OHIO — As authorities continue to investigate and the country tries to make sense of what happened in Uvalde, Texas, the role of educators and school administrators once again becomes part of the conversation.
What You Need To Know
- There’s evidence that gun laws and access to mental health do make a difference in reducing school shootings, but also there's proposals circulating that haven't been well studied
- Building school relationships and having open communication would help to make schools safer
- Burdens put on schools to address issues that are social problems are a big concern
Brian Warnick, a professor of philosophy of education and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Education, Human Ecology at OSU, said there are no clear-cut answers for citizens.
"I think the answer is yes and no. There is some evidence that gun laws and access to mental health do make a difference in reducing school shootings," Warnick said. "At the same time, I think there's a lot of proposals circulating now that haven't been well studied… and in fact might do more harm than good."
Warnick said increased security measures such as zero tolerance policies can have a negative impact on the school environment.
"Zero tolerance policies increased, for example, expulsion and suspension, which had a negative impact on certain communities increasing things like metal detectors or Run-Hide-Fight training," he said. "These actually sometimes make students feel much less safe."
He added that sometimes there's not as much community involvement even when schools have beefed up their security. That’s besides not being aware of the downside of results of security procedures.
Warnick said building school relationships and open communication would help make schools safer.
“We do know one thing that prevents school shootings, and that's going to open communication between students and between students and educators," he said.
Students being able to trust educators and looking out for each other helps prevent shootings sometimes when information about a troubled student is shared with an educator, Warnick said.
His biggest concern right now is how school security is being boiled down to a burden being put on schools.
"We're asking teachers, we're asking students to pay the costs and their education, to do things that inconvenience their lives, when really, it is a social problem of access to high-powered firearms to the mental health of our communities," Warnick said. "These are the things that we need to pay attention to and we need to stop putting the burden on students, on teachers and on schools to solve these larger social problems.”
