Six months ago, a 17-year-old student was shot and killed in the hallway of Ingraham High School by a classmate who had a grudge against him. In a month, Ingraham seniors will be able to breathe a sigh of relief when they graduate, having managed to get out alive in a gun-saturated nation, where going to school has become a high-risk activity, but the risk will remain for the kids they leave behind, not just at Ingraham, my alma mater, but at every school in the city.
Seattle Public Schools administrators have yet to convincingly demonstrate how gun violence can be kept out of classrooms. Superintendent Brent Jones says a safety audit has been completed for the district’s 106 schools in the wake of the murder at Ingraham, but a parents group – Friends of Ingraham – is dissatisfied with the district’s failure to provide enough details about the policies and procedures that may be changed.
District officials have made general comments about a “youth mental health response protocol.” They are planning to put up signs that have the phone number of a safety hotline and instructions for sheltering in place or evacuating a school building. Door locks in the schools are being updated. An app may be available to allow anonymous tips about safety concerns. That is all good, but parents’ concerns have not been assuaged, especially after a video was recently posted on social media showing a Nathan Hale High School student standing in the Ingraham parking lot displaying a gun – an incident that points up a possible gap in the district’s new safety scheme.
Locks might keep intruders out. Signs might help once an emergency is underway. But what can be done about a student – not an outside shooter – who brings a firearm to school and, for whatever reason, decides to gun down one of his peers?
I sure do not have an answer for that question – and I’m not convinced school administrators, parents or anyone else does either.
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