Education Week - May 8, 2024 - 20

25 Years After Columbine, America Spends Billions
To Prevent Shootings That Keep Happening
By Mark Lieberman
The chain of events has become so
predictable as to be mind-numbing.
A school shooting with multiple fatalities
draws national attention to a
community shattered by tragedy. Parents
across the United States fear for
the safety of their own children. They
demand policy solutions that don't
materialize. And school leaders feel
compelled to fill in the gaps, or at least
show that they want to.
That cycle has played out dozens
of times in the 25 years since the Columbine
massacre, leaving a virtually
incalculable financial toll in its wake.
Each day over the past quarter century,
America's schools have opened
their doors to hundreds of thousands
of students who have directly experienced
gun violence at school, and
millions more who fear they will, too.
With the goal of keeping them and
the adults who serve them safe, billions
in tax dollars fund personnel and technology
tools designed to enhance security
and ward off intruders. Billions
more pay for academic and emotional
support services that help students
burdened by trauma and anxiety.
A massive and inconsistently regulated
industry has sprung up to blanket
schools with offers of high-tech
tools and to advise them on practices
that prepare adults and children for
the unthinkable.
" Anytime anyone says 'There is
something you could do to prevent a
school shooting, and if you don't buy
it, you're responsible for what happens
next,' it's very hard for them at
that moment to say no, " said Samantha
Viano, an assistant professor
of education leadership at George
Mason University who studies school
security and technology.
School shootings stoke fear
An array of personnel and tools
implemented with the goal of preventing
future school shootings is
one of the most visible outcomes of
the era following the 1999 shooting
at Columbine High School. School
resource officers and security guards
have been added to district budgets
and payrolls, and schools have installed
weapons detection systems,
facial recognition software, bulletproof
entrance vestibules, and metal
detectors.
Yet school shootings have continued
and remained a persistent
threat for so long that some who
survived high-profile school shootings
now have school-aged children
of their own.
The number of school shootings in
the U.S. has increased significantly
in recent years, from fewer than 20
per year in the early 2000s to well
over 100 in each of the last four
years, according to research analyzing
federal data. The death toll of
mass shootings has also risen over
20 | EDUCATION WEEK | May 8, 2024 | www.edweek.org
"
Anytime anyone
says 'There
is something
you could do to
prevent a school
shooting, and
if you don't buy it,
you're responsible
for what happens
next,' it's very hard
for them at that
moment to say no.
SAMANTHA VIANO
Assistant professor
of education leadership,
George Mason University
the comparable period.
These events are statistically rare,
but many times more common than
in other countries. As of May 2, there
have been 13 school shootings resulting
in injuries or death in 2024, according
to Education Week's tracker.
Sarah Woulfin was a 20-year-old
college junior in 1999. She's lived with
the school shooting threat top of mind
ever since.
Now she's the parent of a 4th grader
and a researcher at the University of
Texas-Austin who characterizes the
process of " hardening " schools as
a form of " fortification " that exacerbates
racial disparities and fails to
meaningfully reduce the threat of
violence.
" I don't think we know enough
about how much money is really being
spent, " Woulfin said. " I don't think
people have done enough alternative
modeling to figure out what might be
the benefits of spending much less or
much more, or the same as what we
spend now but in slightly different
ways. "
How Columbine kicked off a flurry
of investment
On April 20, 1999, two seniors at
Columbine High in Littleton, Colo.,
fatally shot 12 students and a teacher
before killing themselves. The gunmen
had planted propane tanks and pipe
bombs, but those failed to explode.
It was far from the first such incident
on American school grounds.
As early as 1973, a school safety panel
in New York City was making recommendations
for new policies and
personnel in response to violent incidents,
The New York Times reported.
But Columbine gained widespread
recognition with the help of emerging
24-hour cable news programs. The
events of that day spurred calls for
dramatic action that still reverberate.
The impact of the subsequent hundreds
of violent incidents involving
guns on school grounds can hardly
be measured using monetary metrics
alone.
But even an incomplete tally of
the expenses that stem from school
shootings offers a glimpse into the
central role they've played in American
society during the 21st century.
A 2011 study of Texas school finance
data found that schools there overall
spent three times more per pupil on
school security than they did on social
work; their budgets for security expenses
amounted to nearly one-third
of what they spent on instruction.
Urban schools spent roughly the same
amount on school security as they did
on health services for students.
A 2021 study examining districts that
experienced shootings between 1999
and 2018 found that the violence drove
up per-pupil spending by $248 in the
shootings' aftermath. The researchers
also found that those districts often lost
higher-income students to other districts
in the years after shootings.
The biggest and most obvious expense
schools have incurred in the
post-Columbine era is for security
CONTINUED ON PAGE 22 >
A group called for additional
school safety measures in
Laurel County, Ky., on Feb. 21,
2018, following a shooting at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas
High School in Parkland, Fla.,
in which 14 students and
three staff members died.
Districts have invested
billions of dollars in personnel
and physical security
measures in the 25 years
since the 1999 shooting
at Columbine High School
in Littleton, Colo.
Claire Crouch/Lex18News via AP
http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - May 8, 2024

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