"The superintendents are very concerned about school safety issues," said a school superintendent about state legislation that would enable school districts to create school district safety committees. "I'm not sure this will change anything dramatically in any district because many already have something set up."1
There is no doubt that superintendents and all school officials and educators are very concerned about school safety. Being concerned about this issue and knowing what to do about it are two entirely different things. The reality is that most school officials do not know a lot about school safety because the system has failed them. They have never been taught how to manage a school to prevent injuries to students, staff, and visitors. Yet we hold them accountable when something goes wrong and an injury occurs. Safety Management 101 is not found in most teacher or administrator preparation programs.
Consider this sampling of student injuries and near-miss incidents that occurred in schools in the authors' home state in recent years.
Kindergartners are found playing with rat poison they had discovered under a teacher's desk. One child has the rat poison in his mouth. A search finds 15 more canisters of rat poison that had been placed around the school, including in a day care center, by a pest control company that "has total autonomy in how they provide the service."2
A child has to stand on a wooden step stool to reach the faucets to wash his hands in the restroom of an elementary school. As he reaches for the faucet, the stool tips backward and he falls, breaking his arm.
Exhaust gases and dust from a concrete sawing and demolition activity leak into an adjacent classroom area through a poorly sealed double door. A school employee, seeing clouds of what she believes to be smoke, activates the fire alarm to evacuate the children.
A 16 year old girl's hair becomes caught in a lathe in a machine technology class, pulling her head into the cutting bit, causing a seven inch laceration and bruise to her brain.
A severe weather cell warning is issued and schools are advised to hold dismissal and shelter their students in place. While some school districts comply, others dismiss students on schedule because administrators do not see dark clouds. Of those that comply, some shelter their students in incorrect ways that could actually expose them to more harm. One of the administrators who shelters students correctly does so because of previous training and experience as an administrator in a tornado-prone state.
School officials' concern about safety did not ensure controls were in place to prevent these incidents. Many of these were the result of the absence or significant failures of the safety management systems needed to prevent them. Some of these failures were so shocking they wouldn't be tolerated in most businesses and industries. Yet society tolerates them in schools. Management systems taken for granted in industry are often absent or inadequate in elementary and secondary schools.
