William Keith
Liberty University
ENGL 101
September 12, 2022
What needs to be done to help reform public education in the United States? APA Format
There is no question that safety in schools should be a top priority. The most beneficial
thing we can do for our students is to find a way to maximize safety while not making it feel like
a prison. In the past few years, public education has suffered from safety and security measures
that were not already in place at the time of an incident. With the rise of school shootings in the
United States, the public education system has rapidly become a hostile environment to work and
learn in certain parts of the United States. Children should be able to go to school each day
without having to fear for their lives or safety; children should have the ability to maintain their
innocence and feel free and protected.
Many students exhibit anxiety-like symptoms, being forced to attend school after hearing
the news reports and conversations on social media panic. With all the school shootings that are
happening all around the United States, A USA Today article written by Claire Thornton quoted,
“We don’t have to live this way, our children and educators sure as hell shouldn’t die this way,"
said Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, which is part of6Everytown for Gun
Safety. Students in many parts of the United States suffer from anxiety and fear that the school
they attend will be the next one to encounter such a horrific event. We have many children that
have now survived school shootings and survived the traumatic events that took place. The
students that survived these school shootings feel scared and anxious about ever returning to
school. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Center of Violence Prevention said, “Perhaps the
most disturbing effects of school shootings are the feeling of ongoing danger that permeates
schools where they have occurred. The school’s climate and sense of community are profoundly
damaged.” School shootings not only affect the students, facility, and staff, but they also have a
lasting impact on the community and county. The long-lasting effects on the ones involved in the
What needs to be done to help reform public education in the United States? APA Format
school shooting and the ones worrying about their own children will always be affected by these
tragic events.
While there are many groups and people that want to increase the security of the school
systems to help prevent future school shootings, there is a similar number on the other side that is
against the increase in security. While implementing more police officers on campus, metal
detectors at entrances, gated communities, and security cameras would help the safety of our
students, and many believe bringing all the new safety measures to the school will cause more
anxiety for the students and faculty that attend said schools. When implementing these new
security measures, the priority is to make sure that the students and faculty do not feel as if they
are entering a prison-style setting each day. One of the primary issues of the extra security
measures is the funding needed to implement them. CNBC posted an article explaining the
funding for the projects, "We've gone into schools where they've had a one-time shot-in-the-arm
funding through a grant or a school board allocation for putting in additional cameras, for
example, and we go in three or four years later, the cameras aren't working," said Ken Trump,
president of National School Safety and Security Services.
One of the best methods that we can implement to help the students and faculty is to
educate them on what to do when an active shooter is present. In some schools around the United
States, they have started to train and arm the teachers and faculty. Many schools now run active
shooter drills to better help prepare the students and faculty for the cause of an incident. There
are groups of people that feel that the drills cause anxiety in the students because if the student
has not had to experience any of these tragic events, then why do they have to do the drills for
something that may or may not happen?
What needs to be done to help reform public education in the United States? APA Format
When we talk about keeping students safe at school, we need to think about their mental
health and try to keep them safe while on social media. Cyber security could be something that
could be implemented as a security measure to help monitor what’s being said in and out of
school. In many of the school shooting around the United States, the shooter posted something
on social media before the incident even took place. The U.S. Secret Service assessments quoted,
“Four attackers in this study (11%) were referred to their school’s threat assessment team prior to
the attack. In each of these four cases, a student or teacher at the school reported to someone in a
position of authority that the attacker had made a direct threat toward classmates or school staff”.
By hiring the proper people to monitor these things and look for things to be posted, we could
help by having an earlier warning. The children that have committed these shootings usually
suffer from some type of mental illness that has gone unnoticed and needs to be treated. With all
the extra security measures, we need to focus on helping the mental state of many of the
students.
In conclusion, we need to add more security measures to the public education department
of the United States. By adding extra security, we will help our students feel safer while sitting in
class and around the campus. Having more teachers that are willing to go get armed and fully
trained from the local police department on how to protect their class is just a small way that we
will be helping to keep the children safe. Mental health is still the leading cause of most of these
school shootings, and it is a commonly overlooked problem. If we just try and look for the signs
that the student needs help and do everything in our power to get them help, I feel we will
drastically decrease the number of shootings and help reform public education in the United
States. 7 “May there be peace within your walls and security within your citadels.” 8 For the
What needs to be done to help reform public education in the United States? APA Format
sake of my family and friends, I will say, “Peace be within you” 9 For the sake of the house of
the Lord our God, I will seek your prosperity.
References
Morabito, C. (2022, July 6). The school security industry is valued at $3.1 billion. Here's why
that may not be enough. CNBC. Retrieved September 12, 2022, from
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/06/the-school-security-industry-was-valued-at-3point1-
billion-in-2021.html
Protecting America’s schools - united states secret service. (2019). Retrieved September 13,
2022, from
https://www.secretservice.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/Protecting_Americas_Schools.pd
f
School shootings. Center for Violence Prevention. (2021, September 7). Retrieved September 12,
2022, from https://violence.chop.edu/school-shootings
Zondervan. (2011). Holy Bible Psalms 122:7-9 (New International Version).
