School safety is an equity issue; many ‘hard’ security measures harm the students they are meant to protect. School leaders should engage in community-based research when making decisions about school safety programs.

Schools have always played a pivotal role in protecting our children. We send our children to school every day, expecting them to be cared for, nurtured, and challenged. Most of all, we expect them to come home safely every day.

School shootings shatter us. Every act of gun violence ruptures families and communities, but school shootings also eviscerate our collective belief in schools as sanctuaries. Educators, lawmakers, and advocates seek to heal these wounds of our collective psyche partly through school-focused policy reforms. Wide-ranging proposals — arming teachers, hardening school security infrastructures, stationing police in schools — aim to improve safety and offer some assurance that the tragedies of Uvalde, Parkland, Newtown, and too many other communities will never happen again.

Many of these strategies resonate because they match the intensity of the tragedy to which they are responding. Unfortunately, these proposed solutions make schools less safe for many students, especially those already pushed to the margins: Black and brown students, LGBTQ+ students, students in special education, and undocumented students.

The federal Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, passed in June 2022, represents a substantial infusion of money and resources into school safety initiatives. As districts decide how to use these resources, they must commit to cultivating safety for every student — not for some students at the expense of others.

Challenging the arms-race approach

Strategies for improving school safety that rely on law enforcement and surveillance compromise the safety and freedom of marginalized students (Hirschfield, 2008; Irby, 2013; Johnson et al., 2019). More than half of middle schools and nearly three-quarters of high schools are staffed by an armed police officer at least once a week (Diliberti et al., 2019). Police presence in schools is intended to ensure the safety and security of students, but experience and research have shown otherwise. Uvalde, Texas, police officers have been criticized for failing to intervene in the recent shooting at Robb Elementary School. The school resource officer (SRO) at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, also failed to prevent the 2018 shooting. Numerous studies have revealed little evidence that police presence in schools meaningfully improves safety (Gottfredson et al., 2020; Stern & Petrosino, 2018).

Police presence in schools is intended to ensure the safety and security of students, but experience and research have shown otherwise.

However, research demonstrates that school policing harms students of color and other marginalized students. Persistent racial segregation of schools (Reardon & Owens, 2014) and the overpolicing of Black and brown communities make students of color more likely than their white peers to encounter police at school (Harper & Temkin, 2018). Although SROs are only supposed to intervene in situations requiring law enforcement, they often become involved in non-criminal school disciplinary matters (Curran et al., 2019). Their involvement increases the suspension rate among students of color and drives those with typical behavioral issues into the criminal legal system. The link forged by SROs between school discipline and the criminal legal system is particularly strong for Black and brown students. A study by Emily Homer and Benjamin Fisher (2019) found that the increase in the arrest rate for Black students was more than three times larger than for white students when exposed to school police. As a result, Black students make up 15% of the nation’s student body, but 31% of school-based arrests (U.S. Department of Education, 2019). SROs also have been shown to have a negative impact on the safety of undocumented and other immigrant students. Numerous districts have been challenged for sharing students’ information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, leading to the deportation of youth and their families (Dooling 2018, 2020; Speri, 2018).

The risks that SROs present to youth of color and immigrant students may not appear at first glance to be a safety issue. SROs are supposed to protect children from immediate physical danger. Does protecting students from being ensnared in our nation’s web of criminal justice systems rise to the same level of importance? To this, I offer two responses. First, if we accept Horace Mann’s founding principles of universal public education that schooling is central to the development of the whole child and to our democracy (Kober & Rentner, 2020), then school safety measures must protect the whole child. This includes their psychological, emotional, and future well-being. Second, by heightening students’ risk of involvement with the criminal, legal, or immigration systems, school policing exposes young people to an array of future threats to their health and safety (Binswanger et al., 2012; Lovato et al., 2018).

Other “hard” security measures for improving school safety have equally pernicious and unequal consequences. Proposals to arm teachers have been criticized because all evidence suggests that more guns lead to more gun violence (Duggan, 2001; Semenza, 2022). Moreover, Andrew Baranauskas (2021) finds that support for arming teachers is associated with racial resentment, which raises the possibility that teachers with guns might put students of color at risk rather than protect them.

Envisioning safe schools

To create safe schools for all students, we must define what we are keeping them safe from. Protecting young people from school shootings is an obvious starting point, but it is only a beginning. Although gun violence on school campuses has increased recently, school shootings remain rare. Focusing school safety initiatives solely on these uncommon — albeit horrific — attacks leaves young people susceptible to more common forms of violence they could encounter in their schools. Naming those threats and noting their presence or absence in our school communities are first steps toward identifying solutions that promote the safety of all students equally.

Safety from physical violence

While school shootings are relatively rare, other forms of physical violence in schools are more common. Sixty percent of schools reported at least one physical fight or attack without a weapon during the 2019-20 school year (Wang, Kemp, & Burr, 2022). Many accounts suggest that physical violence in schools has worsened with the return to in-person learning in fall 2021 (Sawchuk, 2021). The causes of this possible rise in violence are complex and not well understood, given the recency of the trend. Many see a link between the rise in youth violence and the inequities laid bare by the simultaneous unfolding of the pandemic and the nation’s reckoning with racial injustice.

Of course, school safety efforts should prioritize protecting students from physical violence. An equitable approach to school safety, however, includes understanding that social inequality is both a cause and — if mishandled — a consequence of physical violence. One study found that rates of school violence were higher in racially integrated schools — especially when community-level inequalities were larger — compared to racially segregated schools or schools in communities with less inequality (Eitle & McNulty Eitle, 2003).

Responses to fights and physical attacks can exacerbate these inequalities. Students of color — Black students in particular — and LGBTQ+ students consistently are more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white and heterosexual peers, even when the rule infraction is the same (Palmer & Greytak, 2017; Skiba et al., 2014; Welch & Payne, 2010). These disparities contribute to widening inequality between white students and students of color and between heterosexual/cisgender and LGBTQ+ students across academic, criminal justice, and job market outcomes (Davison et al., 2022; Mittleman, 2018; Palmer & Greytak, 2017). Limiting exclusionary discipline such as expulsions is imperative for creating an equitable school environment, but violence must not be unchecked; disorder erodes feelings of safety, too (Lacoe, 2016).

Using equitable strategies to prevent and respond to school violence can be challenging. Though restorative practices are gaining in popularity, implementing the model effectively is difficult (Fronius et al., 2019; Katic, Alba, & Johnson, 2020). Routine “circle” practice, where youth are invited to speak from the heart and listen to each other in response to structured prompts, is intended to establish communal bonds. It can lay the groundwork for conversations that invite accountability and repair when a harm is done within a community. I found in my own research that a shortage of training, buy-in, and follow-through on the part of educators in these activities results in a hollowing-out of the culture of community, watering down the potential impact of these efforts to promote accountability and repair.

Safety from emotional violence

Emotional violence can take many forms and radiate from a range of sources. Bullying between students is the most obvious form of emotional violence in schools. The association between bullying and emotional distress, self-harm, and suicide identifies bullying as a school safety concern.

The racial unrest in recent years has pushed to the surface barely concealed white supremacist sentiment. At the same time, schools have seen a parallel rise in the incidence of racist bullying and hate speech (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2021). Current “parents’ rights” campaigns against teaching critical race theory in schools illustrate how deeply rooted the resistance to confronting racism is in certain communities.

Despite the political fray, a framework for equitable school safety must aim to prevent and address the impact of implicit bias and explicit racist harassment on students of color. States and districts have policies that define hate speech and bullying, but translating these policies into practices that protect marginalized youth is difficult. As school boards have become battlegrounds over how race and racism are discussed in schools, superintendents, administrators, and teachers acting against racism may find their jobs on the line.

Protecting marginalized students from emotional violence requires a coordinated effort. Evidence-based initiatives to promote culturally sustaining instruction and school climates must be implemented with fidelity. This requires training for educators that goes beyond a rote step-by-step on how to “do” anti-racist education. Instead, professional development should help educators understand and uproot implicit bias. These pedagogical and cultural efforts inside schools must be backed up by well-funded and coordinated campaigns to elect anti-racist representatives on school boards. These boards, in turn, must back efforts by district leaders, school administrators, and educators to implement anti-racist policies and practices that protect students of color from racist bullying and implicit bias.

Safety from structural violence

If ensuring students’ safety from emotional violence requires, in part, favorable policies and governance structures, then the opposite is also true: Unfavorable governance and policies can victimize students directly. We see examples of this when state or district policies mandate the exposure of students to physical or emotional risks to their safety. Kentucky, for example, recently passed House Bill 63, which requires that every school in the state be staffed by an SRO. Given the research outlined above about the impacts of school policing on students of color, LGBTQ+ students, and immigrant students, HB63 exposes marginalized students to a greater risk of future negative consequences. Moreover, HB63 provides no additional funding for schools to hire the required SROs, heightening the likelihood that cuts will be made to other programs, including diversity, equity, inclusion, social-emotional learning, mental health supports, and other resources that promote the safety of marginalized students.

Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Law, popularly known as the “don’t say gay” bill, provides another example of legislation perpetrating structural violence against marginalized students. Under this law, teachers are forbidden from discussing gender or sexual orientation with students younger than 4th grade. Conversations are limited to what is “age appropriate” — without defining what “age appropriate” means. LGBTQ+ youth are at substantially higher risk of bullying, mental health issues, and suicide than their heterosexual and cisgender peers (Johns et al., 2020; Price-Feeney, Green, & Dorison, 2020). These risks to their safety are significantly reduced through such protective factors as relationships with supportive adults, lower rates of community homophobia, and greater access to affirming activities like affinity groups in schools (Gorse, 2020; Rivas-Koehl et al., 2022). The “don’t say gay” law puts LGBTQ+ students at risk of harm by restricting their relationships, institutionalizing homophobia, and limiting their access to affirming spaces and activities.

A research agenda for equitable school safety

You will have noticed by now that I am offering no turnkey solutions to the challenge of cultivating equitable school safety. While frustrating, this is intentional; turnkey solutions to thorny problems are a fallacy. No plug-and-play program or policy will address the needs of every school. Rather, strategies need to be tailored and responsive to schools’ unique environments to create lasting change.

To identify and adopt strategies that promote equitable school safety, schools need to leverage rapid-cycle research that engages youth and communities. Rapid-cycle research and evaluation aim to efficiently measure the effectiveness of specific interventions through quick turnaround data collection and analysis that informs alterations to program implementation (Atukpawu-Tipton & Poes, 2020). Involving students and community members in this work is critical. At the core of culturally responsive and racially equitable evaluation is a commitment to centering the experiences and perspectives of those most directly impacted by the programs and questions under study (Hood, Hopson, & Kirkhart, 2015). Because some school safety interventions can widen inequalities and harm marginalized students, centering these voices in efforts to evaluate and adjust schools’ safety initiatives is a safeguard against injustice.

To identify and adopt strategies that promote equitable school safety, schools need to leverage rapid-cycle research that engages youth and communities.

Research and evaluation are critical tools as districts decide how to use the funding and resources recently made available through the Safer Communities Act. The first major gun control legislation passed in nearly 30 years took shape after the massacre in Uvalde, Texas. The Safer Communities Act provides more than $2 billion in funding for school safety and mental health programs and services. Schools receiving these funds need to be able to make informed decisions about which programs and approaches are most likely to be effective. The legislation itself codifies the creation of a clearinghouse for disseminating evidence-based resources related to school safety.

Taken together, calls for culturally responsive and racially equitable evaluation of school safety initiatives and the creation of a school safety clearinghouse raise important questions about the path toward an equitable definition of school safety. First, what level of evidence will pass muster for the clearinghouse? While high standards for evidence are important, they are also hard to meet. School- or district-level rapid-cycle evaluations that focus on youth and community voices are unlikely to meet these standards because of their sample sizes and methods. How can we scale up the advancement of equitable school safety when the central repository for resources is likely to exclude, by design, community-based lessons that have equity as their guiding light?

Second, what is the ideal relationship between evidence and funding? On the one hand, funding only evidence-based interventions may have implications for school policing and other “hard” safety and security programs that, at best, lack research evidence of positive impact and, at worst, harm marginalized students. On the other hand, requiring that initiatives be evidence-backed as a precondition for funding may preclude local program development and innovation that exemplifies cultural responsiveness and promotion of equity. These questions don’t have easy answers, but they do require the attention of policy makers as the next phase of school safety promotion takes shape.

Events like school shootings invariably expose the assumptions and the privilege that dominate our understanding of school safety. Families close to the tragedy are interviewed by reporters. Families at a distance speak about it while waiting in school pickup lines and over coffee: I just dropped my kids off at school. I didn’t think twice about it. I expected them to be safe there.

I want to add another thread to this narrative — that of the person who does fear for their child’s safety at school. We must not forget the family that worries their child will be victimized by a racist disciplinary system, denied their existence and access to resources by a homophobic state policy, or harassed by a bigoted peer who gives voice to the anxiety and bias and rage of a community-wide campaign. Not everyone gets to drop their kids off at school, buoyed by faith in the sanctuary schools should provide. The work of school safety is to make sure school is a sanctuary for every child. We must work to ensure that every child from every community is holistically safe at school.

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This article appears in the December 2022/January 2023 issue of Kappan, Vol. 104, No. 4, p. 6-11.