Legislation, sausage, and the news are three things you never want to see being made. Of the three, I think legislation is the ugliest with the least predictable (and sometimes least meaningful) outcome. I have had the opportunity to testify on school safety issues four times before our nation’s Congress: House Education and Labor Committee […]
Category Archive: Legislation and School Safety
Pipe Bombs & Shooting Threats: Violence or Incivil Behavior?
High-profile school security incidents this week included: A pipe bomb disabled at a Los Angeles school. A teen arrested for a mass schooting plot at a school. Texas schools on the Mexican border preparing for stray bullets from Mexican drug cartel wars. Is this violence? Or is it a manifestation of bullying, harassment, and “incivil” […]
What Constitutes Comprehensive School Safety Policies, Programs, and Funding?
The “bullying summit” held by the U.S. Department of Education this past week drew attention, praise, opposition, and spirited debate depending upon who you talked with about it. As legislators, bureaucrats, educators, media and others jump on the “bullying bandwagon,” what constitutes a more comprehensive and balanced school safety plan? I revisited my July 9, 2009, […]
Why School Safety Initiatives Fail
New York Times writer, Crystal Yednak, and I spoke at length for her article published this past Sunday entitled, “Seeking to Assure Students’ Safety Outside School.” The article highlights stimulus-funded efforts in Chicago to create safer streets for students walking to and from school following a shocking number of kids killed and injured in recent […]
Who Will Bail Out School Safety?
Education budget cuts are in the headlines every day: Teachers being laid off in mass numbers. Local levy and bond issues failing left and right. Major cuts from school operating budgets. Buried deeper in these stories are the cuts to school safety. As of July, if things move forward as planned, the state grant component […]
Tying Educators’ Hands In School Safety Efforts
Chuck Hibbert is a national school safety consultant (including for my company) and 21-year-veteran school district administrator over school security and school police services for a 15,000 student district in Indiana. Chuck takes issue with ““Taking Safety Too Far: The Ill-Defined Role Police Play in Schools,” February 24th commentary article in Education Week by authors and civil rights advocates Johanna Wald […]
Bullying: Parent or School Responsibility?
Who is ultimately responsible for school bullying – parents, schools, the victims? CNN’s Rick Sanchez and I had a lengthy on-air discussion yesterday afternoon on bullying, the roles of teachers and parents, who is responsible when a bullied teen commits suicide, and what parents can do to support their children who may be bullied or […]
School Anti-Bullying Laws Are The Wrong Approach
School anti-bullying laws ‘sound good and feel good, but they provide little-to-no new resources to educators. High-profile bullying incidents, including a number resulting in victim suicides, have fueled calls for more state and federal anti-bullying laws. The latest school bullying case in Massachusetts resulted in the death of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince and criminal charges against nine teens. […]
Anti-School Police Commentary Paints False School Safety Picture
In ““Taking Safety Too Far: The Ill-Defined Role Police Play in Schools,” a February 24th commentary article in Education Week, authors and civil rights advocates Johanna Wald and Lisa Thurau presented what I believe to be a very skewed misrepresentation of school resource officers (SROs), school police, and administrators. I responded with a letter to the editor […]