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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > September > 29 > Entry
School shooting: Tragic, probably unpreventable
(Student are evaucated Wednesday from Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo.)
The Colorado school shooting this week, which injured several students and left one dead in a rural district, was heartbreaking. But could anything have been done to prevent it?
One expert says probably not.
This is the lead from an Education Week story on the shooting (subscription required to read the whole thing):
The hostage-taking at a rural Colorado high school this week that left one student and the armed intruder dead was a rare event and one that would have been nearly impossible for school leaders to prevent, school safety experts said.
And here one expert in the story describes why these incidents are so hard to stop:
“When you have someone who is suicidal, armed, and willing to die, there aren’t any procedures short of having the building locked and secured the whole day that would have prevented this,” said Del Elliott, the director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
“And doing that is not practical, because these incidents, while so devastating, are very rare,” he added.
Mr. Elliott, whose violence-prevention center has worked closely with many Colorado school districts on safety issues since the Columbine shootings, said the 1,300-student Platte Canyon school district and its three schools were participants in a statewide hotline that was set up after Columbine to report threats of school violence.
“But in this instance, it appears that nobody knew this man and would have known of his plans,” he said.
Another expert in the story said a “well-trained and alert staff” is the best defense to an incident like this, but even then a determined intruder unconcerned with his own personal safety can make bad things happen very quickly.
Schools always must strike a delicate balance between access — being open and friendly to their community — and safety. The experts are right that vigilance helps. Unfortunately, they’re probably also right that sometimes these things cannot be stopped.
But at least they are very, very rare.
(Image credit: New York Times via AP)
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: School Violence
Comments
By Larry Goodnature
October 2, 2006 2:17 PM | Link to this
After a fourth grade student brought a gun into the elementary school in Hendricks, MN, on 9/27/06, many parents hope that school shootings are preventable but school administrators seem to be taking an unconcerned approach with an attitude like “there were no bullets, it was just a gun.” Unfortunately, they have taken that attitude too often in the past. Allegedly, a man who worked for one of the area schools got some boys drunk so he could molest him. That was not reported to the police and not mentioned in the media. Bullying is so pervasive that one student finally violently defended himself and a family has just removed their two boys from that area’s high school to protect them from bullies.By Oldprof
September 30, 2006 10:26 AM | Link to this
I keep waiting for incidents like these to inspire thorough training in safety procedures for faculty and staff. No blame here, but as the report notes, that’s the best way to reduce these threats to the minimum. Sorry to say, in my career I’ve had exactly one training session regarding security—I’m still not entirely certain what I’d do in case gunfire broke out in a hallway.By Mary
September 30, 2006 9:24 AM | Link to this
Maybe the Wisconsin school shooting in today’s paper might have been preventable, more along the lines of the Columbine case - it involved teasing and bullying and students were the shooters.By socialwrkr
September 29, 2006 10:15 PM | Link to this
I don’t think this was “preventable” or predicatable. As a society, we so often want to shift blame. There is one person to blame here, and he is dead. I’m so sorry that any child has to go though a situation like this, but no, it was not anyone else’s fault. Even if the school was completely locked down, all this person had to do was shoot out the glass of a door and he’s in anyway. As you said, someone with no regard for their own safety isn’t going to be easily stopped.