Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Friday, September 29, 2006
School shooting: Tragic, probably unpreventable
(Student are evaucated Wednesday from Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo.)
The Colorado school shooting this week, which injured several students and left one dead in a rural district, was heartbreaking. But could anything have been done to prevent it?
One expert says probably not.
This is the lead from an Education Week story on the shooting (subscription required to read the whole thing):
The hostage-taking at a rural Colorado high school this week that left one student and the armed intruder dead was a rare event and one that would have been nearly impossible for school leaders to prevent, school safety experts said.
And here one expert in the story describes why these incidents are so hard to stop:
“When you have someone who is suicidal, armed, and willing to die, there aren’t any procedures short of having the building locked and secured the whole day that would have prevented this,” said Del Elliott, the director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
“And doing that is not practical, because these incidents, while so devastating, are very rare,” he added.
Mr. Elliott, whose violence-prevention center has worked closely with many Colorado school districts on safety issues since the Columbine shootings, said the 1,300-student Platte Canyon school district and its three schools were participants in a statewide hotline that was set up after Columbine to report threats of school violence.
“But in this instance, it appears that nobody knew this man and would have known of his plans,” he said.
Another expert in the story said a “well-trained and alert staff” is the best defense to an incident like this, but even then a determined intruder unconcerned with his own personal safety can make bad things happen very quickly.
Schools always must strike a delicate balance between access — being open and friendly to their community — and safety. The experts are right that vigilance helps. Unfortunately, they’re probably also right that sometimes these things cannot be stopped.
But at least they are very, very rare.
(Image credit: New York Times via AP)
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