School Security Archive

It’s easy to see where things went wrong after the fact, especially as an outsider. But what baffles me is why school authorities at Cleveland’s SuccessTech Academy didn’t see trouble brewing before it was too late and they became a site of school violence. Maybe it’s not a fair question to ask but consider the clues.

Asa H. Coon was just a freshman at the Ohio magnet high school, but he’d already made quite an impression, and it wasn’t a good one. Described as sullen and strange by his classmates, the 14-year-old dressed in gothic fashion, sporting trench coats and black fingernails.

While his garb alone didn’t deserve attention from school officials, his accompanying behavior should have. Last year, he was suspended after attempting to assault a fellow student. Court records revealed that Coon suffered mental health problems, had threatened to commit suicide, and didn’t regularly take his medication.

Coon’s disciplinary problems continued this school year at SuccessTech, where he apparently got into a few scuffles with other students, for which he was suspended on Monday. Upon suspension, Coon purportedly made a series of threats, intimating that he would blow up the school, stab people, and otherwise retaliate in a violent manner.

Several students tried to tell the principal of Coon’s threats but could not get to her because she was busy. And by Wednesday, it was too late; two students and two teachers suffered gunshot wounds and Coon, after going on an armed rampage through the school, shot and killed himself.

I’m not trying to beat up school administrators who have their hands full with the day-to-day operations of a school, but this seems like an incident that should never have happened.

A 1999 joint report by the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education found that in 80 percent of student-led attacks on schools, at least one person had knowledge of what was going to happen. In Coon’s case, it sounds like he broadcasted his intentions loud and clear. Those should’ve been words, given Coon’s history, school officials took seriously.

School safety experts routinely state that good intelligence and awareness is one of the best ways to prevent school violence. In this situation, it seemed like while those were in place, administrators failed to act on them in a timely manner. It’s a lesson for us all.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

After reading that a New Jersey school system gives local police a live feed to their surveillance cameras, it’s time to pull my copy of George Orwell’s 1984 off the shelf.

No, I am not one of those fellows who worry that Big Brother is watching. But I do think we’re setting up an infrastructure—and mindset—that is dangerous ground for the future.

Proponents of surveillance cameras will scoff at my concerns. Surveillance cameras are going up all over the nation’s schools—and streets—and one emergency management official dismissed privacy concerns by saying “the value we gain in public safety far outweighs any perception by the community that this is Big Brother who’s watching.”

That mindset comforts me a whole lot—particularly after surveillance cameras did nothing to stop a 14-year-old gunman from walking into a Cleveland school, wounding four people and shooting himself.

Ask anyone in school safety, and they’ll tell you that gadgets are nowhere near as effective in stopping school violence as teachers who build good relationships with students, administrators who intervene with troubled youth, and schools that build a healthy school climate where students respect and care for one another.

That’s why I’d like to see school officials turn first to more effective methods of stopping crime and violence than the cold and unblinking stare of Big Brother.

Now excuse me. I feel a need to look over my shoulder to see who might be watching.

Del Stover, Senior Editor

Does suspending misbehaving students—or sending them to alternative schools —set them on the path to prison?

That question is at the heart of a new report, Texas’ School-to-Prison Pipeline: Dropout to Incarceration, The Impact of School Discipline and Zero Tolerance, published by Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit public interest law center.

The title is overdramatic. But the conclusions are worthy of reflection: “The precursor for many young people’s involvement in the juvenile justice system [or prison] is disciplinary referrals in schools.”

That’s not to suggest that school officials allow students to run amok in the classroom. Nor does anyone suggest school suspensions are responsible for students turning down the path of crime and incarceration later in life.

What the report does suggest is that local schools must be thoughtful in their approach to discipline. Taking a hard line with students—with zero tolerance and harsh penalties—actually is counterproductive, undermining school climate and, instead of discouraging misbehavior, actually can encourage more misbehavior among rebellious youth.

Fact is, some school officials are too eager to crack the whip. Something is wrong when some schools are six times as likely as neighboring schools to suspend students or send them to an alternative education program.

Although the report lists numerous strategies for improving your school district’s disciplinary practices, its real value to local school policymakers is more basic: It reminds you that schools exist to help students.

And that help is needed right now. If all your schools do is punish misbehaving students —harshly and with no consideration to the reasons behind such misbehavior—then your schools aren’t really solving the underlying problem. And if a student ends up in an escalating cycle of misbehavior and punishment, then there is an increasing likelihood that imprisonment lies in that young person’s future.

The report can be found at www.texasappleseed.net.

Del Stover, Senior Editor

I just finished reading Jodi Picoult’s book, Nineteen Minutes. If you have anything to do with education, or if you’re a parent, you need to read this book -- now.

Picoult’s 2007 bestseller chronicles a horrific school shooting incident and its aftermath. A meticulous researcher, Picoult imbues the shooter, a brutally bullied boy named Peter, with a sense of humanity that seems almost impossible, especially considering that he goes to school one day and guns down 10 classmates.

The hardest parts of the book to read were the passages about Peter’s relentless torment at the hands of his fellow classmates, starting in the first day of kindergarten when one of them throws his Superman lunchbox out of the school bus window. In fact, I wanted to skip those passages entirely.

In this impulse, I’m like most adults, probably. We don’t want to believe our children are capable of this cruelty, so we look away.

Of course, it is happening. Read the recent New York Times article, “A Boy the Bullies Love to Beat Up, Repeatedly,” about a young man in Fayetteville, Ark. Elements of his daily torture were sickeningly similar to the fictional Peter’s abuse.

In an interview with ASBJ in January, Picoult said: “As a mom, I saw all three of my kids face bullying—and it begged the question: In a post-Columbine world, why haven’t we figured this out yet?

School officials will point to their bullying policies, of course, and every district should have them. But these policies are a starting point, not the end. During the shooter’s trial at the end of Nineteen Minutes, the defense lawyer memorably demonstrates why. No matter how air-tight your policy is, it’s utterly meaningless when adults -- whether they secretly identify with the bullies, they not-so-secretly don’t like the bullied child, or because it reminds them too much of their own childhood torment -- turn the other way when a child desperately needs help.

Is bullying occurring in your schools? Are you willing to take a hard look – and not turn away if you see something that makes you uncomfortable, if you see something you know is wrong?

The bullied kids can’t look away. They live with this every day. If you don’t protect them, no one will.

Why haven’t we figured this out yet?

Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor

I ran a roundtable session for National Affiliate members at NSBA's annual conference in Orlando at the end of March. One new board member who attended had a story that will sound familiar to many of you.

He was having a problem with another board member. Whenever this member wanted to stonewall an idea, she asked, "is it best practice?"

The gentleman at my session asked, half-jokingly, if a "best practices" manual existed somewhere.

We at ASBJ hope that our Magna Awards program can serve as a starting point toward finding those best practices. For 14 years, we have been recognizing excellence in board and district programs on nearly any topic you can come up with.

Want to know how a district is dealing with dropouts? Magna has it. Want to find out how to engage Spanish-speaking parents with the schools? Magna has it.

Each year, we ask an independent panel of judges to evaluate the 300 or so entries we receive each year and find the standout programs. The entries are in three enrollment categories: under 5,000, 5,000 to 20,000, and over 20,000. This way, districts are competing against other districts of the same size.

We honored the 2008 Magna Award winners at the School Leaders' Luncheon at NSBA's annual conference in Orlando. The three grand prize winners took home checks of $3,500 each; all of the winners are featured in a supplement to ASBJ that ran in April.

Look online at the 2008 winners; then browse through the past winners. You'll find the contact names and e-mails of the district contacts so you can get more details about their wining programs.

While you're on the site, consider applying for a 2009 Magna Award, so you can add your programs to our growing "best practices" list.

Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor

How do you honor a 15-year-old boy who was killed because of his sexual orientation?

GLSEN -- the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network -- says silence.

GLSEN is holding its 12th annual “day of silence” on Friday in remembrance of Lawrence King, who was shot by a 14-year-old classmate in a computer lab at his Oxnard, Calif., high school in February. King, who lived in a group home, was constantly harassed because he was openly gay and had begun wearing makeup to school, according to media reports. His killer reportedly came from a troubled home and is being charged as an adult for the crime.

They’ve asked students to take a vow of silence for all or part of the day to remember King and bring attention to the harassment of gay, lesbian, and transgendered students. GLSEN estimates that more than 500,000 students at schools and universities have taken part in such events.

Students participating in the event are asked to distribute cards to their teachers and classmates that read, in part: “Please understand my reasons for not speaking today. This year's DOS is held in memory of Lawrence King, a 15 year-old student who was killed in school because of his sexual orientation and gender expression. I believe that ending the silence is the first step toward building awareness. Think about the voices you are not hearing today.”

More information on the event is available at www.dayofsilence.org. GLSEN offers a wealth of information on preventing bullying and harassment of gay students, and May’s ASBJ features an interview with filmmaker Debra Chasnoff, who produced “It’s Elementary: Talking about Gay Issues in School.” The video is being re-released with a new, 140-page guide for schools.

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor

If you’re a school board member looking to protect taxpayer dollars, you can learn a few lessons from the Dallas Morning News about school district spending.

Speaking at the Education Writers Association’s annual conference in Chicago last month, reporter Kent Fischer shared some eye-opening tips about how his newspaper uncovered millions of dollars of questionable spending within the Dallas Independent School District (DISD)—just by looking at records available to the public.

Imagine what you could do with the records available to you as a board member.

You could start by examining what’s being purchased with district credit cards. After looking at more than 150,000 credit card transactions over two years, Fischer and his colleagues uncovered millions of dollars in purchases that the newspaper claimed “violated state procurement laws or district policy.”

All of these purchases had been buried and lost in vast amounts of paperwork. But, citing Texas’ open records law, the newspaper requested electronic records on purchase orders, written checks, credit card bills, payrolls, and other financial data, including budget program codes and purchase order numbers.

By cross-referencing data, Fischer said lots of interesting transactions popped up, including purchases of blanket and pillow sets, Star Trek DVDs, iPods, and a subscription to an online dating service. One former district employee already has been sent to prison.

Another fertile area for scrutiny is employee stipends, Fischer said. The newspaper discovered that the school district had, as one article last fall reported, “doled out millions of dollars a year in stipends and extra pay not included in the district’s compensation manual.”

“Look beyond the ‘average teacher’s salary’ and look at stipend and supplemental pay,” he said. “Get overtime itemized.”

One story cited a high school band director who “collected nearly $40,000 between 2003 and 2006 for long hours on band trips that should not have qualified for extra pay.” Meanwhile, school police ran up $2.5 million in overtime for three years straight—yet kept budgeting only $250,000 for overtime.

Questions also might arise about employee travel stipends, he said. Thousands of employees were receiving such stipends, including those whose job descriptions didn’t demand travel. One secretary received a $1,200-a-year car allowance, and she didn’t have a driver’s license.

Fischer said it also pays to look closer at contract language. One multimillion-dollar computer contract was written so strictly—demanding a specific internal processor, for example—that only one product could meet the bid specifications. In another contract, school administrators arranged free entry into a major golf tournament.

When exposed on the front page of the local newspaper, such discoveries are a public relations nightmare for a school board. Indeed, DISD leaders spent much of last year modifying their financial processes in response to headline after headline of bad news.

But why leave it to your local paper? You represent your community. Why not look for such improprieties yourself? Through their example, the Dallas Mornings News and Kent Fischer perhaps have done you a favor.

Just follow this last admonishment that Fischer shared with his fellow journalists: “Follow the money—what is spent, not [just] what’s budgeted.”

Del Stover, Senior Editor