Committees to review school safety

The Connecticut school shooting is sparking two reviews of campus safety in Louisiana.

Louisiana House Speaker Chuck Kleckley, R-Lake Charles, announced in December that the House Select Committee on Homeland Security would review laws and procedures involving school safety.

On Friday, Gov. Bobby Jindal formed a separate study committee to identify needed improvements at schools and colleges following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings.

“We are working in concert with the Legislature. We wanted to take immediate steps as an administration and we’ll be happy to get ideas from the Legislature to make sure there is a safe learning environment for students,” Jindal said in a prepared statement.

Kleckley, through his spokesman, said each branch of government needs to play a role in creating safe schools. He said the separate reviews may result in different views and answers to different questions.

He said the homeland security committee still will meet Jan. 17 at the State Capitol.

“The goal here is to do everything we can to ensure our children are free to learn, play and grow safely,” Kleckley said.

Twenty children and six adults died at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14. Adam Lanza allegedly shot and killed his mother before driving to the school and opening fire. He later took his own life. According to some news reports, Lanza entered the school by breaking a window.

Public school principals in Louisiana are required by law to prepare crisis management and response plans that detail security measures in the event of a violent incident or emergency.

The plans are supposed to be reviewed annually. Many schools also have security officers.

Kleckley said he wanted to see if there are any lessons that can be learned from the Sandy Hook shooting and applied to Louisiana schools.

The committee’s chairman, state Rep. John Schroder, said the goal will be to determine what policies are in place.

Schroder’s wife is a public schoolteacher.

“Our focus is to make sure we heighten awareness and do everything we can to keep the campuses safe,” he said.

Schroder, R-Covington, said he has not been in contact with the Jindal administration about the governor’s study committee.

State Department of Public Safety and Corrections Secretary Jimmy LeBlanc and State Police Col. Mike Edmonson will co-chair the study committee that Jindal formed through an executive order to “identify and implement improvements.”

The four-page order directs state agencies to participate in the study group. The order does not indicate when meetings will begin. However, recommendations requiring legislative action are directed to be completed for consideration in the legislative session that starts April 8.

LeBlanc’s spokeswoman said he was unavailable for comment Friday.

Edmonson said the study committee will be more in depth than the legislative committee review. “This is the perfect opportunity to work with school systems across the state,” Edmonson said.

As the father of four children, Edmonson said he wants to ensure that children return home safely from school.

He said law enforcement needs to know the layout of a school, from where the cafeteria is to where the library is located. He said drills will be held at schools in the next year to simulate shooting scenarios.

Edmonson said a similar drill was held at the state Capitol.

“In Louisiana, we’re so good at preparing for the worst. Let’s do this with our schools,” Edmonson said.

Comments

1) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 08/01/2013

Perhaps we (again) need a bit of perspective here. As we seek to respond to the recent tragedy, we need to keep a sense of perspective, I believe. Without in any way minimizing the horror of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School, I think it is important to maintain a bit more perspective about the relative risk of our young children being killed at school. In the year that included the horrors of Columbine, there were a total of 33 murders of adults and children at school or during transportation to or from school or related school activities. During that same year, 2374 school age children were murdered. So in that year, school related murders made up a little over 1.3% of all school age children murdered that year. Considering that school age children spend approximately 17% of their time in school... if schools were as dangerous as all other locations, we might expect schools to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 murders. Obviously schools are much safer for students than the home and neighborhood, when it comes to murder. In the 2009- 2010 school year, there were 25 murders of students and adults in schools or during transportation and school related activities. During that same year there were three killings in schools by armed officers. During that year, murders at school represented far less than 2% of all murders of school age children. In fact, the Department of Justice has not found a year where school-related deaths represented over 2% of all school-age murders. Again, this is an indication that deaths caused by school shootings are not nearly as prevalent as the murder of students outside of schools. Ask hospitals when their pediatric emergency room doctors are busiest. I can assure you it is NOT during school time. Now, do children fight and get hurt at school? Yes, they always have. Any teacher will tell you that kids in some of the roughest schools fight at school, knowing they will be suspended or expelled, and will tell the teachers, in a moment of honesty, why they fight at school! (Hint, they are less likely to face a gun, knife, or death at school fighting than they would on the street.) In the 1996-1997 School year Louisiana was tied for the second highest murder rate in the nation for children aged 0-17, at 5.4 murders per 100,000 juveniles. None of these took place at school. http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/homicidechildrenyouth.pdf Here is what the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention said in their report in 2001: "Available data do not suggest that schools are particularly risky places for homicide victimization, nor do they show that schools are becoming increasingly risky." Whenever we were faced with a question of policy, especially in response to a particularly tragic event, I always asked this question of the School Board and Administration: "What is the opportunity-cost of their proposed solution." In very simple terms, the opportunity-cost is the cost of one solution as opposed to other alternative solutions. What other options are lost in taking one particular approach. To take it out of the immediate realm and lessen the emotional response, I will point out a similar question I raised when there were students killed in a bus accident in the US... parents and legislators immediately talked about installing seat belts on all busses. Would it save lives? Possibly. Here was just one question I raised in testimony at the legislature. "If we were required to retrofit all older busses, and have all new busses equipped with seat belts, what would this do to our ability to purchase new busses, which are much safer in terms of new technology for keeping students safe than the older busses." Luckily, the National Traffic and Safety Administration had a study in the works. It found that there was little increase in safety, overall, for students. The costs would have prevented us from replacing much older busses with new, safer busses as well. In addition, there would be a net financial loss to the district due to forgoing to more fuel-efficient newer busses. I am amazed that people commenting on here often criticize some of us saying, "all you care about is money!" Amazing considering that somehow basic economics seems to be denied in the statement. Funding is finite, yet needs and desirable services in schools are not so finite. IF we put seat belts on ALL busses, there would not be money for some other purposes! In the case of safety officers for schools, let's just imagine what the opportunity cost might be. Let's use some round numbers. With over 1300 public schools in the state, and fewer than 300 having full-time security at the schools, we will use a round number of 1000 schools to equip with armed security guards. What shall we pay them? We certainly don't want minimum wage (most of the current security is provided via trained law-enforcement personnel, costing districts well over $50,000 per year per school) so we will use a round number of $50,000 per school per year. Now keep in mind, this is not going to be enough for large schools, but we will use this number for now. So, $50,000 times 1000 schools currently without protection, we get a total of 50 million dollars a year. Not a particularly large number some might say, but what would making that choice entail? In the absence of new funds, a likely scenario, what cuts would have to be made to existing programs? Cuts in social workers, school counselors? The very people likely to be of assistance in identifying students who might be having some violent tendencies (if only these employees weren't so busy supporting the test-taking mania of the "reformers), would we cut their positions? Schools are the safest places for kids, and please, we all know and understand that the particular schools in the recent tragedies are NOT the norm, yet overall schools are the safest places for school age children. Both the Department of Justice and the National Center for Education Statistics bear this out. I note that specialized programs for dealing with adolescent violence and mental health are being cut, and schools have had their budgets cut to the bone, while at the same time we are calling for more school safety. As we seek to deal with the tragedies, let's keep all options open, and not respond to knee- jerk reactions that are best described as "do something--even if it is wrong!" Our children deserve better.

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3) Comment by Buck - 05/01/2013

This could be interesting. Pleased to see Col. Edmonson involvement. Hopefully there will be access to full data available at State level and also on national level. Whereas Louisiana is once again the holder of the number one position on incidents with firearms per capita and the correspondent medical costs, will be curious if public health entities will be allowed to participate. Sadly several data points are restrictive by Federal and State legislation, however there are ways to get such. Will the arms industry and our ALEC governor allow? I'm not optimistic.

4) Comment by hemogoblin - 05/01/2013

This is another meaningless political gesture unless funds are provided to the schools, and Gov. Jindal has been taking funds from school districts rather than helping them.