School Shooting Problem
The safety role of educational leaders is significant even if they may not be doing the task physically that needs security measures.
An institution’s leadership sets its standards and principles and has the authority to impose safety regulations.
The increasing shootings in schools have sparked discussions about the best approaches to protect students over the past few years.
58 % of teens expressed concern about the prospect of mass shootings at Florida high schools (Tin et al., 2022).
President Trump proposed letting highly skilled teachers and various school workers bear concealed firearms to make schools safer (Rees et al., 2019).
Educational leaders across America struggle with how to stop similar attacks and save the lives of schoolchildren and staff.
Example of School Shootings
The 1990s marked a turning point with high-profile incidents in places like Pearl and Mississippi.
Two students, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, committed the Colorado assault and murdered 13 individuals before killing themselves.
In October 2022, a Michigan kid admitted to killing four classmates (Livingston et al., 2019).
As the October 2022 trial was going on, a former St. Louis performance arts high school student opened fire, killing two people and wounding at least eight more before dying in a gun battle with police.
The revelation that another shooting incident occurred hours after a perpetrator in a different case appeared in court emphasizes how frequently these incidents occur in the United States
Negative Consequences of School Shootings
Trauma results in long-term effects on the health like a lasting psychological and education of students (Levine & McKnight, 2020).
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affects more than half of the school population subjected to mass shootings.
Two years after a school massacre, students who survived face daily challenges and are much more likely to require antidepressants.
Long recovery periods might cause them to lose their prospects for education and jobs (Rossin-Slater et al., 2020).
Approximately 30% of students in 44 Texas school districts that had deadly shootings had been prescribed antidepressants (Rossin-Slater et al., 2020).
After a school shooting, some students become chronically absent, and others have to repeat a grade due to poor academic performance
Stakeholders Impacted by School Shootings
Since students are the primary beneficiaries of education and are why schools are founded, they are significantly influenced by any problems with the educational process.
Due to the high population of students, they are the largest causalities (Blankschaen, 2022).
Teachers oversee and manage the implementation of the curriculum, provide the basic requirements of students, and participate in school activities; therefore they must be present in the classroom with the students and are affected during shooting.
Examples of the work of non-teaching staff include the lunch program, the execution of experiments in science labs, security, and extracurricular activities.
Non-teaching staff are impacted since they spend most of their time in schools and might get killed during such incidents.
References
Blankschaen, K. (2022). Are mass shooters a social kind? Philosophy Documentation Center, 99(4), 162-177. Web.
Katsiyannis, A., Whitford, D. K., & Ennis, R. P. (2018). Historical examination of United States intentional mass school shootings in the 20th and 21st centuries: Implications for students, schools, and society. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 27(3), 2562-2573.
Levine, P. B., & McKnight, R. (2020). Exposure to a school shooting and subsequent well-being. National Bureau of Economic Research. Web.
Livingston, M. D., Rossheim, M. E., & Hall, K. S. (2019). A descriptive analysis of school and school shooter characteristics and the severity of school shootings in the United States, 1999-2018. Journal of Adolescent Health, 64(6), 797-799. Web.