ANALYSIS
0/2/12 1:25 PM Page 1 When kindness fails, you need to be
aggressive, forceful, and effective. An emergency plan of action needs to be in place, practiced and proactive. Teachers and students should be trained and allowed to practice lockdown drills. Bus drivers need to be ready to respond to emergencies in the school and on the road. Parents need a low- tech and high-tech communication system
for responding to school emergencies. Gone are the days of Columbine when police waited for hours to enter the school. Today police and community emergency response teams are trained for active shooter/rapid response, to take out the shooter ASAP. Healing is personal. Schools need to be
prepared to deal with the consequences of violence immediately and long after the
incident. Individuals react to grief in many ways, and there is no best way to grieve. Whereas some people need to process the grief immediately, others need to be left alone. Grief has no specific timeline for everyone. Bus drivers may offer another friendly face to a student who may be suffering from violence or life’s every day problems. School safety has entered uncharted
waters. When I started working in school safety decades ago, the weapon of choice for school violence was a box cutter or knife. Now the choice is semi-automatic weapons. What will be next? A bomb on a bus? Te unthinkable is now doable, and probably unpreventable. Te Newtown and Alabama shootings
raise disturbing issues and questions. Con- troversial approaches, which once would have been considered ridiculous, are now being debated, such as arming teachers and having teachers and students take out the shooter by any means possible. Should we arm bus drivers? Guns, metal detectors, mental health issues, zero toler- ance, and other emotional issues make for complex and difficult decisions. A voice of reason is often lost in the heat of hysteria. Tere are no guarantees, only intelligent
...while buses IDLE away time – and money!
alternatives. Today, we are better prepared to deal with and prevent school violence than we were in the earlier days in Cleveland and Columbine. Tere still is no 100-percent guarantee that our schools and buses will be violence-free. Tere are no easy solutions, but there are intelligent alternatives to reduce the risks. It’s time for all schools to explore these
alternatives. For some, tomorrow may be too late.
© 2013 Stephen R. Sroka, Ph.D., Lakewood, Ohio. Used with permission.
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Stephen Sroka, Ph.D., is an adjunct assistant professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the president of Health Education Consultants. He is an award-winning educator, author and internationally recognized speaker. He has worked with school violence issues worldwide for more than 30 years. Connect with Sroka on his website
www.DrStephenSroka.com or by e-mail at
drssroka@aol.com.
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