Education Week - July 13, 2022 - 6

'The World Feels Less Stable':
Educators' Sense of School Safety Right Now
By Catherine Gewertz
Four in 10 educators feel less safe in
their schools now than they did five
years ago, according to a new survey by
the EdWeek Research Center. School
shootings factor heavily into their fears,
but so does a swirl of other dynamics,
from an angry political climate to a rise
in student and parent aggression.
The survey of 875 district and school
leaders and teachers, administered online
the second week of June, only a few
weeks after a gunman killed 19 children
and two teachers at Robb Elementary
in Uvalde, Texas, unearthed a complex
picture of their sense of safety. While 40
percent said they felt less safe than five
years ago, 38 percent said their sense of
safety hadn't changed in that period.
Two in 10 said they felt safer.
At the same time, in another question,
6 in 10 teachers and administrators
said that fear of a " purposeful
mass homicide " at their schools-by
an outsider or a student-was a key
factor in their worries about safety.
Suzanne Carter has taught high
school English in Rancho Cucamonga,
a foothills town an hour's drive east of
Los Angeles, for 25 years. She worries
about a school shooting on her campus
because there are " so many access
points " with too few security guards to
monitor them. But she's increasingly
fearful of her own students.
When the teenagers returned for
fully in-person instruction this year,
they " created a new threat " with misbehavior
so intense that it seemed
they'd " almost lost their humanness, "
Carter said. One student who'd been
in scuffles last year drew blood this
year by kicking another student in the
head with his heavy boots, she said.
In her own classroom, two students
got into a physical altercation, but
neither was removed from her classroom,
in part due to state rules requiring
schools to explore " other means
of correction " for disruptive students,
she said. " I just worry, is this the day
they turn it on me? " Carter said.
Carter's experience echoes through
the EdWeek survey. Educators who
said they felt less safe than five years
ago cited a range of reasons: too few
school resource officers, severe behavior
issues among students, antimask
or anti-vaccine sentiment, lax
school discipline policies, angry parents.
They also cited a general sense
of unsafety, with one respondent noting:
" The world feels less stable. "
Teachers and administrators who
reported feeling safer in school than
five years ago cited a range of reasons,
too: stepped-up safety training for
staff members, the presence of schoolresource
or law enforcement officers,
locked or monitored doors, secured perimeters,
video cameras, and, in some
cases, armed staff members.
Glenn Bryant, the principal of Ardmore
High School, in a small Alabama
town near the Tennessee state line,
said he feels safe in his school because
of its stepped-up security measures.
His building has a full-time schoolresource
officer. Every door now requires
staffers to scan their ID cards to
enter, and every room has a security
box on the wall that can trigger sirens
and flashing blue lights with the touch
of a fingertip. The boxes also contain a
baton and pepper spray " for close-up
defense, " he said.
" I spent 22 years as a Navy reservist
and a year in Iraq, " Bryant said.
" There have been times in my life
I've been scared. But never in school. "
Bryant also swears by the careful
attention to relationships in his
building. With only 125 students
per grade in his junior/senior
high school, adults can cultivate
connections that pay off when
it comes to security. Recently,
someone in the school community
tipped Bryant and his team
that a student had posted a photo
of himself with a gun on social media.
A search of his car found the loaded
pistol in the glove compartment.
The EdWeek survey results show that
even though many educators' sense of
safety has declined, mass shootings are
grabbing the headlines, and reports of
student aggression are soaring, only a
small proportion actually say they feel
unsafe in their schools.
When they were asked for a rightnow
snapshot-how safe do you typically
feel in your schools?-only 15 percent
of teachers and administrators
said they felt unsafe. Among the other
85 percent, half said they were " very "
safe and half said they were " somewhat "
safe.
Ron Astor, who studies the dynamics
of school violence as a professor of social
welfare at UCLA, said research on
the subject is rife with such paradoxes.
Since violent crime against students at
school has been declining for 25 years,
Astor said he'd expect increases in the
proportions of people who report feeling
safe at school, but that isn't the case.
In research on school safety, educators
often report feeling safe in their
own schools, he said, which could
explain the more upbeat findings
in the EdWeek survey. But safety is
highly subjective, and can be shaped
by events in the larger world, and that
could explain the darker findings in
the survey, Astor said.
Most educators report worry
about mass homicides
Six in 10 respondents to the EdWeek
survey cited large-scale school shootings
as a key safety concern. When
asked what sources of potential violence
worried them most, 63 percent
chose " mass homicide " by outsiders
or students.
Nineteen percent said they worried
about violence stemming from student-on-student
conflict, and 11 percent
said they feared conflict between
students and outsiders. Purposeful
mass homicide by a current or former
6 | EDUCATION WEEK | July 13, 2022 | www.edweek.org
11
32
19
31
What is your biggest area
of concern/anxiety/fear about
the potential source of school
violence/gun violence in your
school or, if you are a district
leader, in your district?
employee was cited as a fear by only 2
percent of respondents.
School shootings, especially like
the attack in Uvalde, are statistically
rare. But the powerful, visceral impact
of shooting rampages deeply shapes
society's views and drives the debates
and legislative responses that follow.
Asked specifically about gun violence,
however, 55 percent of the
survey respondents said schools are
safe from that threat. Two thirds said
their schools have safety measures in
place to prevent a school shooting,
and 6 in 10 said their schools-and
law enforcement-could stop a school
shooting before anyone is hurt.
That's not how Stephanie Derby
feels. She teaches middle school English
in a small town in southeastern
Minnesota, but she worries about
strangers having easy access to her preK-12
building. Staff members, working
in " a town where everyone knows everyone, "
often prop open the school's
doors. There are no school-resource
or law enforcement officers around.
She is increasingly uneasy when her
students see reports of faraway school
shootings on the news, and ask her if
their school is safe.
She's also worried for her own
personal safety. At a parent-teacher
conference in November, a student
picked up a desk and threw it at her,
with both parents present. At 52, she's
starting to wonder if she should retire
earlier than she'd planned. " Every day
I mull it over, " Derby said.
In the small town of Jonesville, La.,
Benny Vault Jr. worries less that one
of his students will get shot at school
than that they'll be plucked off the
Purposeful mass homicide by outsider
Purposeful mass homicide by student
Student on student conflict (interpersonal disputes)
Outsider-on-student conflict/community violence spillover
Student on student crime (robbery, assault)
Gang violence within student population
Purposeful mass homicide by a current or former employee
campus by a stranger. A longtime
football coach and physical education
teacher at Block High School, Vault
said his community has been fighting
against human trafficking, and his
school doesn't feel secure enough in
the face of that danger.
" We have an open campus, no fencing, "
he said. " Someone could just
walk right in off the street. "
Threads of danger, fusing into
uneasiness
In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Adrienne
Khan is concerned about a possible
school shooting; her elementary school
is in the same county where 14 students
died in a shooting at Marjory Stoneman
Douglas High in 2018. But she's also
worried about the adult visitors who
flow through the building daily.
" It's great that the gates and the
doors are locked, and we have security
guards, but the fact of the matter
is, they let [visitors] through the
doors, and you're carrying a big bag,
and how do I know what's in the bag? "
said Khan, who teaches 4th grade at
Bayview Elementary. " I just have a
level of distrust of everybody now. "
Some of that distrust is fueled by the
media drumbeat of mass shootings.
Some is bred by incidents with angry
parents. Not long ago, school officials
had to call police when a parent and a
grandparent came to blows outside the
school over a child's pickup arrangements,
Khan said. A recent meeting she
attended over a child's individualized
education plan had to be quickly disbanded
when one of the parents started
screaming at staff members, she said.
38
Compared to five years ago,
how safe do you currently
feel in the school where you
work or-if you are a district
leader-in the schools in your
district?
Much less safe
Somewhat less safe
About the same
Somewhat more safe
Much more safe
I was not working in a district
or school five years ago
*Results show responses from teachers,
principals, and district leaders.
SOURCE: EdWeek Research Center survey,
June 2022
Florida's new laws restricting what
can be taught in the classroom about
gender and sexuality have also woven
anxiety into her days, Khan said.
" I'm always on edge about what I can
teach, and not sure who's going to
come in and yell at me, " she said.
Derby, the Minnesota teacher, said
she never used to keep her classroom
doors locked. But after the Uvalde
shooting, " that changed. "
2%
9
11
30
10
2%
3 2
6 in 10 educators said
a mass shooting by a
student or outsider
was their biggest
source of fear
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http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - July 13, 2022

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