A few days ago, vice presidential candidate JD Vance upset many parents by conceding school shootings to be a “fact of life,” and suggesting there’s nothing to do about guns, and that we must instead bolster the security in what are otherwise the tempting, soft targets of our schools.
Last Spring,
after another shooting outside Garfield High, Seattle Schools began to discuss
the return of uniformed resource officers, who’d been unwelcome since the de-policing
energy following George Floyd’s death in 2020.
As
officials were debating, students in my Roosevelt English class wanted to talk
about how they felt about police in the schools—addressing race, profiling, school-to-prison
pipelines, but focusing especially on how much such a person could help in the
face of an armed threat. Finally, students turned to me for my thoughts.
And to my
dear students, I said: I am sorry. I don’t have a solution. I have grief.
We now
have cameras at every corner in every hallway. All doors are locked and we video-buzz
the main office to let us in. Classrooms have interior locks and black-out
shades and we practice huddling together quietly on the floor away from windows
and doors. Fire doors close off hallways soon after most students go home. Field
trips require huge teams to approve all the security measures we must prove are
in place. We’re looking to build a perimeter fence.
Schools
are supposed to be places where we grow and inspire our children, teach them to
be citizens and neighbors. Schools have been the gathering hubs for surrounding
community that’s usually named after the very schools that have always been their
beating heart.
I want school
to be a place that speaks to our curiosities rather than our fears.
Why must our best solution to school shootings be locking up our children?
