As millions of students return to classrooms this month, the prospect of on-campus gun violence has become a stark reality for those in charge of education.
The nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety recently reported that the average number of shootings on school grounds will triple between the 2021 and 2022 school years, to 193 last year, while the organization It was the highest number since the company began tracking trends in 2013.
Four students were killed and several others injured at the Detroit suburb of Oxford High School, where a suspect opened fire on November 30, kicking off the new school year on Thursday.
In response to these mass shootings and an overall increase in gun violence in the United States, the federal government took its most aggressive action in decades in June. President Joe Biden signed a landmark gun control law that provides state subsidies and strengthens the background for “red flag” laws. It closes the “boyfriend loophole” by checking for inclusion in juvenile records and keeping guns away from dating partners who have been convicted of abuse.
In July, the House of Representatives passed a ban on assault weapons unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate.
What you need to know about school shootings
Even with a renewed focus on guns, principals and others acknowledge that violence is likely to continue.
To help Principals cope with the overwhelming aftermath of the shootings, colleagues who experienced such tragedies first-hand formed the bipartisan Principal Recovery Network in 2019 to help their counterparts across the country work on such seemingly It helped me navigate through the unfathomable situation.
They recently reached out to teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were killed when gunmen armed with rifles opened fire in May.
Members of the network include school officials who led recovery efforts after the nation’s deadliest school massacre, including Columbine High School in Colorado, Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. is included.
This week, the group unveiled “A Guide to Recovery” at the Columbine Memorial, in which founding member Frank DeAngelis — the Columbine principal who killed 12 students and one teacher in the 1999 shootings — said: provided a comment.
“If you had told me 23 years ago that there could be a Columbine in Columbine, I would have said no,” he said. “I just joined a club I didn’t want to be in. Unfortunately, the club continues to grow, but I can’t give up hope.”
Members of the Principal Recovery Network say the 16-page guide offers hands-on, hands-on advice in five key areas. school reopening. Respond to the ongoing needs of students and staff. Holding commemorative events and annual events. and listening to students.
George Roberts, the former principal of Perry Hall High School near Baltimore, participated in the panel that created The Guide to Recovery when a student shot another just hours after the first day of school in 2012.
“I wish I had a guide like this or a document like this when I went through my situation,” said Roberts. “That way, I could have put things in order and created an order of work that could be done the next day.”
Elizabeth Brown, who helped write the guide, became principal of Forrest High School in Ocala, Florida in 2018. It comes 45 days after her expelled 19-year-old student shot through a classroom door, injuring one student.
She said North Carolina principals have already put guides to good use after a gun incident on campus.
“She literally printed it out and put it on her desk and said she referenced it every day because she was guiding the school through that particular event,” Brown said.
A member of the Principals Recovery Network said there was no comprehensive blueprint for recovery, but highlighted tips to help principals take initiative in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Trauma provides multiple forms of mental health support to students and staff, including her counselor and therapy dog. And make the difficult decisions about when to reopen schools.
“Obviously, the goal of the Principal Recovery Network is to eliminate the need for this guide,” said Brown. “I hope this tool is useful to those who have gone through it to this day, and that no one needs it in the future.”
Brown called creating the guide “sacrificial labor,” and how multiple principals in the network had to relive the trauma of the worst days of their careers in order to help their peers across the country. mentioned.
“We are obviously trying to remember the victims, but for every victim we remember, people realize that hundreds of victims still go to that school every day. I think I forgot,” she said.
