(This story was originally published in The Elevator in June, 2023.)

There have always been factors that have challenged the safety of schools. Many policies and actions are taken that are aimed to prevent these factors from bringing harm to the school environment, and these actions and policies are constantly being changed or improved. 

Though many may believe that schools aren’t the safest, schools are some of the most protected places that students spend their lives. Kent McIntosh, an academic expert in school violence prevention and school discipline at the University of Oregon, said, “Students overall are safer being in the school building than they are out in their neighborhood or at home and in their communities.” 

Schools may be some of the safest places, but there are still causes that may affect the well-being of the academic realm.

School Resource Officers

School resource officers, officers who are trained and are stationed in schools, leave people with different views on whether or not they enhance school safety. 

Mychal Gann, a Campus Supervisor at Oregon City High School, said that campus security officers strengthen the security in schools. They make the students feel more comfortable and are there to deter crime. Oregon City High School has two campus resource officers, and Gann said that the high school should hire more to make the school safer.

Andy Holthouse, a previous candidate for the Oregon City School Board, wants school resource officers to advance what they wear to make schools safer. “School Resource officers in plain clothes and concealed guns should be on duty during all school hours and for after-school sports,” he said on Oregon City News. Holthouse did not receive enough votes to win the School Board election, showing that many people in the community don’t agree with his views. 

McIntosh looks at it at a different angle. “Having police officers in school or on campus increases the risk that students will get arrested, removed, charged, taken off campus, or taken into custody,” McIntosh said. He also said that these officers often aren’t trained on how to support and understand behavior of students, and a lot of the times they yell, use force, or even threaten when interacting with students.

Metal Detectors

Metal detectors also bring different opinions on whether they enhance school safety.

“The main entrance to a school should be the only entrance for students and visitors with metal detection equipment used,” said Holthouse. This would prevent students or visitors from bringing weapons into the school building. 

 Metal detectors may bring a negative impact on schools, though. McIntosh said that students should feel safe and welcome at school, and when they have to line up to go through a metal detector to go to school, it often gives the “opposite reaction,” where students feel unsafe and unwelcome, and “it doesn’t seem to reduce school violence at all.”

Schools Regionally

The Biden Administration put $100 million towards preventing school violence and harm. Some schools around the nation are using this funding to provide more cameras, school resource officers, and metal detectors. Others are using this money for school climate work; that is, putting in programs and frameworks to help students feel like they belong more at school. 

These programs and frameworks are aimed at making students more willing to learn, share their feelings, understand how to manage their own emotions, and interact with each other better. McIntosh said that these have been shown to reduce school violence more than other actions that have been taken. 

When comparing school safety based on population, schools in urban areas typically have more crime than schools in rural areas. “In general, having smaller schools with adults that know the students, and students who know adults in the building, can usually be a good protective factor for reducing school violence,” said McIntosh.

School Threats

The amount of threats that a school has may challenge the safety of schools as well. Schools can take a numerous amount of approaches when reacting to a threat. 

In December of 2021, Gardiner Middle School received a threat from a student on a TikTok video showing multiple weapons, including guns. Police were stationed around the building on December 17 to make sure classes could proceed after the student’s threat to cause harm. The student was suspended from school on the 17th, but was allowed to remain in school on the 16th, after administrators were made aware of the threat. About 25 teachers didn’t come to school on December 17, many to protest the delayed suspension of the student who created the threat. 

A simple threat may be when a person says a threat but doesn’t mean it, and a credible threat is when someone says a threat and may be serious about it. Some schools may invest in threat assessment, which allows them to be able to distinguish between a threat and a credible threat to prevent any potential harm from coming to the school. 

When reacting to a credible threat, McIntosh said that schools need to ensure that any harm is prevented. This can be done by ensuring that the individual who created the threat doesn’t have any access to weapons, preventing the individual from entering the building, and explaining to students what should be done in a situation if the threat was true. 

McIntosh said that a situation can be prevented if students have ways to report threats anonymously and reach out to possibly get help for an individual who has created a threat. 

Oregon City High School has an incident statement form that allows anyone to anonymously report an incident that they feel the school should know about. This gives OCHS students and staff an opportunity to report any threat that they may hear to their school.

School Shootings

Laws that restrict gun control have made an impact in reducing school shootings. This can be seen in the state of Oregon, where the minimum age to purchase a gun is 21, compared to the state of Texas, where people as young as 18 can own a gun. 

Kent McIntosh said that often when school shootings occur, the guns that the attacker uses are obtained legally. “If the age was increased to an age where people could actually be a little bit better at thinking straight and solving problems on their own, it may help prevent gun violence overall, but especially gun violence in schools,” he said.

Investing in Security

To protect students from all of these dangers, Oregon City School District has installed approximately 30 new cameras in previously unseen areas. In 2021, the school district had 275 cameras throughout the schools. 

“There are instances in schools where we need to know exactly what happened, not just the story told by one person or another,” said Hal Gregory, Oregon City Schools superintendent. 

Oregon City High School has created a vestibule in the entrance of the school, which allows security guards, including Gann, to control who comes into the building. Gann said that this way, they are able to check that staff members have their badge with them before letting them in, and they can check that any adult who claims to be a parent of a student is actually a parent. Gann said that this vestibule has improved the safety of Oregon City High School.

The biggest problem at Oregon City High School, said Gann, is that students are opening locked doors for fellow students and possibly people who may try to bring harm towards the school, rather than having these people enter through the vestibule. Kelly Myers, the Oregon City High School Associate Principal, is trying his best to fix this problem, as well as other OCHS staff, said Gann.