On February 14, 2018, the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in
Parkland Florida became the spark that once again ignited a national
conversation about violence in schools. Amid the political agendas,
recriminations, activism, and just plain fear, a critical element has
been overlooked - the need to move beyond speculation and anecdotes
about school safety to a data-based analysis of the threats and
incidents of violence that have occurred in K-12 United States schools
during the past academic year.
This report provides insights and a
critical analysis of the 2017-2018 school year.
The Educator’s
School Safety Network (ESSN), a national non-profit school safety
organization, has compiled the most current information on threats and
incidents of violence in America’s schools to examine the frequency,
scope, and severity of the problem.
In the 2017-2018 school year, more than 3,659 threats and incidents of violence occurred in American K-12 schools.
Perhaps
the most concerning figures are the significant increases in threats
and incidents from school year to school year. There were at least 3,380
threats recorded in the 2017-2018 school year, a 62% increase from
2,085 threats in the 2016-2017 school year.
The
increase in actual incidents is even more alarming. This past school
year included at least 279 incidents of violence compared to 131 events
in the 2016-2017 school year – an increase of 113%.
Concurrent with these troubling findings, school administrators and law
enforcement officials find themselves in the untenable position of
having to make critical decisions about the validity of threats with
little to no threat assessment protocols, few established best
practices, outdated procedures, and typically, a complete lack of
education-based school safety training. In the wake of the Parkland
shooting, gun related issues and law enforcement solutions have become
the central focus to the exclusion of a comprehensive, all-hazards
approach to both violence prevention and response.
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