My thoughts are with the community out at Springfield High where Shane Halligan brought an AK-47 into school two days ago and killed himself. It’s about the worst nightmare for those of us who work in schools. And this one touches the edu-blog community as well because Librarian-Blogger Joyce Valenza teaches there.

I wrote about the topic of school safety and proactive responses a few months ago, and I found myself revisiting that post as I thought about the newspaper articles that were criticizing the school for not having metal detectors. And I thought about what I wrote last night… what are the worst consequences of wanting to create a school where students don’t feel like they are walking into a prison? Is this the worst case? Is Columbine?

I still believe that the best thing we can do is create healthy communities where kids feel valued and safe. And I still believe that walking through a metal detector detracts from that. But I worry about everything in our kids’ lives that we can’t control. I worry about living in a society where the messages kids get about guns and violence and stress are really not great. And I fall back on the statistics that suggest that while this is a horrible tragedy, it’s not something that we should think will happen in our school.

So what do we do?

We create schools that care.
We make sure that every student has an advocate.
We make sure we stress collaboration over competition.
We don’t confuse safety with security — because they are different.
We pay attention, even as we admit that sometimes even that doesn’t work perfectly.

And we don’t allow ourselves to become reactionary. Metal detectors don’t stop guns from coming into the building perfectly. And they don’t stop kids from feeling unsafe — in fact, they might make students feel less safe, less trusted, less humane.

I’ve read the articles that have been written about this tragedy. It seems that the school had some rational, reasoned policies about safety in place. I don’t know what drove this young man to commit suicide, and I don’t know what drove him to do it in the school. I do know that I think the whole community would be better off looking at the reasons that drove him there and trying to create proactive policies to promote wellness than assume that the answer is tighter security and metal detectors.

But I also know that I’ve lost sleep over this issue. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand the impulse to impose much more strict security policies. And I don’t know what I’d do if I were the principal of Springfield High.