Columbia Office of Violence Prevention takes next steps to analyze gun violence data News

The Association urges all school community members to be prepared to ensure that if they use behavioral threat assessments, they achieve their desired outcomes without adverse racial impact. Behavioral threat assessments are frequently used to identify students who are at risk of committing violence and get them the help they need. Every school community is different, so team structures and functions must be designed and implemented based on the unique needs of the student body and the broader school community. SSNRs help interrupt cycles of violence and reduce the impact of students’ exposure to abuse and neglect. An all-staff activity called Know Me, Know My Name is an example of an effective way to identify students who may need support but go unseen (Illinois Education Association, n.d.). Indeed, almost half of NEA ESP members—48 percent—spend a great deal of their time promoting school safety.

About the National Education Association and the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund

A wealth of research demonstrates that allowing teachers to carry guns in schools increases the everyday risks to students. But as the report details, arming teachers is an ineffective and risky approach that does not stop gun violence in our schools. The most important thing that schools can do to prevent active shooter incidents—and gun violence overall—is to intervene before a person commits an act of violence.

Top deadliest mass shooting incidents in the USA in recent years:

Students who commit acts of gun-related violence in schools almost always have shown warning signs that concerned other people around them (National Threat Assessment Center, 2019, p. 58). Strategies including trauma-informed crisis intervention programs and active engagement with students and their families are essential to gun violence prevention. Go to reference While perpetrators of mass shootings in schools have tended to be White, and mass shootings are often portrayed in media coverage as occurring predominantly in schools with a majority of White students, gunfire on school grounds disproportionately affects students of color. Given this complexity, taking meaningful actions to keep our students, educators, and surrounding communities safe must begin from an understanding of four key facts about gun violence in education settings. Understanding the role of ACEs, childhood trauma, and toxic stress in gun violence in schools. Promoting the adoption of gun violence-related collective bargaining language and administrative policy, including the creation or enhancement of health and safety committees, is another effective way to combat gun violence.

Children are particularly impacted by the intersection of domestic violence and gun violence. Compared to other high-income countries, US children aged 5 to 14 are 21 times more likely to be killed with guns, and adolescents and young adults aged 15 to 24 are 23 times more likely to be killed with guns.4Grinshteyn E, Hemenway D. Violent death rates in the US compared to those of the other high-income countries, 2015. Some even surrendered weapons they were legally permitted to keep, in a show of support for their country’s tightening gun laws. In 2002, a 19-year-old student in the Thuringian state capital, Erfurt, shot dead 16 people at the school that had recently expelled him, using weapons he had obtained from his gun club. However, even countries such as Germany, where gun ownership is more widespread, have fewer homicides and school shootings.

• The checklist for this section includes strategies and action steps based on how long ago the gun incident took place—the first few hours, the first 12 hours, and the first week and beyond.
• Students deserve safe communities, schools, and campuses that promote their learning and development.
• Part V will look at the impact the legislation has for current and future students as well as potential results and overreached boundaries of the school districts, and any potential legal consequences.”
• Community violence occurring in and around schools significantly affects students and educators.

Students, staff, and parents all have an important role in promoting school safety. A more robust system for collecting and analyzing data on school violence is needed to identify trends, assess the effectiveness of interventions, and inform policy decisions. The tragedy in Tumbler Ridge serves as a stark reminder that school safety is not a one-time fix, but an ongoing process of assessment, adaptation, and investment. Traditional school safety protocols, such as lockdown drills, are increasingly recognized as insufficient on their own.

Here’s How To Prevent The Next School Shooting, Experts Say

It means the quality of relationships among the students and the adults in a school. Instead of waiting for people to, again, be rushed into emergency rooms, you go into the community with preventive resources. “If we’re really talking about prevention, my perspective is that we should go for the public health approach,” NEA Gun Violence Prevention Guide says Ron Avi Astor at the University of Southern California, who also helped draft the plan. Both specialize in the study of school violence. After Parkland, there have been many calls to make schools a “harder target” — for example, by arming teachers. The federal Gun-Free Schools Act (GFSA) enacted in 1994 requires U.S. public school systems to report any incident of a student bringing a firearm to school or being in possession of a firearm on school property.

Stress related to gun violence affects student performance and well-being in schools. When children live in neighborhoods where gun violence is common, they spend less time playing and being physically active, with one study finding that children said they would engage in an additional hour of physical activity every week if safety increased in their neighborhood.36Molnar BE, Gortmaker SL, Bull FC, Buka SL. While the above discussion shows the disparate experiences of gun violence by race and ethnicity, the data further show that gun violence is concentrated in specific neighborhoods in cities, with some schools and certain communities experiencing gun violence with an alarming frequency. Gun violence manifests in a myriad of ways in US schools, and school shootings have created new anxieties for the younger generation of students.