Here's what we're doing to keep Delaware schools safe
Sen. Stephanie Hansen, D-Middletown, represents the 10th Senate District, which includes Middletown, Bear/Glasgow, and part of Newark. She serves on the Appoquinimink Safe Schools Task Force.
It’s Labor Day Weekend, which means summer is drawing to a close. Whatever your family has planned this weekend, one thing is certain: kids in Delaware are going back to school.
It’s an exciting time, but also one that makes many parents think about their kids’ futures and, recently, their safety.
Having raised three children, I know that nothing matters more to a parent than their kids’ safety and education. Current events seem to validate that anxiety more than ever.
This year’s shootings in Parkland and Santa Fe were tragic reminders of the threat of gun violence in our schools. This raises the question: are we doing enough to protect our schools?
As a former scientist, I rely on research. That’s why my team and I organized in June the only forum on school violence where the public could hear from actual local experts on the subject, including school district officials, mental health advocates, and law enforcement. We also compiled and presented data on the 316 recorded school shootings that have happened in the United States since Sandy Hook. Some highlights include:
- The average shooter is 17 years old, overwhelmingly likely to be male, and about 50 percent likely to be a current student.
- The most common denominators of shootings were prior disputes (34 percent), athletic/social events (18 percent), and gangs/rival groups (17 percent). Reported mental health issues only accounted for 13 percent, which aligns with what we already know: people with mental illnesses are more likely to be harmed than they are to cause harm.
- Handguns were the most common weapon of choice; assault rifles were the least common, but the most devastating. On average, handgun shootings caused 1.04 deaths and 1.69 injuries, while assault rifle shootings caused 13 deaths and 8.33 injuries.
- Most school shootings happen outside of the school building (75 percent) and not during school hours (65 percent).
School safety is clearly a serious issue and a valid concern for parents, so we need to come to an understanding about what we want it to look like.
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Take school resource officers and constables as one example. Do we mean protection just during the school day or just within the school building? Perhaps, but then how do we feel about the data showing that the most likely scenario will be a shooting that occurs outside of the school building and not during the school day?
In fact, just recently, this very thing happened at Towne Point Elementary School in Dover.
Are we ready to pay for constables and school resource officers 24/7 or just during certain times? There are serious questions that deserve serious answers.
Fortunately, Delaware has been proactive on school safety. Six months before Sandy Hook, Sen. David Sokola introduced the Omnibus School Safety Act, which required the state to develop comprehensive school safety plans with schools and law enforcement. Those plans were completed three years ahead of schedule.
School safety remained a priority in this General Assembly. In January 2017, Rep. Earl Jaques and Sen. Nicole Poore introduced House Bill 49, which passed unanimously, requiring new school construction and major renovations to include security infrastructure like secured vestibules, panic buttons, electronically locked classroom doors, and ballistic resistant glass.
We also approved a bond bill that allocated $5 million in school safety funds, and a further $15 million in minor capital improvement funding that can be used for school safety investments.
I’m proud of these steps, but our school safety forum also made clear that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. School hardening policies give us peace of mind, but we can’t just respond to shootings; we need to prevent them and that means an overdue conversation on counseling resources in our schools.
But as the saying goes, “it takes a village.”
We all have a responsibility to stop shootings before they begin by learning the warning signs that someone is planning a shooting, and by saying something when we see something.
I encourage everyone to seek out information on this subject from Sandy Hook Promise or NAMI. All of us care deeply about this issue, and that means that all of us can make a difference.