Education Week - November 17, 2021 - 7

With so many kids out of school last year,
some seem to have pulled into neighborhood
turf squabbles, she said.
" We have some issues that we've been dealing
with for years and years. This year, however
we have brought our kids back-23,000
of them-and for some reason we've decided
we were going to pretend the pandemic had
never happened and ignore 18 months of trauma
induced by the pandemic students have
experienced, " Mundorff said in an interview.
" And we've just had these arguments, these
conflicts that ignited on day one. The violence
that had been happening outside of the school
just carried over. "
School shooting on par with prepandemic
levels
Disparate sources of data generally support
the notion that what's happening in
schools this year is actually a reflection of
general trends.
National homicide rates soared in 2020,
according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
although other types of crime generally
continued a steady decline. And Americans
have been on a gun-buying spree during the
pandemic. There are now simply more guns in
desk drawers, on the streets, and in cabinets.
School shootings are also on track to outpace
the figures in 2018 and 2019.
Education Week began its own tracker
of school related shootings in 2018 in an attempt
to cut through the morass of different
definitions used by federal agencies and researchers.
Our criteria are more restrictive
than other collections. We include only those
incidents that take place during school hours
or events, on school property, and in which at
least one individual is wounded by a bullet.
According to EdWeek's criteria, as of Monday
of this week, there have been 24 incidents
so far this year, resulting in 40 deaths or injuries.
Two-thirds of these incidents occurred
on or after Aug 1. There were also 24 incidents
each in 2018 and 2019.
(The gun-control organization Everytown
USA, which has more expansive criteria, also
shows this year's school shooting figures paralleling
2019's.)
Details of the incidents are distressingly
familiar. At least six began with fights or altercations
between students that spilled over
into gun violence. Six occurred at-or just
following-football games. Three appear to
have been precipitated by a pattern of bullying.
School
shootings nevertheless remain exceptionally
rare, and the small sample makes
EdWeek's collection a limited proxy for trying
to determine overall violence trends. But
the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that
tracks and confirms shootings from thousands
of data sources, found that more children,
not fewer, were harmed by gun violence
in 2020, when many students were working
from home, than in each of the past seven
years.
Finally, children, like adults, are tired, isolated,
and traumatized by the last 20 months.
The numbers of children visiting emergency
rooms for mental-health issues increased
dramatically in a seven-month period in
2020, according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, causing three children's
health organizations recently to declare
a mental health state of emergency.
The nation is still in the crisis of the pandemic
with no real end in sight, pointed out
Margaret A. Sedor, a school psychologist
and a member of the National Association of
School Psychologists' school safety and crisis
response committee. And students can display
a range of crisis reactions, which may in2018
There
have been 82 school
shootings in which at least
one person was injured or
killed since 2018.
2019
2020
2021
clude aggression, in response to the losses of
the last two years.
" They've had almost two years of being socialized
and acculturated in a different way,
and we need to acknowledge and support
community re-engagement, " she said.
What it all adds up to, said Densley, is this:
The global pandemic has exacerbated risk
factors for violence in general, like loneliness,
isolation, and economic instability. Violence
also tends to rise at times of uncertainty, especially
when distrust in public institutions is
high. And social media serves as an accelerant,
whipping up anger and frenzy.
" Now you tie that together with last year's
record gun sales-and we've got more people
carrying guns in public because of more lax
laws in that regard, " he said. " And you can
sort of put two and two together and say guns
are just more likely to be found in the hands
of juveniles. "
Some districts consider a return to
school-based policing
Those sobering conclusions seem primed
to restart an already searing debate over the
role that school resource officers and other
safety personnel play in schools.
Earlier this summer, Education Week
found that a small number of U.S. school
districts removed police officers or cut their
school-policing budgets in the wake of racial-justice
protests in 2020. Some of those
communities, like Alexandria, Va., are now
beginning to have second thoughts.
In Rochester, the president of the teachers'
union and three other labor groups representing
educators recently demanded that
the district consider several options, including
restoring SROs in high schools, increasing
the number of school safety officers, and
offering evening or remote learning options
for disruptive students.
The district did not respond to a request for
comment on its safety plans. Its superintendent
has acknowledged the concerns about
violence in public statements.
In other places, advocates fear that more
10
24
violence could put paid to longstanding efforts
there to remove school officers.
The Shelby County district, which includes
Memphis, has resuscitated the idea of a
" peace force " staffed by district-hired police
officers in the wake of a harrowing shooting
at a public K-8 school in late September, apparently
prompted by bullying, that left one
student in critical condition.
" I'm very concerned about the child, obviously.
But my second thought is, 'Oh no,
what does this do to trying to get law enforcement
out of schools?' Because so many
people think [having a police officer] is like a
Band-Aid, " said Cardell Orrin, the Memphis
executive director at Stand for Children Tennessee,
which has pushed to remove sheriffs'
deputies from schools. " It makes people feel
better rather than solving the challenges, and
it potentially further criminalizes children.
That is the fear, and I think that's the fear nationally,
too. "
Researchers continue to learn more about
SROs and the tradeoffs that having them can
mean for students. In an important study released
earlier this month, a team of researchers
studying federal data found that having
an SRO did reduce some violent incidents in
schools, mainly fights, but did not appear to
reduce shootings or firearm-related incidents.
And their presence came at a high price: It
meant that a higher proportion of students
were suspended, arrested, or referred to the
juvenile-justice systems, and the toll fell disproportionately
on Black students. (The research
has not yet been peer reviewed.)
Districts will need to honor the
complexities
Even these new insights, though, don't always
make it clear what's happening in the
black box. For one thing, it's ultimately principals
who make the call on whether to suspend
students, not officers themselves, and
principals who, alongside officers, can refer
students into the juvenile justice system. Put
another way, the research appears to point to
broader cultural problems in schools.
24
24
Police respond to a shooting at
a K-8 public school on Sept.
30 in Memphis, Tenn. Authorities
say a boy was shot and
wounded.
The body of school safety literature invariably
recommends that improved school culture
and safety hinge on strong relationships
between adults and students.
Getting kids back into school and back in
routines and being reconnected with their
peers and classmates is a critical step, said
Sedor, the school psychologist. But it demands
that districts think systematically
about how to support students, and that they
move from merely reacting to incidents to intervention
and wellness-promotion efforts.
" I think it's bringing folks together and acknowledging
that things have changed and
talking about fear and loss, and then problem-solving
and strengthening coping strategies, "
she said. " It's about relationships and
being able to listen. "
But desperate to respond to frightened
communities, districts often seek out immediate,
tangible improvements rather than the
painstaking work of improving school culture.
For good or ill, police officers and other
hardening measures-fences, metal detectors,
bulletproof glass-signify safety, even
though, for the most part, not much evidence
suggests they contribute to safer schools.
" People want to see what you're doing for
safety, and police are very visible. Connecting
kids with resources or using social workers
or school psychologists-those things
are not as kind of in-your-face or apparent, "
noted Joe McKenna, a senior research associate
at WestEd's Justice & Prevention Research
Center.
Even teachers who say they're close to
their breaking points acknowledge the complex
calculus.
" I know that teachers are annoyed that the
focus keeps going to school resources officers
because there are so many more levels to
it, and everyone just focuses on them, " said
Mundorff, the Rochester teacher. " Would it
be helpful to have one? Sure. Does that solve
all our problems? Absolutely not. We have
three social workers for 952 students who are
carrying tons of trauma. And now we have
students who weren't carrying trauma before
the pandemic and the ones before are carrying
a ton more. "
In Madison, Wis., Gloria Reyes represents
the radical middle when it comes to the ongoing
school safety conversation.
A former law enforcement officer, she
served on the city school board when it voted
in June 2020 to remove SROs. She now teaches
classes, including on racism within the
criminal justice system at Madison College,
and runs a local nonprofit.
She strongly supports the restorative justice
programs that have replaced school policing
in the district, but she's also concerned
that teachers and other educators aren't well
trained to respond to incidents of violence.
And while she agrees that communities have
for far too long relied on police for things they
shouldn't, they've simultaneously neglected
other critical social investments, she notes.
If rising violence is due to a simple equation-that
hurt kids hurt other kids-the solution,
she fears, is complex.
" We have to have professionals out in our
communities, visiting with families and visiting
with children and doing the outreach and
support, " Reyes said. " You know, it's going to
take families, parents, teachers, social workers-it's
going to take everyone to prevent
fighting. "
EDUCATION WEEK | November 17, 2021 | www.edweek.org | 7
Adrian Sainz/AP
http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - November 17, 2021

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