Some schools and police are teaching students to attack armed gunmen. But are they soft-pedaling the program and misleading parents in the process? A.L.I.C.E. stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate. The “counter” component of teaching school students to throw objects at armed intruders and to physically attack them is being question by many experienced educators […]
Blog Archives
Should school police have high-powered rifles in schools?
The Plainfield (IL) Police Department’s recent request to allow its School Resource Officers (SROs) to store AR-15 rifles in gun safes at their high school generated quite a buzz. (See the Chicago Tribune story entitled Assault rifles in schools a sign of the times.) But was the request really unreasonable? Actually, the request by the police is not unusual. […]
Police in Schools are Prevention, Not Cuff-n-Stuff, Programs
Civil rights advocates who portray police in schools as overly arresting kids are simply wrong. Police officers who work in schools, commonly known as School Resource Officers (SROs), generally perform more as prevention programs where officers prevent incidents versus taking on a “cuff’n’stuff” role with the intent of increasing student arrests. That’s not stopping civil rights and other […]
What Parents Expect After a Shooting & Pipe Bombs at School
A 14-year-old South Carolina high school student shoots at a school resource officer (SRO). He has two pipe bombs in his backpack. A search of the student’s home finds a wide array of items including shotgun and handgun shells, multiple cigarette lighters, exploded bomb pieces, 14 carbon dioxide cartridges, and the list goes on. Authorities later find […]
Fear mongering article? America’s real school-safety problem
Good theory, perhaps, but clueless in understanding School Resource Officers (SROs), school security, and so-called “zero tolerance.” This is my take on America’s real school-safety problem, an article posted Sunday on salon.com. The article is mostly a Q&A with Aaron Kupchick, author of “Homeroom Security: School Discipline in an Age of Fear.” He spent two years researching “zero […]
School Safety Leader: Marie Waldrop
A school principal is often referred to as the “captain” of his or her ship. When a principal is new, sometimes you hear it said, “There is a new sheriff in town.” But rarely do you find the principal (new or a veteran administrator) actually is also really a deputy sheriff. Unless, of course, Marie Waldrop […]
Law Enforcement and Educators Partner to Sustain S.C. School Safety
Yesterday I shared how the South Carolina U.S. Attorney’s Office has taken a leadership role in promoting school safety annually for the past 19 years. Kevin McDonald, the Acting U.S. Attorney and First Assistant U.S. Attorney in that office, shares his perspective on the importance of federal, state, and local partnerships not only in putting together statewide training each […]
Tying Educators’ Hands In School Safety Efforts
Chuck Hibbert is a national school safety consultant (including for my company) and 21-year-veteran school district administrator over school security and school police services for a 15,000 student district in Indiana. Chuck takes issue with ““Taking Safety Too Far: The Ill-Defined Role Police Play in Schools,” February 24th commentary article in Education Week by authors and civil rights advocates Johanna Wald […]