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June 27-28, 2018 TCA and TSCA were invited by the House Public Education and Public Health Committees to testify on strategies to create safe and secure schools and improve mental health for all Texans. TSCA President-elect Kimberly Ridgeley, TCA Past President Cyndi Doyle, and TSCA Past President Eli Zambrano gave testimony.

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After Parkland, there have been many calls to make schools a "harder target" - for example, by arming teachers. But there's a decent amount of research out there on what actually makes schools safer, and most of it doesn't point to more guns.

On the Friday after the deadly shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, Matthew Mayer, a professor at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, got an email during a faculty meeting.

The email was from Shane Jimerson, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Both specialize in the study of school violence.

That email led to nearly two weeks of long days, Mayer says, for some of the leading experts in the field. On conference calls and in Google docs they shaped a concise, eight-point "Call for Action To Prevent Gun Violence In The United States of America."

About 200 universities, national education and mental health groups, school districts, and more than 2,300 individual experts have signed on to support this document in the weeks since.

Their topline message: Don't harden schools. Make them softer, by improving social and emotional health.

"If we're really talking about prevention, my perspective is that we should go for the public health approach," says Ron Avi Astor at the University of Southern California, who also helped draft the plan.

A public health approach to disease means, instead of waiting for people to be rushed to emergency rooms with heart attacks or the flu, you go into the community: with vaccinations, screenings, fruits and vegetables, walking trails and exercise coaches. You screen and regulate environmental hazards, like a nearby polluting factory. You keep watch on reported cases of illness, to stop a new outbreak in its tracks.

A public health approach to school shootings, Astor explains, would be much along the same lines.

Instead of waiting for people to, again, be rushed into emergency rooms, you go into the community with preventive resources. You do your best to lower the background levels of bullying and discrimination. You track the data and perform what is called "threat assessments" on potential risks.

And, these experts say, you remove the major "environmental hazard" that contributes to gun violence: the guns. The eight-point plan calls for universal background checks, a ban on assault-style weapons, and something called Gun Violence Protection Orders: a type of emergency order that would allow police to seize a gun when there is an imminent threat.

What sets this call to action apart from other policy proposals is not gun control, however, but the research-based approach to violence prevention and response. This is a long haul, say the experts, not a quick fix.

"No matter what you try to do by just hardening the target, we've learned that having the armed officers isn't necessarily going to stop it," says Matthew Mayer at Rutgers. "Having the metal detector or the locked doors isn't going to stop it. The hard work is a lot more effort. You'd better start thinking in a more comprehensive manner about prevention instead of reacting."
Prevention: The first step
School climate may sound fuzzy or abstract. It means the quality of relationships among the students and the adults in a school. It's affected by the school's approach to discipline and behavior, the availability of professionals like counselors and social workers, as well as any social-emotional curriculum taught in the classroom.

School climate, in turn, affects students' mental and emotional health and academic success. And research by Astor and others has consistently found key factors that can make schools safer: cultivate social and emotional health, connect to community resources and respond, particularly, to troubled students.

Why does this matter? Well, for one thing, the very kids who bring weapons to school are more likely to report being bullied or threatened themselves. They may be fearful of gang violence and feel a need to protect themselves on the way back and forth to school.

Or, they may be individually ostracized and aggrieved. This is true not just in the United States, says Astor, but in "Kosovo, Canada, Chile, Israel, the kids who bring weapons to school are reporting tons of victimization."

So, if you devote resources to shutting down bullying, discrimination and harassment, there is a chance to de-escalate conflict before it starts.

And research shows that school climate measures really work. In fact, there has been a steady downward trend in bullying and harassment over the past decade, which Catherine Bradshaw at the University of Virginia attributes in part to evidence-based social and emotional measures.
The witnesses
There is a second reason a better school climate can cut down on violence. It's what Astor refers to as the role of the witness.

He again cites the example of California, which does a comprehensive annual survey. There, 20 to 30 percent of students above the elementary level consistently report seeing a weapon of some kind at school at least once during the year. That's conservatively more than half a million students, just in that one state.

Moreover, based on the survey, at least 125,000 of these students in California were actually threatened or injured by a weapon on school grounds. This includes things like knives and nunchuks as well as guns.

But what happens next?

If that witness, or that victim, has a strong relationship with an adult, they are more likely to report being menaced by a weapon. Whereas, if there is what Astor calls a "no snitching culture" in the school, or the witness fears for their safety, nothing will be done.

He says he's not urging schools to punish or expel the kid who brought the weapon, but, instead, to use "education as an intervention."

This approach is applicable not only for mass shootings, he says, but for violence that arises from disputes between students or when gang violence in the community spills onto school grounds.

And, he says preventing gun violence also means looking at suicide. Suicide is just behind homicide as a leading cause of death for teenagers. When a weapon comes to school, self-harm may be the plan, and a school-climate approach addresses that threat as well.

The researchers' policy plan calls for assessing school climate nationwide; reducing "exclusionary practices" like suspension and expulsion; maintaining physically and emotionally safe schools; and staffing up with specialists like counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers, both in the school and in the community.
Emergency mode
While school climate is an ongoing background effort, the public health approach has an emergency mode when it comes to violence. It kicks in when someone does report a person bringing a weapon to school or talking about violence. It's called a "threat assessment."

After the Columbine shooting in 1999, the FBI and the Secret Service each conducted studies of school shootings and shared their knowledge with the nation's educators. They found that there was no one "profile" of a school shooter. But, almost all students who committed homicide had told someone of their intentions.

So, the two law enforcement agencies recommended that schools copy what the Secret Service does when someone makes a threat on a government official. Threat assessment has been required by law in Virginia's schools since 2013, and adopted in many other places.

A threat assessment team consists of the principal, school counselor, school psychologist and a school-based police officer. They talk to the people involved and any witnesses. They try to figure out if the threat is serious: Is it specific? Is there a detailed plan? Is there a weapon?

In a school, the next steps include notifying parents, taking steps to protect victims, and referrals to mental health and law enforcement if appropriate.

Threat assessments are not a fail-safe. A local ABC affiliate in Florida did report, based on school records, that a threat assessment was ordered for Parkland shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz, based on an incident that happened in January 2017, a year before the shooting.

But Dewey Cornell at the University of Virginia, another author of the Call to Action, says researchers have gathered good evidence to support the technique, when implemented fully as in Virginia. Among the positive impacts, he says, are "reduced suspensions and reduced bullying, students and teachers reporting that they feel safer, and students reporting a greater willingness to report threats of violence."

His research also shows that less than 1 percent of threats are ever carried out.

The researchers are hopeful that their Call to Action will break through the noise. But they've been here before, Mayer says. A group of his colleagues wrote something similar in 2012 after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and after a group of school shootings in 2006. Mayer hopes, this time, people will be paying attention.

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

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After Parkland, there have been many calls to make schools a "harder target" - for example, by arming teachers. But there's a decent amount of research out there on what actually makes schools safer, and most of it doesn't point to more guns.

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June 27-28, 2018 TCA and TSCA were invited by the House Public Education and Public Health Committees to testify on strategies to create safe and secure schools and improve mental health for all Texans. TSCA President-elect Kimberly Ridgeley, TCA Past President Cyndi Doyle, and TSCA Past President Eli Zambrano gave testimony.

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Some of the main prevention methods noted as being effective are having a threat assessment team made up of school staff, having staff treat students with respect and staff having a visible presence throughout the school (Daniels, Volungis, Pshensishny, Gandi, Winkler, Cramer, Bradley, 2010). In addition, most of the rampage type shootings were a result of the student being a victim of bullying (Daniels et al., 2010). This article focused heavily on prevention after a plot already exists, although some schools worked toward identifying any peer conflicts early on in order to resolve them before they evolved (Daniels et al., 2010).  The article did not address how to prevent outside perpetrators, providing only a partway prevention solution. The online article from National Public Radio Ed emphasizes these concepts, and summarizes them as not making the schools harder with guns, guards, and metal detectors, but rather making them softer by improving staff and student relationships and encouraging other students to speak out if they are aware of a plot (Kamenetz, 2018).  The issue of non-student perpetrators cannot be addressed within the school climate.  The Sandy Hook Advisory Commission addressed a possible solution for this instance by looking at school design, specifically re-enforcing school entrances to reduce forcible entry options (SHAC, 2015). They also emphasized the need for stronger gun control laws, specifically focused on assault rifles, which were not included in the list of weapons used in the Sandy Hook Elementary attack.

There are several legal and ethical implications for educators when looking at school shooting preventions and reactions.  On the legal side, politicians and lawmakers have spent considerable time and effort looking into what measures can be put into place to make schools safer.  One method includes federal programs to improve preventative education which teachers and counselors will have to then implement. Another  method is arming teachers to defend their classrooms.  If a teacher is able to be armed, what then are the rules of engagement with shooting a child who brings a gun to school with the intent to shoot? Do you wait for them to shoot the first student while you talk them down? Does the age of the child matter in how the situation is handled?  There have been discussions of only arming teachers who were prior military or law enforcement as well as making it optional for teachers who have a license to carry to do so. There is also the issue that one teacher in a school cannot be everywhere at once, if their class is not the target, then they won't be able to respond.

References:

Daniels, J., Volungis, A., Pshensishny, E., Gandhi, P., Winkler, A., Cramer, D., Bradley, M. (2010). A qualitative investigation of averted school shooting rampages. Sage Journal, 38(1), 69-95. Retrieved from: http://dx.doi.org.easydb.angelo.edu/10.1177/0011000009344774

Kamenetz, A., (2018). Here's how to prevent the next school shooting, experts say. Retrieved from: https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/03/07/590877717/experts-say-here-s-how-to-prevent-the-next-school-shooting
Sandy Hook Advisory Commission (2015). Final report of the Sandy Hook advisory commission. Retrieved from: https://schoolshooters.info/prevention

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2. Option 3: Periodical Trends: Discipline for Social Media Trends

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2. Option 3: Periodical Trends: Discipline for Social Media Trends

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https://www.educationdive.com/news/court-rules-school-out-of-line-in-disciplining-social-media-post/507054/

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Upon completion of my Masters of Education in Guidance and Counseling, I hope to work with children in Social Services. I volunteer as a Court Appointed Special Advocate and see many ways that I can continue to help troubled kids with my degree, either with a permanent position with CASA or working for Child Protective Services.

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2. Option 2: Professional Association Website: Texas Counseling Association

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2. Option 2: Professional Association Website: Texas Counseling Association

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https://www.txca.org/tca/PUBLIC_POLICY.asp
Two topics I discovered on this site, that were submitted for legislative review are defining roles for counselors in cyber bullying and developing a program within schools focused on prevention of sex trafficking and abuse.

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2. Option 2: Professional Association Website: National Education Association

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2. Option 2: Professional Association Website: National Education Association

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http://www.nea.org/
Two legal issues I discovered on this site were educating undocumented children and working with LGBT children.

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2. Option 3: Periodical Trends: School Shootings

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2. Option 3: Periodical Trends: School Shootings

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http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2018/05/trump_safety_commissions_first_hearing_PBIS_guns.html

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3. Choice topic: School Shooting Research and Prevention Policies

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3. Choice topic: School Shooting Research and Prevention Policies

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I chose this article because it deals with intervention techniques that will require school counselor guidance for teachers as well as direct involvement. If these programs become required at a federal level, many schools will need to develop them from the ground up.

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4. Academic Resources on School Shooting Research and Prevention

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4. Academic Resources on School Shooting Research and Prevention

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http://dx.doi.org.easydb.angelo.edu/10.1177/0011000009344774

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4. Web Resources on School Shooting Research and Prevention

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4. Web Resources on School Shooting Research and Prevention

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https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/03/07/590877717/experts-say-here-s-how-to-prevent-the-next-school-shooting
https://schoolshooters.info/prevention
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/stop-the-cycle/201804/how-prevent-the-next-school-shooting