Excessive violence in schools

[Ken]

i’ve read, because of local high crime rates, inner city schools are better prepared to PREVENT gun violence on school grounds,
thus “most school shooters are white.”

this seems entirely plausible. taking practical measures of prevention is not magic.

That might be true in some cases. In some cities there are some schools that are pretty locked down, more to keep out gangs and drug dealing etc. than school shooters.

But generally speaking that isn't true. A lot of urban schools are older and were built in an era long before school security was a primary concern. In my current job I don't do full time teaching at one school anymore. I do long-term subbing in two different school districts across Vancouver which includes some very inner city/diverse schools and some wealthier suburban ones. So I bounce around to a lot of different schools. All last spring I was teaching chemistry at a fairly urban majority/minority school that was built in the late 1960s with most of the classrooms opening directly out to exterior breezeways so it was literally impossible to lock the school down or even secure it in any reasonable fashion. They had over 100 exterior classroom doors at that school. Anyone could basically walk off the street and directly into any classroom. There was security of course, driving aroud in their golf carts, but they couldn't possibly keep track of all the kids, parents, staff constantly coming and going.

By contrast, most newer suburban schools are built with security in mind. So they are sitting on big suburban lots and students/visitors are funneled into just one or two entrances, all visitors have their IDs scanned, get visitors passes, etc. And the hallways are generally long and straight radiating out from a central point so that one or two security guards can basically see most of the school. So it is much easier to lock them down and locate a shooter. There aren't all the endless stairwells, corridors, and quirky hidden corners that you find in older schools.

Any school built in the past 10-20 years is going to be designed with security as one of the design considerations. A lot of older schools (which are more common in inner cities) were never designed that way and it can be impossible to do much to fix them up short of just bulldozing them and starting fresh with new buildings. Which most urban school districts don't have the funds to do.

[Ken]

I fail to see how gun control does anything about fists.

Are we talking about school violence generally? Or one specific incident on one specific school bus in Miami?

Because the prevalence of school violence that results in actual injury and death is most definitely correlated with access to firearms.

School violence with fists is common in places like Japan and Korea. Just like everywhere else. But guess what. Far fewer children are killed or injured in Japanese and Korean schools because they don't give children access to firearms. And guess what. It isn't racial since they are all the same race.

[temporal1]

i realize a simple apology for going off-topic from the get-go is not to be expected.
not here or elsewhere on forum.

you know, i’m pretty sure there are non-tech or non-state of the art preventions regular folk (parents+teachers+admin) can+do employ to prevent gun violence in old school buildings. not everyone waits around for egg heads sitting in office cubbies googling stats to determine how to protect themselves, esp where gun violence is a regular occurrence.

shooters are known for 1) being cowards, 2) going after easy prey.

for myself, having prevention comparable to courthouses, airports, seems logical. not all are new construction.

[temporal1]

i will hazard to say, non-firearm physical violence is ‘way more common than with firearms in public schools.
not reported.

even in my grdaughter’s Catholic elementary school, there was pushing down stairs, pushing on playgrounds causing broken arms, etc., pretty much ignored, even when reported by multiple parents.

possibly having family photo ops with the obamas (local idols) caused admin blindness.

Josh’s topic is valid. Responses support the level of denial in schools.

[Ken]

i realize a simple apology for going off-topic from the get-go is not to be expected.
not here or elsewhere on forum.

you know, i’m pretty sure there are non-tech or non-state of the art preventions regular folk (parents+teachers+admin) can+do employ to prevent gun violence in old school buildings. not everyone waits around for egg heads sitting in office cubbies googling stats to determine how to protect themselves, esp where gun violence is a regular occurrence.

shooters are known for 1) being cowards, 2) going after easy prey.

for myself, having prevention comparable to courthouses, airports, seems logical. not all are new construction.

Gun violence in schools is not a regular occurrence anywhere. It is almost always a surprise one-off event.

And no, it isn't possible to secure many older schools in any meaningful way. This is just one example of an older school built around 1970 where I worked last year. It is a HS with about 2,000 students and all the classroom doors open to the outside (the blue doors). There are over 100 exterior classroom doors on all 4 sides of the school and also opening into interior open-air corridors. The school is actually 10 separate buildings that have been added on over time. There is parking and city streets on three sides and at a school this size students, staff, and parents are constantly coming and going. Some students do half-days at other tech schools or community college. Some have off-site internships. Some staff work half days. So there are always cars coming and going and people walking in and out.

You could theoretically lock the entire school grounds down like a military base with a security gate and do searches of every single car entering and leaving the school. But it would be absolutely impossible to find a handgun hidden in some student's car. Or even a bigger weapon like an assault rifle.



Here is a much newer HS in the same school district that is more suburban. It was built in 1999 and there is only one main entrance, all the other exterior doors are fire door exits from corridors that remain locked during the school day. So anyone entering or leaving has to walk through those two main sets of doors, past security, etc. And any visitors are funneled through the security desk where they get their ID scanned and are issued a visitor's badge. You literally cannot get into this school without walking through a series of two double doors and right past security. They don't use metal detectors, but they could actually easily install them if they wanted. School design does matter.

[Ken]

And to follow up with the above. School design isn't just about big events like school shootings. It affects little things like ordinary bullying.

Most modern schools are now built with sightlines and such. So that you can have a security officer or school administrator sitting at one central point who can look down one or two different hallways and see 50 different classrooms at once. At one school where I worked they would have administrators roll these little carts out with their laptops and such and they would sit there and could monitor 50 different classrooms and any kids in the halls who didn't belong there. If a teacher had any issue they only had to step out of the classroom, wave, and there would be an administrator an possibly security there in seconds. And if teachers are monitoring the hallways as they are supposed to do during passing periods at many schools, you basically have adult eyeballs on every corner of the school at all times.

By contrast, a lot of older schools, especially ones that have been added onto ad-hoc over the decades are literally a maze of corridors, stairwells, corners, cubbies, portable classrooms scattered about ,and various other nooks and crannies. Kids have endless places to hide out unobserved. Mostly they are doing things like copping a feel with their girlfriend/boyfriend or vaping or some other such thing. But it also provides endless spots for bullying to occur out-of-sight teachers or administrators. So while you can control what is going on in a classroom, or cafeteria. You can't really control the whole school. And again, there often isn't a whole lot you can do about it other than tear it down and build a more modern school building in its place that is actually designed to better monitor the school spaces.

So yes, school design does very much matter if you are trying to make schools secure from threats both without and within.

[Only an Anz]

Have you ever lived in a disadvantaged, non-majority-white area and sent your young children to public school?

Desegregation was a major factor for private schools' ascendency in the 1960's. Do you have anything new to say?

What does they have to do with anything? It’s 2033, not 1960.

In this case, a family tried to go to their local, desegregated school. Their children were targeted for violence. The school administration told them to go to another school when they asked for help.

My position from the beginning was that all children should be free of being targeted for violence. In particular, a 9 year old girl should not be beaten by multiple 14 year old males twice her size. And the school district’s response shouldn’t be, “go find a segregated school if you don’t want your kids to be beaten up”.

So, in 2023, let's find a better thing to harp on than race. M'kay?

[Szdfan]

So, in 2023, let's find a better thing to harp on than race. M'kay?

I have not found a single quote from the parents that the school advised them to enroll their kids in a "segregated" school. The school did advise them to enroll them into another school, but the addition of the word "segregated" seems to be a MennoNet addition.

I also haven't found any evidence that the parents of the girl who was beaten up believe the attack was racially motivated.

Battery charges against the 15 year-old attacker have been filed in juvenile court. https://wsvn.com/news/local/miami-dade/ ... l-bus/amp/

Here's the mother of the victim:

“I think that some form of rehabilitation is needed because children who feel that aggressiveness and violence is the only answer need to have a way to change that form of thought,” said the victim’s mother.

“I want to see solutions, and I want to see it. My kids weren’t safe from it, but I don’t want another mother to be going through what I’m going through,” said the mother.

She also said her mission is to see changes at the school from the district.

“My child is not the first, and if they don’t do anything about it, it’s not going to be the last,” said the mother of the victim. “It’s just very sad because there were many points where adults could have stopped this from getting as bad as it did.”

Again: I don't see anything from the parents that they think the attack was racially motivated.

[Josh]

Again: I don't see anything from the parents that they think the attack was racially motivated.

If you saw two older white males (14 or 15 years old) beating a younger black female (9 years old), would you consider the attack racially motivated or not?

[Ken]

Again: I don't see anything from the parents that they think the attack was racially motivated.

If you saw two older white males (14 or 15 years old) beating a younger black female (9 years old), would you consider the attack racially motivated or not?

Not without more information, no. Not everything is about race or is racially motivated. Kids bully each other and fight for hundreds of reasons, most of them having nothing to do with race.