Opinion: Is School a Safe Place?

Schools have always been a target by threats due to the population and vulnerability. School has many students bunched together who don’t have any way of protecting themselves against what’s typically the threats’ weapon, a gun. One of a teacher’s main priorities is to protect their students, which is great, but that goal isn’t always accomplished unfortunately. There have been many shootings at schools, which leads students to worry about their safety at school. Should school be considered a “safe place,” specifically, is Rangeview High School a safe place? Of course, we would have to hear this response from the attendants of Rangeview.                                                                                    

“I wouldn’t consider it safe because nowhere is, but the safety procedures that we have pushes our school to be kind of safe,” said Senior Kiaorie Stewart. We do safety procedures often enough to know what to do if a threat is near or in the building. Although the effectiveness may not be high if an actual situation were to happen, at least we are prepared. 

Over the safety procedures I’d like to push the attention to the police. The police really help us in knowing if there is a threat nearby. They communicate with us and if a threat is present or nearby  they also call for the assistance of other policemen nearby.

Speaking of police, something that we lack at Rangeview is the amount of police present. I usually see about two cops a day, not saying that it’s not enough, but for how big the building is and the amount of entry doors there are, it isn’t enough. “There’s just not enough police officers to feel protected if something were to happen,” said Senior Austin Appiah. A threat could come into the building on one side of the building while both of our officers are on the complete opposite side and be able to accomplish, if not all, some of what their goal was. Not blaming it on the officers on the other side of the building, but there’s just not enough officers.

Police officers contacting other officers for backup is a pro to the situation. But how long will it take for the officers to get there? All a threat needs is about five minutes to do what they need to. In the meantime of the other officers arriving the threat is satisfied and doesn’t care about what is next to happen to him. Not sure if this is already in effect, but having three officers in the building and maybe one or two officers patrolling the area for potential threats seems way more safe. We would have a bigger area of secured safety in and around the school.

“I don’t think that the school is safe because any student could bring anything into the building without anyone knowing,” said senior Andre Hazard. When everyone comes into school in the morning if you have an ID then you’re in. A student could be carrying a weapon every day in their backpack and no one will know. Not saying that every student should be searched before entering the building because that would be nearly 2,000 students, but just pointing out that this scenario could be true. 

This worry arises because many students who attend their school are the ones who decide to be the threat to their school typically because of bullying or for revenge. There’s not many ways to go about the worries of a student having something in their bag besides bag checking. I’m sure there’s some guidelines about bag checking which makes this solution less effective.

All in all, Rangeview does have a fair share of safeties, but it is more on the not safe side. There’s not enough officers in or around the school and no safety procedures regarding student threats. Solutions about if students have something in their bag may be limited, but it can be solved.