Dangerous Days in Education School safety used to mean fire drills, locked doors, and maybe a campus officer. Now it means walking into a building knowing that school shootings are a regular feature of the news cycle, cyberbullying never really turns off, and educators are being asked—explicitly in some places—to pick up the role of armed security on top of everything else.
And still, they show up. They put the shield on. They pray over their buildings on Sunday and unlock the doors on Monday. They keep growing human beings in a world that sometimes feels determined to do the opposite.
What does “safe” even mean now?
From 2000 through 2022, there were 328 casualties in active shooter incidents at elementary and secondary schools in the U.S. The 2023–2024 school years saw some of the highest numbers of school shooting incidents ever recorded, with at least 144–349 incidents, depending on the tracker. Gunfire on school grounds in 2024 alone resulted in at least 46 deaths and 106 injuries nationwide.
Underneath that, there is the daily drip of harm that rarely makes the news:
Roughly 77 percent of public schools report at least one crime incident in a school year, totaling about 1.4 million incidents.
Heavy social media use is strongly associated with both experiencing bullying (in person and online) and higher rates of depression and suicidal thoughts among students.
The job now is not pretending safety is guaranteed. It is asking: what do we owe kids and educators in a world where the risk is never zero?
No, teachers shouldn’t have to carry guns
Every time there is a high-profile school shooting, the same idea comes back: arm teachers, train them like security, and let them be the last line of defense.
Here is what the people actually standing in classrooms think about that: nearly three-quarters of U.S. teachers oppose being armed in school, and 58 percent believe guns in their hands would make schools less safe, not more. Only about 18 percent say they would even be willing to train to carry a gun at work.
Yet the pressure remains. Polls show a sizable slice of the general public is open to the idea of armed teachers, even as educators themselves overwhelmingly reject it.
So we need to say this clearly:
Teachers are not lacking bravery. They are already walking into a job they know is dangerous.
They are already shielding kids with their bodies during lockdown drills, already scanning the hallway when a door slams too hard.
Adding firearms to their job description is not a solution. It is a failure of imagination and a refusal to invest in more effective, preventative measures.
SEL and campus culture are safety work
Social and emotional learning and intentional campus culture are sometimes treated as “soft” work next to metal detectors and security plans. In reality, they are part of the hard infrastructure of safety.
Research on SEL shows that when schools teach skills like self-regulation, empathy, and conflict resolution, students show fewer conduct problems, less aggression, and lower bullying and victimization. Evidence-based SEL practices that build supportive relationships and promote belonging help reduce violence and isolation, and support both physical and emotional safety.
This is what real prevention looks like:
classrooms where students feel known and connected, so they are less likely to become isolated or consumed by resentment
campuses where students learn how to manage conflict before it turns into violence
adults modeling self-control instead of fear and escalation
No, SEL will not magically stop every act of violence. But without it, we are just reacting after the fact instead of changing the conditions that produce harm in the first place.
We can’t only rely on teacher courage
Educators talk about putting on a shield every morning, walking the building on Sundays, praying for safety because she knows the danger is real. That is courage. It is also a quiet indictment of a system that has gotten comfortable depending on that courage to make up for what policy will not fix.
Teachers are already carrying:
the emotional weight of students who come to school anxious, angry, or numb;
the responsibility of noticing which kid is withdrawing, which kid is escalating, which kid is on the brink;
the reality that if something terrible happens, they are the ones physically standing between children and harm.
The question is not whether educators will be brave. They already are. The question is whether the rest of us will match that bravery in the arenas we control.
What we can actually do
1. Push for smarter safety policies, not louder ones
Advocate for comprehensive school safety plans that combine physical security (secure entries, communication systems) with mental health supports, SEL, and threat assessment teams.
Support policies that actually reduce the flow of guns into schools—stronger background checks, safe storage laws, and red-flag laws—rather than pretending each individual teacher can outshoot a crisis.
Back legislation and funding for more school counselors, psychologists, and social workers, the people who can spot and address early warning signs of violence.
2. Build community safety nets, not campus silos
When Minnesota communities faced upheaval and fear during waves of immigration raids and protests, educators and neighbors built mutual aid networks: delivering groceries and medicine, watching for ICE near schools, raising rent money, and creating safe spaces for vulnerable students and families.
That same mindset applies to school safety:
Organize neighborhood watch and mutual aid networks that keep an eye on what is happening around schools, not just inside.
Partner with local organizations, faith communities, and youth groups to create safe after-school spaces and supports so kids are less isolated online.
Show up at school board meetings not only when you are afraid, but when leaders propose investments in SEL, mental health, and community programming that quietly prevent the crises you never read about.
3. Hold policymakers accountable, consistently
Policy makers respond to pressure, and right now they are getting plenty—from people who want more guns, more guards, and less of anything that looks like SEL or DEI.
Counterpressure looks like:
calling and emailing representatives not just after a tragedy, but when safety bills are on the floor;
demanding that “school safety” funds include prevention work, not just interventions;
This is our fight, not theirs
We often talk about “hope in the next generation.” We look at students leading walkouts, organizing mutual aid, speaking at rallies, and we tell ourselves they will fix what we have broken.
But kids should not have to be the ones carrying that weight.
Educators like Dr. Braswell and Ms. Holloway are doing their part. They walk into buildings where anything can happen, put on their shields, and keep teaching anyway. They are growing humans who, if we do our jobs, will be less angry inside, less desperate, less dangerous.
The rest of us cannot stand back and call that “enough.”
School safety is not something we outsource to the bravest adults in the room and then hope for the best. It is something we build together—through policy, through community, through culture—so those brave adults can focus on what they do best: raising the next generation of changemakers, not dodging bullets while they do it.
