The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day 2018 was one in a long series of school shootings that left Americans shaken, kicking off a year of protest and many changes in the country’s education system. But despite those changes, a report from a partnership between nonprofit news organization the Trace, the Miami Herald, and the McClatchy newspaper group found that since Parkland, 1,200 Americans aged 18 and under have died from gun violence.
What has become increasingly clear since Parkland is how little progress we’ve made, and the ways in which working toward “safety” may backfire.
Following the February 14 shooting, Parkland students and young people nationwide confronted the issue of gun violence in their own schools, in Washington, D.C., and on stages in battleground electoral states. The Parkland students launched their Road to Change tour, bringing with them students, educators, and allies nationwide. Simultaneously, teachers in multiple states (including Arizona, Colorado, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Kentucky) went on strike for better wages and much-needed resources for their students. This push for increased rights and wages for teachers continued into 2019, with the Los Angeles teachers’ strike in January succeeding in improving the quality of education for students and the Denver teachers’ strike in February achieving increased steady wages for educators.
In schools, security and safety procedures changed as a result of the shooting. News outlets reported schools teaching kindergarteners special songs to remember where to hide, parents buying bulletproof backpacks and teachers getting bulletproof whiteboards, and the addition of more school resource officers and police officers to schools, often to the detriment of students of color, particularly black students. (Meanwhile, at the end of 2018, a federal judge ruled that neither the school system nor the local sheriff’s office had a legal obligation to protect Parkland students during the shooting, tossing out a suit brought by students and parents.)
In Florida, a special committee brought together following Parkland announced last month that they supported tactics like installing bulletproof glass in all school windows as well as arming Florida teachers, a proposal initially supported by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos last March. In early February 2019, a bill was reintroduced in the Florida Senate that would expand an existing program providing gun training to school employees to include teachers. Security companies were able to capitalize on the obsession to “harden” schools, pushing costly changes that aren’t necessarily proven to work. Some blamed mental health. Some blamed a lack of gun control. Many pointed to both.
An article published in the Children’s Legal Rights Journal in 2015 (prior to Parkland) noted that legislation around drills and drill safety is “generally vague,” leaving the specifics to states. Most states require some type of school safety drill, such as natural-disaster-related or fire drills. While active-shooter drills were put in place in a number of states post-Columbine, there’s a lack of consensus around their efficacy — and whether they are more harmful than helpful. There’s little to no data to indicate that active-shooter drills are effective preparation, and some think they may cause further trauma for students.
According to a report in The Atlantic, some researchers suggest that nationally, we don’t seem to have a regulated way to keep track of mass shootings, let alone appropriately address them. The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) reported that in the 2015–2016 school year there were 235 school shootings. NPR followed up with the schools surveyed and was able to confirm only 11 of those incidents, while a separate investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California confirmed fewer than NPR’s. Everytown for Gun Safety’s database of school shootings counts 29 shootings during the same time period as the DOE’s study, but the two studies only share eight schools between them. Of the schools contacted by NPR, 161 reported that there had been no such incidents. In response to NPR’s report in August, the DOE said that it relies on school districts for accuracy in their survey responses and promised to update their data.
A different DOE survey of the 2015–2016 school year, conducted in July 2017, found that roughly 15% of schools reported “serious violent incidents,” categorized as “rape, sexual assault (including threatened rape), physical attack or fight with a weapon, threat of physical attack with a weapon, and robbery (taking things by force) with or without a weapon.” This survey included primary, middle, and high schools.
To better understand what’s happening in schools, and what educators think would help prevent violence, Teen Vogue spoke to teachers and students across America about what the issues of school safety and gun violence look like in their schools and curriculum. Of the 31 teachers surveyed by Teen Vogue, more than half indicated they had seen or experienced violence in the classroom with students. Roughly half of the 33 students surveyed indicated they felt unsafe or unsure of their safety in the classroom.
At some high schools, there are no clear security guidelines for students. Allie, who graduated from a private high school in Washington state in 2018 and didn’t want to use her last name, says drills weren’t always taken seriously. She recalled a lockdown drill that took place because of a robbery nearby, during which her teacher at the time continued teaching.
“I think last year a teacher even said while we were having a conversation about [school shootings] that anyone could just walk up the stairs and walk into our classroom at any moment,” she tells Teen Vogue.
“You watch all the videos on the news and everything, and it’s like, ‘I didn’t sign up for that.’... I don’t think there’s any amount of training that could prepare you for it,” Hana, a special education teacher’s assistant in southern Maine, tells Teen Vogue. She recounts her school’s policies, which include the expectation that she place herself between an active shooter and her students. “Of course I would do that,” she says. “Never in my morals or my ethics would I not.”
Shortly after Parkland, President Donald Trump suggested that the solution is to arm teachers in the classroom. Multiple teachers interviewed by Teen Vogue, a group that stretches from Maine to California and in between, reported that they would not feel comfortable being armed in the classroom. There are already some states that allow or encourage teachers to be armed in schools. In the year after Sandy Hook, bills were introduced in 33 states to allow teachers and other positions in schools (such as “safety marshalls”) to be armed, according to a 2014 report by the nonprofit policy group the Council of State Governments. In Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Tennessee, these bills passed in 2013. In late August 2018, Secretary DeVos publicly announced she was considering providing federal funding for safety marshalls to be armed in schools. (In the July 2017 DOE survey, just over 40% of the public schools surveyed had either part- or full-time school resource officers, with suburbs and towns more likely than cities or rural areas to have one. Eleven percent of surveyed schools reported having sworn law enforcement officers, while 20% of schools reported having security guards or security personnel.
Jess, who recently graduated from a high school in Brooklyn, tells Teen Vogue that she wouldn’t feel comfortable knowing her teachers were armed. Stories from California, Utah, and Georgia have told of teachers either injuring themselves or students in the classroom with firearms; in California, one teacher accidentally fired a gun in a classroom while attempting to illustrate safe firearm usage during a discussion on Parkland.
“As an educator, I would not feel prepared in any way, shape or form to defend myself or defend my students with a weapon,” says Bethany, a high school teacher in New Mexico. “My attention is pulled in way too many directions throughout the day, and there’s no way I would ever feel like I could be vigilant enough to keep constant control if I were armed.”
While federally there have been no advancements since Parkland on the issue of arming teachers in schools, the topic continues to come up: Last month, the Parkland commission announced support for arming teachers, and in a national report released in December, Secretary DeVos praised state programs that armed teachers, suggesting she could support this recommendation at the national level. And three Parkland survivors and parents were brought as guests to the February 5 State of the Union address by members of both parties.
Teachers have scrambled to train their students on their area’s security measures. Emily (whose name has been changed for safety reasons) tells Teen Vogue that she graduated from high school in Montgomery County in Texas, one of America’s most conservative counties, and her teachers have discussed pouring chemicals in doorways or boiling water during lockdown drills to throw at a shooter. “Right after Parkland, we had an active-shooter drill just to prepare. My principal even told us over the intercom addressing the whole school that ‘We do this for your safety so that you’ll be OK.’ Those are conversations I’m having with teachers a bit more often because of Parkland, but even beforehand, this has happened so many times before that it’s just something that’s almost oddly become a part of daily life,” she says. Following Parkland, several states increased their budgets for funding active-shooter drills. In March 2018, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill during the National Student Walkout that would provide a $50 million grant per year for improving training measures, such as drills, and security systems.
In a state and area that is intensely pro-gun, she feels the normalization of gun violence, and guns, in school is increasing. Emily says she feels unsafe speaking out: “It’s heeded as something disruptive or something people wouldn’t really agree with,” she explains. “I don’t want to get any retaliation.”
Meredith, a teacher in Charleston, West Virginia, says she lives in an area where keeping guns in the home for recreation is common among her students. She says that most of the student body at her private Catholic school participated in the National Student Walkout following Parkland last spring, even some who use or owned guns. Of her own students, she recalls that only two students sat out; both were against any gun control, including measures that would bar guns from school environments. “I tried to have a conversation with these two students about it, [saying] ‘You don’t have to be against guns to not have guns at school,’ and they pretty much said, ‘Yeah, but I don’t want any government gun regulations.’”
In fact, for schools with a police presence, guns are already in schools, and the number of school resource officers — who are sworn police officers, not hired security guards — has grown nationally in the years since Columbine and continues to grow. And many of the teachers we spoke to say they’re not making people feel safer. Just last month, students in Portland, Oregon, protested a new plan to keep nine armed guards on campuses five days a week. Those students stated that an increase in counselors and support resources would make students, especially students of color, feel safer — not more guns in schools.
Two teachers who spoke with Teen Vogue — one who taught in Chicago public schools and another who taught in Santa Paula, California — said that even before Parkland, their students came to school wondering how to avoid guns, pointing out that the national gun control debate generally does not discuss the gun violence that affects black communities. A 2017 analysis of national data on firearms injuries affecting those age 17 and under published in the journal Pediatrics revealed that between the years 2012 and 2014, black people under 18 were 10 times more likely to be killed by a gun than their white counterparts. And as Allen Salway wrote for Teen Vogue last year, Native American communities disproportionately suffer due to gun violence, having the most fatal police interactions and some of the highest rates of death by suicide in the country. Native Americans were also victims of the deadliest mass shooting in history, at the hands of the government at Wounded Knee in 1890.
While the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis by armed shooters protected by Florida’s “stand your ground” laws initiated conversations around gun control, they did not incite the scale of walkouts that happened last spring. Just in the month following Parkland, 17-year-old Alabama teen Courtlin Arrington was shot in her Birmingham high school by a classmate. While Courtlin’s death was not the result of a mass shooting, the death of a young black woman by gun was not covered in the media in the same way that mass shootings are.
A wrongful death lawsuit was filed on behalf of Courtlin’s family against the Birmingham Board of Education following the shooting, stating that actions by superintendent Lisa Herring led to “a false sense of security” in the weeks following Parkland and contributed to Courtlin’s death. The lawsuit notes that Herring had left messages for parents to assure them that the school district would be taking extra precautions to keep guns out of schools.
The school responded to the lawsuit, stating, “We are aware of the filing of a lawsuit, but are unable to comment on pending litigation. Nevertheless, the Birmingham City Schools system remains deeply saddened by the Huffman High School tragedy, but steadfastly committed to student and staff safety and security." Courtlin’s classmate was indicted on charges of reckless manslaughter.
The 2017 report by the DOE that looked at school safety data from 2015 to 2016 showed that schools that were less than 50% white and non-Hispanic were more likely to include formal conflict-prevention programs than mostly white schools, including restorative programs, individualized-attention programs, and programs intended to increase inclusivity. These programs serve as an alternative to punitive discipline, such as suspension, intended to support struggling students and keep them in school. For context, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is roughly 60% white, according to U.S. News’ 2018 rankings.
As conversations continue on how to implement gun control or improve school safety, many wonder why it took a group of mostly white children protesting publicly to consider these changes — and why increased militarization of schools is considered by many to be the solution. There is at least one potential consequence of police presence in schools: a 2018 ACLU report found that the over-emphasis on police officers or security guards in school (in lieu of counselors or social workers) illustrates a prioritization of “law enforcement rather than mental health and social services.” Students missed 11 million days of school due to disciplinary suspension in the 2015-2016 school year.
There is no obvious correlation between depriving mostly black and brown students, as well as students with disabilities, of an education and making schools “safer,” considering that this data is from the same year the Department of Education found that 15% of surveyed schools reported some incidence of violence. These policies were in place already leading up to and during 2018, the deadliest year on record for gun violence in schools.
As we pass the one-year anniversary of the Parkland shooting, we’re still wondering what a solution could look like. The aforementioned ACLU study found that the student-to-counselor ratio nationally is 444:1, suggesting that students lack specialized attention and counselors lack the resources and capacity to support their caseload. Meredith, the West Virginia teacher, explicitly says that she feels safe at her school but makes clear that her school was also keeping an eye out for its students’ mental health and had the capacity and resources to do so as a private religious school.
Two experts in school violence wrote an open letter following Parkland suggesting that the solution was not “hardening” schools by increasing policing and investing in expensive security technology but instead “softening” them by focusing on social support and emphasizing gun control. One educator and assistant principal profiled by NPR affiliate KQED expanded support networks for students, bringing in advocates and social workers rather than increasing the burden on teachers and penalizing students. Going back to DeVos’s call for more armed safety marshalls, the 2018 ACLU study found that “nationally, schools reported more than 27,000 sworn law enforcement officers compared with just 23,000 social workers.” The teachers we interviewed frequently referenced this conflict, noting that they already felt strapped by the resources they were lacking to care for their students.
Tracy, a teacher from Wisconsin, says that (due in part to a state government that “slashed our educational funding”, “we have one social worker who is serving 480 [students]. That’s insane. I do the best I can, but...we need things in place to support our students.”
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Related: Photographer Emilee McGovern Explains How She Captured the Spirit of Parkland Survivors
