United States Schools Security

The recent spate of school shootings by students, including the worst in U.S. history at Columbine High School last month, has caused many schools to reconsider their security systems and safety policies. Some have implemented simple procedures, such as requiring student IDs and uniforms, while others have installed high-tech surveillance systems. High-profile security measures aren't always the answer, however, and tend to cost more than schools can afford.

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.

Now it's getting scary. Being a parent must be a nightmare these school days. Being someone's son or daughter might be even scarier. Little monsters are loose. They don't merely carry out a terrorist threat, a shooting, a bombing, an act of violence, they fake it now, pretend, make jokes, play on and prey on people's fears. Which is cruel beyond belief. It is happening coast to coast. It's spreading to countries other than ours.

The largest U.S. teachers union focused Friday on counseling, smaller classes and discipline as ways to reduce school violence in the aftermath of the high school massacre in Littleton, Colo. Gun-control measures that have dominated congressional debate drew only secondary attention among delegates and speakers at the annual meeting of the 2.4-million-member National Education Assn. "Society has ceded too much control of discipline in our schools to the children," said Rep. Patrick J.

Still rattled by last month's school massacre in Littleton, Colo., the Senate on Tuesday opened a wide-ranging debate on how to respond to such outbursts of youth violence--a debate that gun control proponents hope will produce the first new restrictions on firearms since Republicans took charge of Congress more than four years ago.

Targeting behavior that runs the gamut from disruptive classroom wisecracks to deadly schoolyard shootings, President Clinton announced an offensive Monday aimed at restoring discipline to America's troubled schools. The president said that he will convene a special White House conference on school safety in October so that educators, law enforcement officials, students and victims can hash out the problem.

The National Education Assn., responding to increased violence in the nation's schools, proposed a $500-million initiative Thursday to retrain teachers, increase security and develop programs to detect and deal with problems before they occur. At a news conference Thursday, the teachers' group said violence has grown to critical proportions, reaching beyond urban public schools to suburban and rural campuses and into private institutions.

The largest U.S. teachers union focused Friday on counseling, smaller classes and discipline as ways to reduce school violence in the aftermath of the high school massacre in Littleton, Colo. Gun-control measures that have dominated congressional debate drew only secondary attention among delegates and speakers at the annual meeting of the 2.4-million-member National Education Assn. "Society has ceded too much control of discipline in our schools to the children," said Rep. Patrick J.

President Clinton, in an unusual breach of constitutional etiquette, on Saturday criticized the Supreme Court for its decision this week to strike down a law banning possession of a gun near a school. Clinton said he was "terribly disappointed" by the ruling, which was delivered Wednesday by a court sharply split along ideological lines. In a 5-4 vote, the court ruled that the "gun-free school zone law" of 1990 was an unconstitutional infringement on state power by the federal government.

Some schools are getting tougher, hiring security guards and installing metal detectors and expelling students who so much as mutter a threat. Some schools are getting softer, creating peer-mediation panels and mentoring programs and hotlines so kids can vent without violence. Some schools, in a grim modern twist on the fire drill, make kids sit quietly in locked classrooms while a hypothetical psycho stalks the halls. Some schools are doing all of these things; others, nothing at all.

Still rattled by last month's school massacre in Littleton, Colo., the Senate on Tuesday opened a wide-ranging debate on how to respond to such outbursts of youth violence--a debate that gun control proponents hope will produce the first new restrictions on firearms since Republicans took charge of Congress more than four years ago.

The recent spate of school shootings by students, including the worst in U.S. history at Columbine High School last month, has caused many schools to reconsider their security systems and safety policies. Some have implemented simple procedures, such as requiring student IDs and uniforms, while others have installed high-tech surveillance systems. High-profile security measures aren't always the answer, however, and tend to cost more than schools can afford.

Now it's getting scary. Being a parent must be a nightmare these school days. Being someone's son or daughter might be even scarier. Little monsters are loose. They don't merely carry out a terrorist threat, a shooting, a bombing, an act of violence, they fake it now, pretend, make jokes, play on and prey on people's fears. Which is cruel beyond belief. It is happening coast to coast. It's spreading to countries other than ours.

For as long as there have been high school cafeterias, there have been misfits without a friendly place to eat their lunch. But it has never seemed to matter as much as it does now, when the lines drawn between high school groups--between the jocks and preppies and potheads and Goths and nerds--can turn into something far more serious than the melodrama of a fistfight in the hall.

It would be hard to find a high school in California that doesn't have its loners and misfits--the kids with the Mohawks, tongue studs, trench coats, or those whose idiosyncrasies are less obvious. A day after two disaffected students went on a killing rampage in a Colorado high school, parents, teachers and school officials across the region said they have been painfully reminded of the need to differentiate typically alienated teenagers from those prone to deadly violence.

Spurred by last year's spate of schoolyard shootings, federal officials committed $300 million in new grants Thursday to school districts that can demonstrate effective ways of combating violence and drugs. The program will provide up to $3 million per year for three years to 50 public districts that, through an application process, can put together a comprehensive strategy in areas such as gang intervention, school security, mental health treatment and mentoring.

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.

For as long as there have been high school cafeterias, there have been misfits without a friendly place to eat their lunch. But it has never seemed to matter as much as it does now, when the lines drawn between high school groups--between the jocks and preppies and potheads and Goths and nerds--can turn into something far more serious than the melodrama of a fistfight in the hall.

Over the last dozen years, the U.S. Department of Education has poured nearly $6 billion into an ambitious yet flawed program that has fallen far short of its mission to control violence and narcotics abuse in the nation's public schools. Billed as the federal government's largest program to deter student drug use and aggression, the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act provided an average of $500 million annually to local school districts with virtually no strings attached.