FARMINGTON — Building relationships between teachers and students might help prevent some school shootings but no single measure will stop all shootings, a national safety specialist told Northwest Arkansas superintendents.
Bill Bond, safety specialist for the National Association of Secondary School Principals, said banning certain weapons or high capacity magazines or hiring more resource officers may prevent some shootings.
Arming teachers may not be the answer, Bond said. He cautioned about 80 administrators and teachers Thursday morning at the Northwest Arkansas Educational Services Cooperative that legislation may be proposed in Arkansas to arm staff members. A South Dakota law allows school districts to decide if teachers and staff can carry guns.
Pete Joenks, principal at the 2,100-student Springdale High, said safety is the No. 1 goal of his school and the district. District staff members are working to make the schools safer.
At A Glance
Other Notable School Shootings
Bill Bond, a native of Fordyce, Ark., referred to several notable school shootings during his discussion on school safety at the Northwest Arkansas Educational Services Cooperative.
• Pearl High School, Mississippi — October 1997, two killed, five injured
• Santana High School, California — February 2001, two killed, 17 wounded
• Red Lion Junior High School, Pennsylvania — April 2003, principal killed
• Stewart County High School, Tennessee — March 2005, bus driver killed
• Red Lake High School, Minnesota — March 2005, seven killed
• Campbell County High School, Tennessee — November 2005, assistant principal killed
• Weston High School, Wisconsin — September 2006, principal killed
• Success Tech, Ohio — October 2007, four wounded
• Marinette High School, Wisconsin — November 2010, student killed self after holding classmates, teachers hostage for hours
• Chardon High School, Ohio — February 2012, three students killed
• Perry Hall High School, Maryland — August 2012, one student shot, teacher got gun away from student
• Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut — December 2012, 26 killed
Source: National Association Of Secondary School Principals
Elementary schools added buzzers at the front doors. Entrances at the high school have been limited, Joenks said.
Building relationships with students has been a key objective at his school for the past several years, he said.
At Fayetteville High School, two school resource officers patrol the campus and the school closes one of its two entrances during the school day, Superintendent Vicki Thomas said.
“We feel we are well covered,” Thomas said.
Bond was the principal in 1997 at Heath High School in Paducah, Ky., which was the scene of the first high-profile school shooting. Three students died and five were injured.
He said he was finishing a telephone call that Monday morning when he heard “pow pow” in the lobby outside his office. With every shot, someone fell to the ground.
His first thought was to get the gun, which he did when the shooter, a 14-year-old boy, laid the gun down to reload. The boy had 1,060 rounds of ammunition in his backpack along with two .22-caliber semiautomatic rifles and two shotguns wrapped in a quilt he smuggled into the school through the band room.
A shooting such as the one in Paducah usually isn’t about an argument with another person or a soured relationship or a drug deal gone bad.
“He is there to kill,” Bond said, which is a common thread running through all mass school shootings, including the one at Newtown, Conn., where 26 people died.
Bond went through the details of 10 other high-profile school shootings, noting the differences and similarities in all.
“Banning AR-15s absolutely will not stop school shootings,” he said, adding the high capacity magazine is so the shooter won’t have to stop to reload.
Only 12 seconds elapsed from the time of the first gunshot until Bond had the gun in his hand, Bond said. Yet, it would be 13 minutes before the first emergency responders came through the front door of the school, he added.
“If I had had a firearm and if I had been highly trained, I think I would be dead,” he said. “Teachers being armed might help, but it’s a trade-off. A teacher who is armed might not be as effective a teacher because she is on alert for menacing activity. There is no perfect answer. Anything might help a little.”
When Bond’s school reopened only three of the 18 previously unlocked entrances were used and teachers were stationed at each to check bags and backpacks.
“It turned out to be one of the most positive things because the kids would see three smiling, caring adults at the door,” Bond said. “Kids didn’t take that as intrusive. We started to concentrate more on relationships with kids. Nothing will replace a trusting relationship between teacher and student, someone a student can trust to talk to.”