School shooting raises questions of safety, security, prevention
“Their emergency planning did not work,” said Dale Yeager, a Pennsylvania-based consultant to New York state schools, Congress and others. “Cleaning up after a bloody killing can never be called a success.”
Yeager, author of a report “The State of School Safety in American Schools” based on interviews with more than 1,500 educators and 900 law enforcement officials, contends schools must be more aware of the signs of potential problems.
“All the school shootings in this country were preventable had someone stepped up and had a systematic way of identifying violent children, understanding how cliques work, understanding the connection between truancy and violence, and actually interceding in these children’s lives,” Yeager said.
District Attorney Paul Phillips has barred law enforcement and school officials from discussing the background of the suspect in Tuesday’s shooting, Ken Bartley Jr., saying it could jeopardize his right to a fair trail. Phillips wants to try the boy as an adult for first-degree murder.
At the age of 12, Bartley was placed by his parents at Kingswood School, a residential counseling program in Grainger County, for treatment for drug and alcohol abuse, Kingswood administrator Darrell Helton told WBIR-TV on Thursday.
“When he first came to me they were saying he was unruly, had gotten into some trouble at school (and) wasn’t following rules at home,” Helton said.
Bartley went home 18 months later, in May. His parents “thought he was ready to leave and we did not,” Helton said. Still, the administrator said, “I did not think he was capable of these kinds of actions.”
Authorities also have refused to say exactly what happened after the administrators, tipped by a student that Bartley had a gun, called the freshman to the principal’s office for questioning.
Principal Gary Seale and assistant principals Ken Bruce and Jim Pierce all were shot before Bartley was subdued. Bruce died, and Seale and Pierce remained in serious condition at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville.
Officials in Jacksboro, about 34 miles north of Knoxville, praised the administrators’ courage and singled out Seale for getting to the school intercom after being shot and ordering a school lockdown to prevent injury to students.
“We did have a safety plan in place and the safety plan was followed very well,” Campbell County Schools Director Judy Blevins said. “Otherwise, we feel like we might have had a number of kids in this tragic event.”
Ken Trump, who leads the Ohio-based National School Safety and Security Services organization that tracks school violence, said “the heroic actions of the school administrators unquestionably saved other lives there at the school.”
“But there also is no question that this incident is going to serve as another teaching tool,” he said, worried that school security in Tennessee and across the country is being shortchanged both in money and time because “of the pressure to meet mandated test score standards.”
Tennessee Education Commissioner Lana Seivers said the state is spending $4.9 million this year on school security needs, from video surveillance to school guards known as “school resource officers.”
She noted the number of firearms found in Tennessee schools has been steadily declining, from 98 incidents in 2001-2002 to 75 in 2004-2005. No firearms violations were reported in Campbell County schools during that whole period.
“I can’t second-guess something until I know all of the details,” Seivers said of the shooting in Jacksboro. “If there was a glitch in the system, if something did fail, what was it and how can we learn from it?”
Campbell County High has one unarmed school resource officer, a woman who also acts as a hall monitor. The school has video surveillance, though it apparently did not cover principals’ offices. It has one handheld metal detector.
State Sen. Tommy Kilby, a Democrat who represents Campbell County, said that as a result of the Campbell County incident he will call for a special legislative panel to make recommendations on school safety.
He thinks the answer may be greater than more metal detectors and guards. “I really think we need some kind of curriculum in our schools that teaches respect for human life, and to teach that life is fragile,” Kilby said.