After a student was shot and killed inside Ingraham High last week, Seattle Public Schools must now confront a familiar question as gun violence worsens: How do educators keep kids safe on campus?
Experts say even the most well-thought-out plans to address school violence aren’t 100% effective, nor do they address the wider epidemic of young people dying by gunfire, the vast majority of it happening outside of school. And they warn that a heavy-handed approach to school security can further alienate students rather than support their well-being.
But there are strategies to prevent future violence and respond to tragedy, some of which the district is already doing. Among them: providing students with social and emotional support, and intervening when a student exhibits concerning behaviors — solutions that Seattle students said they wanted maximized during a public demonstration this week.
Schools and communities have approached school safety in a variety of ways, with some education and policy leaders more focused more on “hardening” schools, by placing more police in buildings, enhancing surveillance systems, and using metal detectors to screen students for weapons.
Those strategies can have a negative impact on students’ academic outcomes and don’t reduce crime, said Odis Johnson Jr., executive director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools. “Schools are doubling down on the approaches and responses that have proven least effective,” Johnson said.
Those efforts have also caused local and federal spending on school safety and security to skyrocket. “Twenty-five years ago it was in the millions, and now it’s in the billions and billions and billions of dollars,” said Ron Avi Astor, a professor at UCLA and longtime expert on school safety issues.
Astor and a group of experts from across the country created an eight-point plan to reduce gun violence, backed by extensive research. They recommend schools continuously evaluate their school climate, limit disciplinary practices that remove students from class when possible, and use culturally responsive threat assessment teams that include mental health and law enforcement partners.
It’s also important to keep shootings in context, Astor said. Overall, certain kinds of school violence have been on the decline for the past two decades, but the number of shootings in schools or on campuses has gone up slightly in recent years.
“In almost every category of school safety, things have gotten better except for the school shootings,” Astor said. Most school-aged children won’t see a shooting inside their school, and even fewer of them will ever experience a mass shooting, he said.
Astor says it’s essential that schools implement cohesive strategies, rooted in a clear vision.
He and Johnson also agree that student involvement is a critical step toward finding what works in a particular community — not just to keep kids safe, but also to keep them on the path to academic success.
“I don’t think we look to kids often in trying to understand how they make sense of safety within their schools, and that’s where we’ll find answers,” Johnson said.
How SPS handles school security
In Seattle, the district has its own security department that handles incidents like fights, drugs and other minor issues without involving the police. These employees don’t carry guns or wear uniforms, and they report to the building principal, said Benjamin Coulter, assistant manager of safety and security at Seattle Public Schools.
Each Seattle school also has a committee that works on safety and emergency response plans, including health issues and violent threats. The district focuses on creating multiple layers of prevention, Coulter said, such as identifying potential dangers or threats, resolving conflicts through restorative justice practices and teaching kids social emotional learning skills to help prevent an issue from escalating.
Coulter said funding is Seattle’s biggest challenge.
That’s a problem nationwide. Building systems that are flexible and responsive — and ultimately effective in preventing violence — takes time and dedicated people to do it, said Dewey Cornell, a forensic clinical psychologist at the University of Virginia who specializes in threat assessments. It also requires following up with proper services and interventions.
“There’s a huge resource problem … more than any problem with the model of threat assessment is the lack of staffing,” Cornell said.
Schools also reflect what’s happening in their communities, making gun access and policies a critical part of the conversation.
“It’s unreasonable to focus just on schools … the problem is not school violence, but gun violence,” Cornell said.
The news media’s focus on schools creates an incomplete picture of the scope of gun violence in the community, said Matt Remle, who was working on campus the day of the deadly 2014 Marysville-Pilchuck High School shooting. Remle runs the district’s Indian Education Department.
“Nothing against the phone call and the questions — but we often don’t get that type of question about the shootings in our neighborhoods,” said Remle, who lives in the Othello neighborhood of South Seattle. “It’s a lot of young men — young men of color — getting killed by drive-by shootings.”
Remle doesn’t know what would ultimately stop a student from bringing a gun, knife or a weapon to school. The best hope, he said, is building good, healthy relationships with them.
Responding to school shootings
School shootings are rare in Seattle, and the district has never had a mass shooting, generally defined as a shooting with three or more victims. A U.S. Navy data set and The Seattle Times archives show around half a dozen reported incidents of gunfire or attempted gun violence on Seattle school grounds since the 1990s, most of them nonfatal.
After the Ingraham shooting, the district announced it would conduct a safety audit, convene a “child well-being council” and begin a work group with the Seattle Police Department. (The district had cut most ties with the city police department during racial justice protests in 2020.)
Earlier this year, Seattle students rallied for more gun control laws and mental health support in schools. On Monday, in response to the Ingraham shooting, thousands of students walked out of class, then protested in front of Seattle City Hall. They called for mental health counselors in every school, representing the diverse backgrounds of students; updated safe gun storage laws; increased de-escalation and anti-racism training for security guards working in Seattle schools; and a ban on assault rifles.
State policymakers have passed laws that encourage school districts to hire more security staff, and created crisis response plans. The state education department has started collecting data on compliance with the law but has not yet determined if all districts are meeting the requirements. Current law also requires school districts to screen students and respond to signs of emotional distress.
In Yakima, the site of a fatal school shooting in March, the district is about to implement what is likely the most extensive lockdown system in the state. Every employee will have a device that can trigger their building’s alert system or signal for help. The local police department also delivers a daily report to the school district that includes whose students’ homes they’ve visited in response to domestic violence and other calls.
These changes didn’t happen because of the shooting; there were signs that the district needed to update its security measures, Yakima Superintendent Trevor Greene said. Most of these adjustments aren’t the type of “hardening” that researchers refer to — there aren’t routine searches of students’ belongings or metal detectors at all campuses.
“We prepare for the worst and we hope for the best, but we recognize this is a consistent and ongoing battle,” he said.
Marysville-Pilchuck still stands as one of Washington’s worst school shootings. A 15-year-old student shot five people, killing four of them, before turning the gun on himself. In the days that followed, Remle’s office was flooded with students seeking support. But one student who visited a grief counselor told Remle she felt like the counselor was just checking boxes instead of offering support.
So he and his colleagues offered other ways to cope at the school, which has a large population of Native students. They brought in Native American healing practices, such as talking circles, where students would get to share their feelings and frustrations; traditional medicines like sweet grass and sage; drumming and singing.
“We drew on that to really … give kids a sense of not normal but a sense of home, and welcome,” said Remle. “Whatever your community is, draw on the strengths of the community. These kids just wanted someone to listen to them.”
Seattle Times staff reporter Jenn Smith contributed to this report.
The opinions expressed in reader comments are those of the author only and do not reflect the opinions of The Seattle Times.