“There is no school safety protocol, or battalion of school resource officers, or number of active shooter drills that can save a school from two parents who a semi-automatic handgun,” wrote the New York City educator who writes under the name Cafeteria Duty. However, there’s a strong but mistaken belief that school staff shouldn’t be scrutinized for something that happened to them - and may have been out of their control. It also found that Broward County demonstrated a pattern of stonewalling and making false statements.
Indeed, past shootings like Parkland have highlighted the importance of systems and procedures designed to keep kids safe - and the value of reporting that investigates this aspect.Īfter Parkland, the Sun Sentinel revealed that both the Sheriff’s Office and the school district were “unprepared for the crisis” that took place that day. “Time and again, our research shows, adults have denied that an eventual school shooter is capable of serious violence or have failed to act on warning signs,” according to two experts in the LA Times.
What did teachers, counselors, safety officers, and administrators know and do? What protocols were in place, and were they followed? It seems obvious to say that a school’s role in the events leading up to gun violence is critically important and relevant. Education reporters stand the best chance of helping us understand what really happened at Oxford High School - and possibly preventing something similar from happening again. They stand the best chance of helping us understand what really happened at Oxford High School - and possibly preventing something similar from happening again. However, timely media attention on the school’s role is a crucial complement to coverage of other aspects of school shootings and a clear role for education reporters. The narrative shifted dramatically and somewhat unusually towards the end of the week and over the weekend, focusing first on the parents’ role and then on what school staff did or didn’t do in the leadup to the tragedy.įor some, focusing on the role of the school in a school shooting is wrongheaded, given the limits of what “hardening” schools against violence can achieve and the presence of so many other societal issues such as lax gun control laws and parental negligence. But, by and large, the coverage of the Oxford High School shooting followed the standard media narrative following these events. The role active shooter drills may have played in limiting the number of deaths also received some early attention. When a high school kid in suburban Detroit shot up his school last week, the initial focus was on who he was, what his motives might have been, the issue of easy access to guns in American society, and the victims and survivors of the tragedy. Finding out more details could help limit future violence. Despite a strong first week of coverage, we still don’t have much firsthand information about what happened inside the school.