Back to School --Surrounded by Safeguards

WASHINGTON — As kids scramble back to classrooms across the nation, the jangle of school bells has some dissonant new accompaniments: the electronic beep of metal detectors, the robotic swivel of surveillance cameras, the crackle of walkie-talkies and the thwop-thwop-thwop of SWAT-team helicopters.

After a sobering two years of school shootings, a growing number of school systems this fall has embraced measures designed to safeguard children against the armed rage of violent classmates or deranged adults.

In communities large and small, urban and rural, violence-plagued and crime-free, police departments and special intervention teams have spent the summer mapping school grounds and plotting responses to violent incidents. Mock drills, complete with “victims” playing out their roles, have been conducted at schools from Berkeley to Pasadena, Md.; Pittsburgh even used helicopters to evacuate the “wounded.”

Schools Employ Host of Safety Measures

In hundreds of school districts, pupils must wear newly issued identification cards to get onto school grounds. Businesses that specialize in security cameras are working overtime to market, produce and install them.

In California, Gov. Gray Davis has earmarked $100 million to help school districts pay for new school safety measures. With spending requests due to the state by Oct. 31, districts are drawing up plans that range from Whittier City’s bid to bring in more guidance counselors to Palo Alto Unified’s proposal to buy cell phones for administrators and install telephones in classrooms.

Across the country, the most numerous and visible of the new security measures are mechanical. But many schools’ security plans, to the chagrin of most teens, will also clamp down on students in ways large and small.

In Broward County, Fla., as in many communities, high school students at South Plantation High will no longer be able to leave the campus for lunch. In Miami and San Diego, book bags--which could hide weapons--are barred. In Gilbert, Ariz., “white supremacy clothing” such as the trench coats worn by teen killers in Littleton, Colo., is banned. McKinney, Texas, bans baggy pants, T-shirts with violent or sexual messages and unusually dyed hair.

More dramatically than any of the last two years’ other violent incidents, April’s massacre at Littleton spurred school officials into action. Two teenage boys shot and killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School before taking their own lives.

Not all have drawn the same lesson from Columbine. While most school systems have primarily beefed up their physical safeguards, many others have either supplemented or supplanted those measures with low-tech solutions such as kind words and plain talk.

“One of the major lessons from Columbine is that we don’t have anyone saying anymore that it couldn’t happen here,” said Joanne McDaniel, assistant director of the Center for the Prevention of School Violence in Raleigh, N.C.

In the wake of the Columbine shootings, experts faulted the Colorado school’s size, its physical layout and the local Police Department’s response to the crisis. But McDaniel said that parents and school officials have been most affected by the idea that every school has its potential Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold--the two Columbine shooters. Given the right combination of psychological factors, parents and officials have come to understand, these children could move from merely troubled to deadly.

In many communities, that has led parents and school officials to conclude they had better start focusing on their schools’ psychological environment--from student bullies to disengaged teachers and administrators. Many experts believe that defusing children’s violent impulses will have more impact in the long term than disarming gun-toters at the door or mounting exercises that prepare for their deadly outbursts.

“Making schools safe is as much a matter of the heart and changing attitudes and actions as it is a matter of bringing in a tool that will create a safe environment,” said Ron Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center in Westlake Village. “This is not just about hardware but about software--about valuing each individual. Many strategies we see schools taking are more about ‘snooper-vision’ than about supervision.”

In schools in and around New Orleans, a focus on “software” has translated into adoption of school uniforms. Hundreds of schools across the country are urging students to break their code of silence and use telephone “tip lines” to report an overheard threat or flag a dangerous situation. Other schools are trying to curb outcasts’ violent tendencies by opening lines of communication among students and between kids and school officials.

At Powell Middle School in Hernando County, Fla., for example, Principal Cy Wingrove plans to expand a crime-watch program that outfits students with walkie-talkies and distinctive jackets to monitor the halls. By seeking out troubled or disengaged youngsters for the special role, Wingrove hopes to give them a stronger sense of responsibility.

Throughout the Port Huron, Mich., school district, principals will begin lunching regularly with students of every stripe and from every clique, not just class leaders.

“The theme this year is listening to kids--at all levels,” said Port Huron’s superintendent, William D. Kimball. “We’re focusing on prevention, trying to be more aware of the kids, to identify our problems earlier.”

Although the district has ruled out the purchase of metal detectors and is moving slowly on the question of surveillance cameras, it has accelerated a program to train all school employees--from teachers to food service workers to bus drivers--in conflict resolution.

The focus on low-tech prevention rather than high-tech intervention came after Port Huron school officials foiled a plot in May by four students who threatened to outdo the Columbine shooters. A fellow student who had heard of their alleged scheme alerted school officials; two 13-year-olds and two 14-year-olds were arrested before any harm was done.

In the Hopkins school district in the Minneapolis suburbs, every teacher is assigned to mentor a small group of students throughout their high school careers.

“We’re establishing a long-term ‘Let me be the adult in your life’ thing,” said the district’s social worker, Sharon MacDonald. “Maybe that way we won’t have kids slipping through the cracks.”

Some Districts Are Starting From Scratch

A few districts are starting from scratch by building schools that enhance students’ sense of community and protect schoolchildren by drawing them into the larger world.

The Downtown School, which opens this fall in Minneapolis for kindergartners through 12th graders, features small-group work areas clustered around individual work stations rather than long corridors and isolated classrooms.

The Cuningham Group, which designed the Downtown School, applied similar principles to a more sprawling high school in Kapolei, Hawaii, for 2,400 students. When it opens next year, Kapolei High will be divided into four “neighborhoods,” with group learning rooms and individual work spaces set around a “village green”--a central courtyard where group activities are open to broad view.

The school is designed to promote students’ responsibility for peaceful activity and learning, said Bruce Jilk, an architect with Cuningham Group, with “implied supervision” allowed by open spaces.