In response to the recent rash of school shootings across the country, state and local school and law enforcement officials are reviewing school safety policy in Rhode Island.
On Oct. 10, Gov. Don Carcieri '65 convened a "Safe Schools Summit" at Community College of Rhode Island in Warwick. At the conference, which coincided with a national panel on school safety headed by President George W. Bush, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales held in Chevy Chase, Md., Carcieri asked the Board of Regents - the chief policy-setting organization supervising Rhode Island's elementary, middle and high schools - to evaluate and announce recommendations regarding school safety by the end of the year.
The summit resulted from a spike in school violence at the beginning of the 2006-07 school year. According to National School Safety and Security Services, a Cleveland-based school safety consulting firm, more murder-suicides on school property have already occurred over the past two months than in any full school year since the year of the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo., which took place April 20, 1999.
The latest school murder-suicide occurred Oct. 2 in Nickel Mines, Pa., when a 32-year-old man shot 10 girls in a one-room Amish schoolhouse, killing five before turning the gun on himself.
"No innocent student or teacher should have to be concerned about losing their life at school," Carcieri said at the conference, which featured Col. Steven Pare, superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police, Richard Gelles, dean of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy and Practice and administrators from Cranston High School East and Westerly High School.
Westerly High School was praised for its Westerly Integrated Social Services Program, which makes available more counselors on issues ranging from substance abuse to character development than a typical high school guidance department.
"(WISSP) is a wonderful opportunity for a greater number of people to be available (to assist high school students)," said Jim Spellman, Westerly High School assistant principal, who attended the Oct. 10 summit. "WISSP works with students on an individual basis making sure a student never gets so desperate that he or she acts out in violence. The genesis (of WISSP) goes back 10 years to a very fortuitous realization (that) we must do more. Our primary focus is always preventative."
In addition to WISSP, Westerly High School has a School Emergency Response Team in place to respond in the event of an intruder alert.
According to Steve Kass, Carcieri's communications director and moderator of the Oct. 10 summit, state police have offered to audit every school and evaluate safety procedures on an individual school basis. "Is (the school's safety protocol) good? Is it mediocre? We wouldn't know without sending out people to evaluate each school," Kass said.
For now, schools are free to request that police evaluate their safety measures but are not required to be investigated. According to Kass, having police review every school's safety protocol "may happen." Kass also said Carcieri will submit a budget that fully funds the recommendations from the Board of Regents.
Bush's conference on school safety focused on prevention, preparation and recovery in relation to a school shooting. According to panelist Delbert Elliott, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the primary causes for the recent spike in school violence are gangs, bullying and romance or relationship issues. Last week in Florida, a 17-year-old male student stabbed a 15-year-old male student to death in a dispute over a girl.
The surge in school violence has triggered an increase in weapons brought into classrooms. "6 percent of 12- to 18-year-olds attending school reported that they carried a weapon to school in the last 30 days," Elliott said. "That's a real concern."
"I don't think safety can ever be adequate enough," Spellman said.
"There are a lot a differences between the Amish school shooting (and others)," said Zach Ragbourn, assistant communications director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "But a very fundamental similarity is that there are crazy, unbalanced people out there able to get their hands on guns."
On Sept. 27, a 53-year-old man in Bailey, Colo., took six high school girls hostage, molested them and then shot and killed one of the girls before being shot by SWAT officers.
On Oct. 9, in Joplin, Mo., a 13-year-old student wearing a ski mask fired one round of an AK-47 copycat assault rifle into his middle school's entranceway.
According to Ragbourn, enforcing existing gun-control legislation and tightening loopholes would significantly reduce school shootings. Ragbourn said a big problem is access to guns and one focus is making sure gun owners work to keep firearms out of the hands of children.
Identifying potentially troubled students requires better guidance programs and better counselors, Kass said, but schools should be cautious about going too far.
"We can't just start branding kids. There are all kinds of (American Civil Liberties Union) issues and people saying 'my kid's fine and yours is nuts,'" Kass said.
A 15-year-old special education student in Cazenovia, Wis., shot and killed his principal on Sept. 29 after telling another student the principal "wouldn't make it through homecoming."
Of the seven states that have experienced school-related violent deaths during the 2006-07 school year, only one - California - earned higher than a C-plus on the Brady Campaign's grading of state "laws shielding families from gun violence." Rhode Island received a B-minus.
It is not illegal in Rhode Island for an individual with a concealed weapons permit to carry a firearm on school grounds.
"During the facilitated discussion, it was noted that schools should be a 'no gun zone' even if someone has a license to carry a firearm in the state," according to minutes from the Oct. 10 summit released by Cheryl Travers, public information officer for the Rhode Island Department of Education.
According to a 2005-06 School Accountability for Learning and Teaching survey, about 90 percent of Rhode Island middle and high school students and teachers have "never experienced any type of violence" at their school. According to the governor's office, no Rhode Island school has been designated as "persistently dangerous" under the No Child Left Behind Act.
Each state is responsible for defining what "persistently dangerous" means, and in Rhode Island any school that goes three consecutive years with instances of "federal or state gun-free schools violation(s) that has resulted in a long-term suspension" or homicide, rape, robbery or aggravated assault on school property will be classified as "persistently dangerous," according to the Rhode Island Policy Unsafe School Choice Option adopted by the state's Department of Education.
Spellman said he sits on a U.S. Department of Education board for creation of violence and drug-free schools and believes Rhode Island is doing a better job than other states in working to prevent school violence.
"Rhode Island is in the leading pack (when it comes to) taking the issue and doing something about it rather than bemoaning it," Spellman said.
