Education Week - October 12, 2016 - 7

Boy, 6, dead in wake
of teen's gunfire
By Evie Blad
A shooting at an elementary
school rocked Townville, S.C., leaving a 6-year-old dead and two other
students and a teacher injured.
But school leaders say the situation that unfolded late last month
could have been worse if not for
practices that limited the alleged
14-year-old shooter's access to the
building and the students inside.
Those included self-locking external doors, visibility inside the building, and staff members prepared to
respond to an active shooter, Anderson District 4 Superintendent
Joanne Avery said in a letter to
parents.
The shooter, who police say shot
and killed his father before arriving
at the 285-student Townville Elementary School, began firing from
the playground as children were
coming outside for recess.
"Immediately upon those shots
being fired, our students were led
to safe locations by the teachers,"
Avery said. "The doors were secured,
and the shooter was denied access to
the building and our students. Administrators and teachers at Townville Elementary followed all district
procedures by immediately placing

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the school on lockdown and taking
children to secure locations."
In the aftermath of school shootings, public debate often focuses on
such issues as arming teachers, increasing police in schools, or investing in costly security infrastructure.
That's the case now in Anderson
County, where some leaders have
proposed placing school resource officers in every elementary school or
allowing teachers to carry guns.
But many school safety experts
say more basic efforts to limit
schools' exterior access, boost visibility indoors, and train teachers
and staff about how to respond to
an intruder are some of the most
important steps schools can take.
"We need to reinforce or reintroduce these basic fundamentals,"
school security consultant Kenneth
Trump said. "We have a number of
people in the post-Sandy Hook era
who've been focused on questionable,
over-the-top tactics," he said, referring to the 2012 shooting at the Newtown, Conn., school that took the lives
of 20 students and six staff members.

The Shooting
The family of 6-year-old Jacob Hall,
who died after several days in critical condition, laid the kindergartner
to rest in Townville last week after a
superhero-themed service.
The alleged shooter awaits trial on
two counts of murder and two counts

of attempted murder. He never made
it into the building, officials said.
A volunteer firefighter, who arrived on the scene, restrained him
until law-enforcement officials arrived seven minutes after the shooting started.
The school canceled classes for several days before planning to return
last week. Teachers were to return
a day early to prepare to address
the issue in classes, and the district
planned to provide counselors and
therapy dogs for students to help
them process the events emotionally,
the superintendent said.
The school took "additional safety
precautions" as students were scheduled to return, including an increased
police presence to calm parents' fears,
Avery wrote in a message to families
before school was set to resume.
"We want our children to feel safe,
but we don't want the additional police presence to scare them," Avery
wrote. "We are attempting to find a
healthy balance."
It's not unusual for educators and
policymakers to explore upgraded
safety measures in the aftermath of
an attack, and those conversations
often extend beyond district and
even state boundaries as parents
around the country respond to news
reports with fear and anxiety.
The "fundamentals" of school
safety training and controlling exterior access were stressed at schools
across the country after the 1999

Rainier Ehrhardt/AP-File

Shooting Reignites Safety Concerns

Joey Taylor reunites with daughter Josie Taylor following a shooting at
Townville Elementary School in Townville, S.C. A 14-year-old is accused of
killing a 6-year-old and injuring three other people.

shootings at Columbine High School
in Colorado, which dramatically
changed practices, said Trump, who
is based in Cleveland.

Emotional Topic
But the safety of vulnerable children is an understandably emotional
topic, so members of the public often
look for quick fixes like untested response plans and expensive gadgets,
he said.
"There's been this sort of mantra of
do something, do anything, and do it
fast," Trump said.
Townville Elementary School and
the entire Anderson County district
had made a number of safety up-

grades in the last six years, Avery
said. Those included locked entry
vestibules in all schools, systems
that require visitors to buzz for
entry, cameras to improve visibility in hallways, and regular safety
drills with students and staff members, she said.
Trump said it's important for
schools to focus on such "human elements" of safety such as training
and teaching staff members about
proper protocols because even the
most sophisticated door lock won't
keep a school safe if that door is
propped open against school rules.
"The nuts and bolts things that
need to be done take as much time
as they do money," Trump said.

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Education Week - October 12, 2016

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