Communities demand long-term solutions once attention fades from school shootings | Local News

In the immediate aftermath of a shooting, the news media, gun control and gun rights activists and mental health advocates all now routinely swoop in with dramatic images of grieving parents and memorial services, with emotional calls to action.

Federal and state lawmakers have also thrown money at the problem — often via one-time or short-term grants — to up security with more cameras, reinforced doors and more campus police and mental health professionals.

“You see the knee-jerk reactions of legislators. And it is frequently one-time, shot in the arm grants,” said Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, based in Ohio.

For many police departments and school districts — especially smaller ones — jumping through the hoops of applying for federal and other grants is too daunting of a challenge to take on. And if they do plunge into that process and are successful at securing a grant, the pot isn’t infinite. They’ll have to figure out long-term funding after the original money runs out.

“The grant process is not simple. You can put a lot of work into it and end up with nothing,” said Martin Sayre, community engagement commander for the St. Cloud Police Department, in Minnesota. “I’m not a professional grant writer.”

The St. Cloud police force has 116 sworn officers — including school resource officers at local schools.

Sayre said new and enhanced security efforts frequently require financial and operational coordination between law enforcement and school districts.

Mac Sosa, chief of police in Stevensville, Montana (south of Missoula), said his law enforcement agency agreed to a 50/50 cost split with local schools for an on-campus officer. That is a common formula among school districts with school resource officers (SROs) on campus.

Sosa said he also tries to leverage regional and national training programs and resources related to active shooters, threat assessments and behavior interventions.

But Trump said the problem is getting longer-term sustainable investment in school security and moving beyond vendors offering infrastructure and “gadgets.”

“We are running into a number of people who want to do school safety on the cheap,” said Trump. “Many would rather do a one-time shot in the arm and install a few cameras. You have to strike a balance.”

Sayre said police and school districts need to realize that all schools and campuses are not created equal when addressing safety and the deterrence of violence.

Newer and older school buildings are unique — as are urban schools compared to suburban and rural counterparts.

“They are all different,” Sayre said. St. Cloud police are looking at how best to secure and access classrooms and other doors after the widely-publicized school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in May that left 19 students and two teachers dead.

Sayre said secure and reinforced doors have proven effective in protecting students in past shootings. However, police had trouble entering the classroom during the Uvalde shooting.

Some police departments are making sure officers have keys, key fobs and maps of schools as they learn the lessons from the delayed Texas response.

“That is one thing we are working on in the short-run and long-term,” Sayre said.

The national challenge is evolving the conversation from short-term attention and funding to long-term solutions that address school violence and its underlying causes.

“Are you being proactive or are you being reactionary?” said Amy Klinger, an education professor with Ashland University in Ohio and director of programs at the Educator’s School Safety Network.

Klinger said reactionary approaches too often center on political and media fights over guns and on active shooter drills that appease local worries but don’t actually fix anything. “Everyone goes into their corner and screams at each other,” Klinger said of the discourse and politics.

There were 97 shootings in classrooms and on campuses nationally this past school year and 943 gunfire incidents at American schools since 2013, according to Ronn Nozoe, CEO of the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

The Virginia-based group hosted a forum Aug. 22 with current and former principals from schools that have experienced high-profile shootings including in Columbine, Colorado and Parkland, Florida.

The forum focused on how school administrators who have dealt with previous shootings can help districts and communities who have suffered new violence.

In June, President Joe Biden and Congress approved a school safety package after the Uvalde shooting.

Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Martin said the measure offers more than $2 billion to help schools hire more mental health counselors and expand behavioral health services for students.

Federal school safety grant programs are administered by various agencies including the U.S departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Education. Those streams of funding have helped grow the school security to a $3.1 billion sector, according to a 2021 analysis by consulting firm Omdia. That is up from $2.7 billion in 2017.

The measure — which lacked enough congressional support for restrictive new gun controls — also offers $750 million to help states create and implement crisis intervention plans and to enact “red flag” laws that allow police to seize firearms from individuals deemed dangerous. The new federal measure law, which could face challenges under the Second Amendment, also implements enhanced gun purchase screening for buyers under the age of 21.

Red flag laws vary from state-to-state and give police powers to potentially confiscate firearms from individuals deemed dangerous. They do face criticism from Second Amendment adherents and scrutiny from civil libertarians concerned about potential overreach and use against those with unpopular or anti-government stances.

“We know big problems take big solutions,” said Martin at the NASSP event held in Littleton, Colorado ,where 15 people were killed at Columbine High School in 1999.

The difficulty has been getting those “big solutions” to stick.

Gun control advocates argue that without new restrictions — particularly on the AR-15 rifles favored by many school shooters — the carnage will continue.

Others say past efforts to focus on mental and behavioral health and to address a school bullying culture that, it’s been suggested, feeds the potential for shootings, have been short-lived.

“That’s cutting it for about a week and the kids are back to the same old ways,” said Brenda High, who founded Bully Police USA. High alleges her 13-year-old son committed suicide after being mistreated at his school in Washington state.

High, who now lives in Idaho, works to set up peer councils at schools to help address bullying.

Michelle Kefford is principal at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, where shooter Nikolas Cruz killed 17 and injured 17 more on Valentine’s Day 2018. Kefford said during the Aug. 22 forum in Colorado that the focus needs to be on getting students to trust teachers and administrators enough to tell them about distressed classmates and potential threats. That, Kefford said, is violence as important as increasing spending for security and mental health initiatives.

That requires engaging students and overcoming unwritten school yard codes and social norms against snitching.

Kefford and the other principals at the event also said the scars from school violence never completely fade and memories can easily be retriggered and become retraumatizing.

In Florida, that’s happening as sentencing hearings are underway this month for Cruz, who could face life in prison or the death penalty.

“That is opening wounds for all of my staff, all of my students and the entire community,” Kefford said.