Columbine: Ten years onOfficials ponder the lessons of Columbine
Next week will mark ten years to the Columbine High shooting; hundreds of millions have been invested in school security, but money is drying up, and emphasis on campus security is weakening; some say say simpler, cheaper measure would be best in any event
It was ten years ago, on 20 April 1999, that two students at Columbine High pulled guns and home-made grenades out of their duffel bags and then, methodically, walked through the hall ways and class rooms shooting students and teachers, killing 12 and then killing themselves.
Since then, hundreds of millions of dollars — from federal, state, and local coffers — poured into school safety, buying metal detectors, security cameras, and elaborate emergency-response plans. The money also paid for the hiring of 6,300 police officers on campuses, and for training students to handle bullying and manage anger.
Wall Street Journal’s Stephanie Simon writes that ten years later, the money is drying up. The primary pot of federal grants has been cut by a third, a loss of $145 million. The Justice Department has scrapped the cops in schools program, once budgeted at $180 million a year. States are slashing spending, too, or allowing districts to buy textbooks with funds once set aside for security measures.
Indeed, money is so tight that the Colorado district that includes Columbine High, which reopened four months after the shootings, has canceled its annual violence-prevention convention. Miami can afford to send just half as many students as it used to through anger-management training. Many educators and security consultants find the cutbacks frightening.
Simon writes that some wonder whether progress is being measured by the wrong yardstick. Even as they ask for more money, an alarming number of schools admit to ignoring inexpensive, common-sense safeguards. Federal funding for school crisis planning has been cut by 25 percent in recent years, a loss of nearly $10 million. What good is a pricey plan, some officials ask, when close to 40 percent of administrators admit they are not adequately training their own staff on emergency procedures?
The federal government has boosted spending on what might be considered the “softer” components of safe schools. Grants for mental health and counseling, for instance, have soared from $20 million the year after Columbine to nearly $58 million today. This does not make up for the cuts in other school-safety programs, officials say, but they say they are spending smarter.
“A lot of what we learned coming out of Columbine didn’t [require] large sums of money,” said William Modzeleski, who runs the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. “School safety is more than cameras, metal detectors and police officers.”
Simon writes that in a recent survey of 445 educators conducted by the American Association of School Administrators, nearly 80 percent of respondents called school-safety funds “stretched” or “inadequate.” Yet many also said they left quick, inexpensive fixes undone. More than 15 percent reported that their school entrances are neither locked nor monitored. A third confessed to propping open doors, giving intruders easy access. One in five did not equip recess and field-trip monitors with walkie-talkies to report suspicious sightings or brewing conflicts. Moreover, 29 percent either had no safety committee or indicated doubts about its effectiveness. Such committees are intended to bring together parents, teachers and local law enforcement at regular intervals. “Many, many districts still have the Mayberry mentality — we’re nice and quiet” and it won’t happen here, said Paul Timm, president of consulting firm RETA Security.
Schools hold regular fire drills because they are mandated by law. They work; no student has died in a school fire for decades. Timm says far too few schools hold lock-down drills, or run tabletop simulations of a crisis with police and paramedics.
