School leaders balance security, accessibility

Three shootings in six days struck schools in Colorado, Wisconsin and rural Pennsylvania last year.

Far more routine and discreet, the pressures of cyber-bullying and online taunting also sometimes incite schoolyard violence.

Confronted with such dangers, school administrators from across the country are gathering this week in Rosemont to consider how best to keep schools secure.

Despite several highly publicized tragedies, things are getting better. Three of every 1,000 students nationwide were assaulted, robbed or raped in 2004, down from four per 1,000 children reported in a year earlier, according to the National School Safety Center. Reports of violent crime among students dropped by 54 percent from 1992 to 2004.

Yet crime prevention cannot come regardless of cost.

Schools must remain creative and open to students and their parents, said Sarah Jerome, superintendent of Arlington Heights Elementary District 25 and president of the American Association of School Administrators that hosts this week's safety summit.

Skewing the balancing act, Jerome said, is increasingly nimble technology that both aggravates violence and helps prevent it. As the safety summit got under way, Jerome responded to Daily Herald questions on the issues at stake:

Q:How do you define school safety?

A: It is such a broad topic. One aspect is children who are inside the building and who are misguided and perpetrating terrible things -- a child who might bring a weapon to school, for instance. ... All the staff need to be alert to children in trouble, to mental health issues in schools.

Q:So the threat comes from outside and inside schools?

A: It is in tandem.

Q:Is one more dangerous than the other?

A: I don't see it as an either-or. We've had students who have gone off the deep end, students who have done terrible things to their fellow students or teachers. We've had people from outside come into schools. It is all these things that we are aware of. But we still know schools are safer than they've ever been.

Q:How do you gauge school safety today in comparison with the past?

A: There is less violence occurring in our schools now than 50 years ago. What is different is the reporting of it. We know instantly when it happens. ... Because of the instant media that shares this information, we've gotten the perception that schools are violent and more dangerous places, but that is not, in fact, the case.

Q:How do you ensure school safety while keeping school a fun learning environment children enjoy?

A: That is the delicate balance we try to achieve, making sure these are places where there is safety and security and a child can feel safe in all settings. At the same time, we need to make them inviting, so parents feel able to come and join us as volunteers and community members can come share their experiences with students.

Q:How does the Internet and the latest gadgetry affect school safety?

A: The vulnerability of students in using and posting some very detailed information about themselves on the Internet certainly has caused us all to be more alert. ... It's often the case that our children are more sophisticated about using technology than a number of our staff are. That gap in sophistication with technology hinders our ability to intervene and help them. That's true of parents as well. We need to help our staff and parent community know what cyber-bullying is, know how to use MySpace, YouTube and other things in safe ways so that children can have fun, can express themselves but not make themselves vulnerable to predators.

Q:How does technology factor into schools' safety efforts?

A: There are, for instance, systems where visitors would come to a building and they would scan in their driver's license. A system would check the sex offender list, the felony list -- whatever is published, we could screen against. We would know any visitors that were coming in and if they were a danger to our children. Another piece of equipment that has been around for a long time is the camera system. It gives a record of who is there and who is leaving, just to provide an additional set of eyes.

Q:Is this a national concern or is it felt more regionally?

A: It is nationwide. In fact, I think it's international. We've had visitors from Japan come to visit and see how we are handling bullying. ... It is not just localized. It is everywhere.

Q:How do you make all this relevant and worthwhile for students?

A: In the same way we teach bike safety to children, they can be alert to things going on in the building that would, if shared with responsible adults, be great interventions. Just as we would walk by a puddle of water and someone would say, 'Someone is going to fall and get hurt there. Let's clean it up.'

Q:How attuned are students to the risk?

A: I don't think it is a surprise to children. They've heard the news. They've heard stories about friends or people who have gotten into trouble this way. It's not a secret. What we need to do is to be able to talk about these things with our children and parents.