any unneeded
worry.
4. On-Site Incident Response
That leads to pillar No. 4: Schools must have an on-site response
capability that can confront and stop an active shooter.
Law enforcement will do their best to respond in a timely manner, but
they will quite often fail. Most active shooter scenarios are done
within 3-6 minutes. Few, if any, police or sheriff departments can
promise to respond that quickly, especially in non-urban areas. How
schools achieve this capability is again a delicate decision.
Every school district or individual school should come to this decision
themselves. A highly centralized “solution” is not recommended. The
“how” of achieving an adequate on-site response must once again factor
in the school culture. This is clearly the most contentious aspect of
school security.
There are four main options. (1) A school can have dedicated police
assets on campus; (2) they can hire private security personnel; (3)
they can seek volunteer security personnel from the community (such as
veterans or retired law enforcement); or (4) they can have armed staff
and/or faculty.
There are numerous options for schools to attain this on-site
capability, and communities must choose what they can support, both
budget-wise and within their collective moral structures. Remember: Too
much security can be almost as big a problem as too little, so the
right solution for each school is critical.
This is about more than just handing out pistols or asking those with
concealed carry permits to bring their weapons to work. This will
involve protocols for the storage of weapons, psych evaluations for
those who volunteer, and extensive training regimens. The training must
include negotiation and de-escalation skills, non-lethal control
techniques, team response drills, firearms training, and extensive
trauma-level first aid.
This all bears emphasis: You must have the correct people as well as
the correct training. The firearms training in particular must entail
far more than shooting a few dozen rounds at a local range. Shooting in
close proximity to non-hostile personnel is the most difficult gun
skill to learn—it must be trained and drilled until it is engrained,
and only attempted in the correct situations. This is particularly
essential if we are going to depend on a volunteer- or staff-based
response capability.
The fact that certain individuals will actively deter and respond to
threats need not lead to culture of fear among the student body. Local
schools and communities will be able to develop their own psychosocial
infrastructure that is compatible with each individual’s preferred form
of security.
Some students are more attracted to a physical procedure, and therefore
will be more likely to respond appropriately based on their training.
Likewise, those who are attracted to a psychological facilitation can
respond positively and rebound more quickly from the trauma of an
attack event.
Both deterring and facilitating through adequately trained response are
necessary to maintain psychological strength and resilience. This is
needed both in the event and immediately afterward.
One final note of action. No matter how one of these situations plays
out, the school and community will be severely traumatized. If a solid
base of psychological security has been laid beforehand, along with the
physical security measures, the school and student body have the best
chance of weathering the tragedy with the least damage.
Strong follow-up support must begin as soon as the site is secured, and
it must continue until every need is met. If the kids know the
counseling department well from pre-existing relationships, this can go
relatively quickly. Bringing in strangers may be needed, but it not
optimal. School districts are better served if the counseling
department is well and professionally staffed long before any event
occurs.
These four steps (and the follow-up) will not guarantee 100 percent
safety in our schools, but they will materially increase that security
through deterrence, strong defense measures, and adeptness in ending
the killing as quickly as possible, and returning to normality as
swiftly as possible.
These are not pie-in-the-sky ideas. They are already being applied in
hundreds of schools across America. It is time to apply them in all our
schools.
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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