Rural Schools should be more prepared

Rural Schools should be more prepared
Page 3 Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper & Schleswig Leader- Thursday, October 12, 2006

The Congressman Foley instant-messenger sex with teenage pages and the apparent House cover-up eclipsed Bob Woodward’s new book, “State of Denial,” that scrutinized the Bush Administration’s handling of the war in Iraq. Before that, Woodward’s book overshadowed the National Intelligence Estimate that revealed many of the problems that those policies wrought.

No doubt by the time you’re reading this column, yet another story will be dominating the headlines. That’s the problem with writing for a weekly newspaper, the news cycle is 24/7 so there’s no way to know what will be relevant if you’re writing for October 12, but writing on October 5th.

But something tragic happened recently that we shouldn’t take for granted or become calloused to. Nor should we let it be lost in the media feeding-frenzy of political intrigue and personal indiscretion.

Kids were killed. Kids were killed all over the country. Not in big cities, but out here, “ out in the country.”

An October 4 story on National Public Radio (NPR) reported” Violent crime is far less common in rural areas than in cities. Rural people are four times less likely to be victims of violent crime. Yet all three school shootings in the past week occurred in rural places.”

There was a similar rash of shootings after the Columbine shootings in 1999. Virtually all of the shootings in the 90’s occurred in small cities and rural towns.

It doesn’t make sense that the safest places to live could be the most dangerous place to go to school. We feel somewhat insulated.

Schools in small towns make easier targets.

Urban schools have tighter security and more experience working with violent and troubled teens.

In rural areal guns are more easily accessible than in cities, although they’re less likely to be used in a crime. But rural kids are far more likely to be able to get a hold of a weapon easily.
In a smaller community, if a student lives on the social fringes, they have a harder time finding a place to fit in.

We’d like to think that it’s a good thing to live somewhere where everyone either knows you or knows someone who knows you, but that also means that if you’re teased or ridiculed, it’s harder to hide and it’s harder to reinvent yourself.

After the Columbine shootings, the vast majority of students identified with the victims, but a small percentage identified with the shooters because they not only got even with the bullies and the mean teachers, they also got famous.

In the years since Columbine many schools have worked hard to crack down on harassment and bullying. Districts have drafted policies and implemented programs to prevent sexual harassment, hazing and initiations of underclassmen, and discrimination based on race, religion and sexual preference.

It still may not be enough. School hallways, locker rooms, buses and classrooms are still places where it’s accepted behavior to “talk trash,” and “rip on each other.”
But it’s also not enough to work at being pro-active. Schools have to craft, review, train for and implement serious emergency management plans.

One teacher in a one-room school 80 miles from the nearest sheriff’s station suggested to an NPR reporter that they should equip schools with sirens, so that when a catastrophic event occurs, parents and neighbors will know about it for miles around.
Schools in Brown, Rock and Holt counties in North Central Nebraska were in low-down last week after a local newspaper received an anonymous call from someone who said there would be a shooting at one of the schools.

What exactly is “lock-down?” I’m a teacher and I don’t know. I’ve heard of large city schools where all of the classroom door can be closed and locked at once in case of an emergency. Sort of like battening down the hatches on a ship.

We’re told where to take kids in a tornado and for a fire drill. We know who our team leaders are for cleaning up blood, vomit, and bodily fluids. We’re trained in first aid. But what if someone was in the library with a shotgun?

Maybe my district has such a plan and I’m the one who’s negligent for not knowing it, but as a parent I’d want every teacher to know it backwards and forwards.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools suggests a framework of the four phases of crisis planning: prevention/mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.

They held training sessions this April in Colorado and this May in Pennsylvania, but they only had room for 125 school administrators and personnel.
I believe that our states should offer this kind of training for as many teachers, administrators, and school-board members as possible.

I may sound paranoid or alarmist to some, but I believe that every school board should develop an emergency and crisis management plan and make sure that teachers, staff members and students are a helluva lot more familiar with it than they are with the school mission statement or fight song. Lives may depend on it.