PHOTO: Durango-based FCI Constructors is currently performing upgrades to Pagosa Peak Open School (PPOS) that will enhance building safety and security.
In November, 2017, Archuleta County voters appeared to be concerned about school staffing and security, but maybe not as concerned about large jails.
The November election revealed significant voter support for a seven-year property tax increase, to fund better teacher salaries and improved building security for the Archuleta School District (ASD)…
…and a lack of popular support for a proposed sales tax increase proposed by the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners, for “Justice System Capital Improvements”.
Since that election, the School District’s 5A mill levy override has been generating about $1.7 million annually in new property tax revenues for ASD, to be used to “recruit and retain highly qualified teachers and staff; fund full time school resource officers for safety; fund full day Kindergarten; and provide required funding for Pagosa Peak Open School [charter school] to increase staff salaries, supplement full day Kindergarten, and improve school safety.” That property tax increase won at the polls with 61% percent of the vote.
Archuleta County Ballot Measure 1A would have increased the County sales tax from 2 percent to 3 percent, to fund a new Sheriff’s office and 54-bed County Detention Center, but received only 47% of the popular vote, compared to 53% voting ‘No’.
A new District-authorized charter school had opened that same year — 2017 — as Pagosa Peak Open School, occupying the first floor of the the Parelli Natural Horsemanship office building in Aspen Village. Over the next five years, PPOS made gradual changes to its operations and to the building, to enhance student security, ultimately purchasing the entire building in concert with the PPOS Building Corporation. Unlike the District, however, PPOS has not hired police to patrol its halls.
Last year, PPOS won a matching grant from the Colorado Department of Education to perform $1.4 million worth of health and safety upgrades to the school building. The largest part of that investment will be used to upgrade the building’s ventilation system — a recommended upgrade intended to improve energy efficiency, student and staff comfort, and additional safety during infectious disease outbreaks.
The entry vestibule inside the building will also be made more secure, in terms of preventing unauthorized entry. Security cameras are also part of the upgrade.
‘Hardening’ of school buildings has become a popular concept over the past two decades, including — in some cases — police patrols in hallways, self-locking doors, intercom systems, security video networks, alarm systems, teaching staff carrying guns, and emergency drills and planning.
Here, for example, is a chart from Chalkbeat.org showing increased security in American schools between 1999 and 2019:
In spite of these efforts, the number of school shootings has merely increased, including incidents involving ‘active shooters’ — defined as a perpetrator of a type of mass murder, marked by rapidity, scale, randomness, and often suicide.
According to a story by NBC New York, American schools experienced 41 ‘active shooter’ incidents during the decade from 2002 and 2011.
Between 2012 and 2021, and in spite of millions of dollars spent ‘hardening’ school buildings, American schools experienced 57 ‘active shooter’ incidents.
The vast majority of the school shooting incidents have involved “non-active shooters”… increasing from 291 events between 2002 and 2011… to 792 events between 2012 and 2021. That’s a 270% increase, decade over decade.
240 of those ‘non-active shooter’ events happened during 2021 — the most ever in a single year, despite the fact that many schools remained closed for at least part of the year due to the COVID crisis.
One is tempted to suggest that ‘hardening’ of school buildings has been a failed approach. One could also argue that things might have been even worse if schools had not been ‘hardened’. Because it seems obvious things are getting worse, not better, in terms of school shootings.
As we’ve seen, time and again, over the past two decades, an ‘active shooter’ incident generates an outcry — generally from the political Left — that America needs stricter gun control measures. At the same time, we hear — generally from the political Right — that our federal Constitution prohibits legislative limitations on gun ownership.
An honest look at the research we shared yesterday, from Pew Research Center and The New York Times, suggests that the raw number of guns in private possession has very little correlation with the number of deaths caused by guns. If we’re looking for reasons for America’s murder crisis, we need to look a lot deeper than merely at the ‘number of guns’.
For example. Here’s a quote from an article published by Rutgers University this past March:
Almost half of teachers express desire to quit or transfer, survey says
One-third of teachers say students verbally harassed or threatened them with violence at least once during the COVID-19 pandemic and nearly half considered quitting or transferring, according to a survey by an American Psychological Association (APA) task force and co-authored by a Rutgers researcher…
The full 50-page report from the American Psychological Association — ‘Violence Against Educators and School Personnel: Crisis During COVID’ — can be downloaded, here.
Something strange happened to students during the COVID crisis, in schools all across the nation, and the world. Similar increases in violence have been reported in hospitals, and other places of work. Reports of increased violence against children have also come to us from around the globe, during COVID. It would appear that violence was also increasing within families, at home.
Could the record number of school gun incidents reported in 2021 — a total of 249 ‘active shooter’ and ‘non-active shooter’ events — be credited to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its social fallout? Perhaps. But the increases in school violence were already being seen prior to COVID’s arrival in 2020.
I believe we cannot blame American murder rates on gun ownership alone, or on a lack of background checks, or on COVID, or on video games.
Could it be blamed on a combination of ingredients… far too complex to understand?