Mass shootings have become tragedies experienced by schools across the country, but their effects can be more widespread than some may think. These events can prompt faculty and administration from neighboring schools to take proactive action - many times by learning from past incidents.
In 2018, Marshall County High School in Benton, Kentucky suffered a shooting – and it left an immediate impact on not only that community but the communities surrounding it as well. Josh Stafford, the superintendent at Vienna High School in southern Illinois, says the Marshall County shooting brought worry that Vienna may be the victim of a follow-up attack.
“I remember one of the immediate reactions being, okay, is this an isolated incident or is there maybe some regional coordination that we need to be concerned about or be aware of in schools throughout the region.” Stafford said. “So, we were in immediate contact with local law enforcement to analyze that situation. Everyone came to the conclusion that we felt like it was isolated there but we still followed some immediate safety protocols here in Johnson County.”
Stafford says the number of shootings nationwide has put a major spotlight on the issue, prompting schools to focus more on it than ever before.
“Right now we are in this time where this is the prevalent crisis. We’re all scrambling trying to figure out what is the best response. Is it armed resource officers? Is it social workers? Is it building hardening such as bullet resistant film on windows? Is it metal detectors? I would say, honestly, it’s all of those things” Stafford said.
He says Vienna started their school resource officer program prior to the Marshall County attack, but it has only grown larger in the years since.
“We’ve run a school resource officer program now for a number of years and our school resource officer program existed pre Marshall County. Since Marshall County and just as time has naturally moved forward we have added additional officers to that pool of school resource officers. We currently have 6 SROs in our SRO pool and are always looking for ways to fund and add more” Stafford said.
Vienna has also implemented magnetic lock systems in their doors and an automatic alert system to the community and law enforcement in the case of a shooting happening at their school.
Colleges including SIU have also taken steps to ensure the safety of their campuses due to the number of shootings around the country. Jaime Clark, the student health services director at SIU, says organizations across campus are constantly trying to learn from past shootings to know any precautions they need to take. That includes a drill this past spring that included a shooting simulation.
“I sit on the EOC, which is the emergency operating center. We do practices of these all the time. We learn and watch videos from past schools, we learn and talk about what we would do at ours. We look at how we handled the response or the different activities that we do, like our April event. We look at what we could have done better, here's some areas we need to firm up” Clark said.
While these are great changes to make in case an event were to happen, schools have also taken steps to help prevent shootings from occurring in the first place. Edna Bundren, a social worker at Vienna High School, says kids feeling connected in school is one key to prevention.
“I just think that probably staying connected and trying to catch those kids that aren’t connected is probably the greatest and most important thing. Trying to get to the point where they have a trusted person through school they can talk to” Bundren said.
She says the school is constantly reaching out to students to know what may be bothering them and to be aware of any future risks.
“We do a lot of interviews with students and surveys for interest and things like that. I would say it is more directed in asking the students what they want” Bundren said.
Jaime Clark says SIU also reaches out to students to know what resources they may need to help them handle the added stress brought on by shootings or other aspects of their lives.
“That’s one of the first things I wanted to do here is to do some focus groups with students. What’s going well, what’s not, what services do we have and that has led to the after hours things. In those conversations with students, that’s led to us having clinicians in satellite locations and it’s also led to us doing the 24 hour crisis” Clark said.
SIU added their 24 hour crisis hotline and more drills like the active shooter drills they performed in April as a result of these focus groups with students. However, Clark says these drills can sometimes trigger stress or anxieties of a shooting in students and the college is prepared to help them manage.
“We absolutely do have counselors that can really assess what is the need. So, for some of them, that is the only reason they are coming in. For some of them it might bring up a past trauma or a past experience that makes them think about that” Clark said.
To help students at VHS connect with people who can help them in any time of need, Edna Bundren and the staff have introduced numerous new clubs and activities.
“For us we need to connect with those students who maybe don’t like school, don’t feel like they fit in, and really try to find things that they like. We’ve started new clubs here this year like E-gaming clubs. The E-gaming clubs have really sparked a lot of interest in kids that normally aren’t connected to other things” Bundren said.
Schools across southern Illinois are employing measures to help students cope with stress and prepare their campuses for any future threat that could occur. To learn more about how schools are protecting students, click here.
