A Call for Safer Schools

When you walk into Sweet Home High School, do you feel safe?

If you said no, your feeling of fear can be shared with students throughout America. However, I believe our school is under considerable risk. The lack of security at our school worries students and makes some parents anxious when sending their children to school.

There have been 45 instances of shootings on school campuses in the U.S. just in 2019. There are kids out in the world who have access to guns and want to shoot fellow students in school. Less than 11% of public high schools use metal detectors.

Clearly, this could pose a risk for students at school, especially if a kid an easily take out a gun because there’s no security or teachers checking if kids have anything dangerous.

Over the past few years, Sweet Home has received threats that have caused students to be afraid when coming to school the next day. This is highly problematic as everyone wants to feel safe coming into school; if students aren’t focused on simply learning, as having the fear of death in their minds when coming to school surly weighs on the psyche, productivity is sure to be down.

People should be more focused on getting an education when at school than being scared because they don’t think there’s enough being done to ensure their safety. We are in the 21st century—new security measures must be put in place. It’s crazy how we have to practice lockdown drills and hold-in-places because people are scared that there could potentially be a threat.

Back in the day, people did not think about school shootings or similar threats. Now, for the sake of self-preservation, such thinking is imperative.

If we had more security in our school, it would make everyone feel a lot safer. Kids wouldn’t bring in knives or guns if they knew that teachers or administrators were going to check bags. Students would feel a lot better because they wouldn’t have to worry about guns in school. It could also reduce the number of school shootings if there were more school-appointed SROs (or security units in general) in schools all across America.

Some may say that kids come into school at all different times of the day and checking every person would waste a lot of time, which teachers and administrators don’t have enough of. Though the process may take a while, it would still be valuble as it could help people feel safer in school.

After all, teachers are always saying school should be a safe place. In addition, alternative and time-saving methods may be implemented in the long run.

Don’t you want school to be a safe place? Don’t you want to go to school and not have to worry about lockdowns or if this person next to me really reaching into his bag to get a notebook or, in fact, something more sinister? Or maybe even will this person try to cut me with a knife? This makes teachers and students alike feel unsafe and uneasy at school.

If we had a lot more security at school, it would make parents less worried to send their kids here. It would also make students feel safer going to school and worry less about one of their classmates committing an isolated attack or even a school shooting.

It’s already hard enough for a parent to entrust a bunch of adults, be they educators or not, with their beloved children for six and a half hours each day. Reducing modern violence may help them rest easier.

Lexi Herrmann

Lexi is a senior at Sweet Home High School and previously wrote for the Panther Press where she was the editor for the News section for two years. Lexi is now the Opinion section editor of The Panther Eye. She plays volleyball for the Varsity team at Sweet Home.