Columbine 25 Years After

25 years ago, 12 students and one teacher were murdered in cold blood inside Columbine High School.

I was finishing up five years as a middle school principal, getting ready to open a brand-new high school. Myself, my school, my community, my city, my state, and my nation were shocked at what happened at Columbine that day. And, I think it’s fair to say that school leadership never looked at school safety the same way again.

Last week, EducationWeek online posted an article titled “How Columbine Shaped 25 Years of School Safety.” The reporter, Evie Blad, writes,

“School shootings had happened before the fateful 1999 massacre at Columbine High School. But it quickly became clear that the tragic event, in which 12 students and one teacher died, thrust the country into a new era, forever changing millions of American students’ sense of safety.”

“Twenty-five years later, experts say many of the fundamentals of school safety date back to that transformative moment in Littleton, Colorado, even as they’ve proven difficult for schools to embody: Recognizing threats, intervening when students are at risk of violence, preparing students for emergencies, and relying on a speedy police response.”

“Today, Columbine tops the list of K-12 school shootings that have become high-profile touchpoints in school violence debates, even as the scale of shooting has been eclipsed by attacks with more fatalities in Newton, Connecticut, Parkland, Florida, and Uvalde, Texas.”

“Countless mass shooters have modeled their attacks on the Columbine shootings, including some who weren’t even born when they took place. Lockdown drills, a rare practice before 1999, are new a routine part of school for American students.”

“Schools have invested billions of dollars in technology like metal detectors and surveillance cameras – even as school safety experts say policymakers often bypass the core lesson that emerged in the earliest investigations following Columbine, which focused on human behavior, not merely ‘hardening schools.’”

…

“Incidents like the 1997 shooting at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky and the 1998 shooting at Westside Middle School outside of Jonesboro, Arkansas, had already fueled Americans’ fear for student safety, but coverage of the Columbine tragedy crystalized it.”

“…Policymakers seeking solutions after Columbine sought to identify a profile of would-be violent perpetrators, homing in on factors like their taste in music and video games or their mental health histories.”

“But in a seminal report, a 2001 U.S. Secret Service analysis of targeted school attacks found no predictive profile of offenders. The analysis, echoed in successive research, found that school attackers are frequently males with a sense of personal grievance or a perception of bullying and suicidal ideation. But none of those traits are rare enough to form a predictive checklist, the report concluded. Many students who struggle with bullying, social isolation, and depression will never have a violent instinct, but they still need support, it said.”

…

“Federal investigators did identify commonalities among attackers that remain core to school violence prevention. Contrary to popular misconceptions, perpetrators of mass violence don’t ‘just snap’ or act impulsively, they found.”

“’Instead,’ said an FBI report published in 2000, ‘the path toward violence is an evolutionary one, with signposts along the way.’”

“Learning to recognized those warning signs or ‘leaks’ in which students communicate violent intentions beforehand, and intervening early, would make schools and communities safer, they concluded.”

…

“The earliest state and federal reviews of the shooting recommended schools create threat assessment teams to review reports of concern that a student might harm themselves or others, report imminent threats to law enforcement, and offer interventions like counseling for others. By the 2021-22 school year, 65 percent of public schools said they had such a team in place, though experts say those teams vary widely in training and procedures.”

…

“Drills to ensure staff and students are prepared to take cover flowed form that panel’s recommendations, and by the 2003-04 school year, when the federal government began collecting data on the subject, 47 percent of schools said they drilled students in a written school safety plan. Nearly all schools reported conducting lockdown drills by 2021-22, according to the most recent federal data.”

…

“Dramatic and unproven drill procedures are hardly the only unsupported practice that has sprung up. Vendors use fear to market saferooms, gun-scanning technology, and bulletproof backpacks, among other things, to school officials terrified of potential harm to their students – and their own potential liability.”

“But the investigations of school shootings often point to human factors, like a lack of safety procedures, open doors and gates, and law-enforcement failures.”

“Parkland, Florida shares another commonality with Columbine: questions about the law-enforcement response. In Parkland, a school-based sheriff’s deputy faced widespread criticism after security footage showed him waiting outside of the building during the attack, violating protocols that changed after the Columbine attack that called for police to quickly confront active shooters.”

“In 1999, police in Littleton formed a perimeter around the school, following procedures that called for them to tend to the wounded and gradually evacuate the building rather than quickly locating the gunmen. That gave the attackers 47 minutes to carry out their assault before they killed themselves.”

My experience as a school leader tells me two things about why these types of mass shootings will continue to prey on our young learners and their supporters. First, I’ve never seen a school that I thought would be safe from an attacker – never. And second, they way we love our guns in this country makes it a slam dunk that young people who want to hurt other young people will always have a way.

Finally, my thoughts are with the survivors of Columbine and all school shooting tragedies. What a terrible legacy to deal with, when all they wanted to do was go to school to learn.

Til tomorrow. SVB