If we can protect a courthouse, why can’t we protect a schoolhouse?
Why, in the face of a clear pattern of school attacks, are we so lackadaisical about defending against school attacks?
We responded to the threat of jihadi terrorism with an intense, unrelenting defensive posture. Yet we have responded to the threat of mass school shootings with a bunch of marches and speeches and a few swipe cards.
If only we cared as much about schools as we do about airports.
We can secure welfare offices and state capitols and corporate headquarters, but kindergartners are on their own.
Why is that?
As yet another heartbreaking slaughter at an American school has sent us spiraling into yet another fight over guns and the first blows of the year’s congressional campaigns, maybe it would be smarter to focus some energy on hardening our schools and making them safe places for children.
Defending schools is neither Democrat nor Republican, neither conservative nor progressive, it’s just common sense. And it’s doable. Though it would come with a price tag and some inconvenience, it is in principle verysimple.
You limit access points, and you control those access points.
You have one or two doors that are open to the outside of the school building, and you put armed, trained security at those doors. You screen with searches or wands or magnetometers, and you make sure – just like you do at the airport and the courthouse – that nothing harmful gets through that security checkpoint.
It happens in some schools to protect against street violence, why can’t it happen at all schools to protect against mass violence?
And if you can afford an army of teachers and aids and special-ed workers, you can afford the police or security officers necessary to control the access and patrol the halls.
And you rethink what a security officer looks like and who can provide active defense.
You recognize that in some circumstances, with some teachers and school staffers, with the appropriate training, that arming those teachers and staffers makes sense. If an airline pilot can be trained to protect her passengers with a gun, can’t a teacher be trained to protect her students with a gun?
The goal isn’t to turn schools into the OK Corral, but it is to recognize that in the event of a security breech, active defense is a lot better than hiding behind a plywood door.
When school security is discussed, the politicians and school executives immediately talk cost.
It’s too bad they don’t talk benefit.
The benefit is kids who are alive instead of dead, schools that are safe instead of unsafe, murderers who are foiled instead of empowered.
Yes, there is cost. Everything costs. Education is wildly expensive.
But find me something in education that’s more important than the lives of the people who work and learn inside our schools.
Securing schools might require governors and superintendents to do more than complain, it might require them to prioritize.
But the power is in their hands. It always has been. But in large measure they’ve done nothing.
A few drills, with closed doors and darkened classrooms, is an exercise in cheapness, not defense. That’s meant to make people feel good, not make children safe. It’s about mollifying people, not protecting them.
It is a simple concept. You secure the premise. You harden the target. You restrict access points and you control the access points – not with a secretary and a guest pass, but with an officer with a gun.
You keep the bad guys out. And you take them down if they get in.
And America’s governors, school superintendents and police chiefs need to get off their asses and get it done.
Because every act of violence in a public school is a failure of officials to do their job.
Not just the ones in Washington, but also the ones in your hometown.
And maybe it’s your failure as well – a failure to demand that your school truly protect your children.