School safetyKeeping Students Safe Is a Growth Industry Struggling to Fulfill Its Mission
There is a lot of federal, state and local money spent to “harden” school buildings and campuses. It’s a booming business that by 2017 had become an estimated $2.7 billion industry with about $1.5 billion directed toward K-12 school safety. But based on my research on school safety practices, I believe that – in addition to doing more to regulate access to automatic weapons – what’s actually needed is more funding for mental health services in communities and schools to help heed and address warning signs before someone becomes violent.
In the 25 years I’ve spent working as a school psychologist and professor of school psychology, I’ve never seen so much federal, state and local money spent to “harden” school buildings and campuses.
The term encompasses a wide array of steps being taken to keep students safe amid increasingly frequent mass shootings. Examples include arming teachers, conducting active-shooter drills and installing surveillance systems.
It’s a booming business that by 2017 had become an estimated $2.7 billion industry with about $1.5 billion directed toward K-12 school safety.
But based on my research on school safety practices, I believe that – in addition to doing more to regulate access to automatic weapons – what’s actually needed is more funding for mental health services in communities and schools to help heed and address warning signs before someone becomes violent.
New Architecture
With the federal government’s 2018 commitment to spend $1 billion over the next decade and states like Florida allocating hundreds of millions more in 2019 for school safety initiatives, changes are happening everywhere.
Most money to date has been focused on changes to school buildings.
In Fruitport, Michigan, the local school district spent $48 million to improve school safety through a high school renovation.
The money is paying for curved hallways to reduce a shooter’s line of sight, concrete “wing walls” that jut out a few feet to create a physical space for people to seek cover from gun shots, impact-resistant windows to protect students and staff from glass shattered by gunfire and technology that makes it possible to instantly lock classroom doors when someone perceives a threat.
Likewise, Connecticut gave Newtown a $50 million grant to help it build a new Sandy Hook Elementary School to replace the one that was demolished after the 2012 mass shooting that killed 20 children and six adults at the school.
The new building’s automatically locking classroom doors and other safety features meet the state’s beefed-up guidelines, which in turn were heavily influenced by the Department of Homeland Security’s recommended standards.
In Oregon, the Bend-La Pine school district is spending millions to build “safety vestibules” – locking entryways that can slow or prevent access through the front door.
