Heritage Foundation: Get schools to report immigration status and the undocumented will self-deport

In his presidential campaign, Donald Trump has doubled down on bashing migrants crossing the southern border. Trump said migrants are criminals who are “poisoning the blood of our country,” reported The New York Times. The Republican National Convention was full of talk of surging “migrant crime,” even though such a rise does not exist.

The number of Americans who think the immigration level is too high has sharply risen since the last presidential contest in 2020, and as Americans move to the right on the issue, Trump plans to go much further than President Biden’s executive order in June, which closes the border when crossings surge. Trump has said he would build “vast holding facilities” — detention camps — to lock people up as their cases progress; end birthright citizenship, even though the Constitution protects it; and bring back a version of the travel ban from his first term, which barred visitors from several mostly Muslim countries. Another Trump promise, mass deportations, hasn’t been tried since the 1950s; now, polls show majority support for it, including among Latinos.

But there is one anti-immigration proposal on the right that Trump doesn’t talk about publicly. It’s a spin on “self-deportation.” The term — for provoking immigrants to leave of their own volition — has gone out of fashion but the idea continues to lurk. This time, instead of directly pressuring undocumented adults to flee, some immigration opponents are threatening access to school for their children. It’s a nuclear option — requiring the reversal of a Supreme Court ruling that has been a linchpin of educational rights for four decades — that some of Trump’s allies on the right are quietly building support for.

In February, the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing Washington think tank that’s become central to mapping out policy objectives for the next Republican administration, recommended requiring public schools to collect data on immigration status when students enroll. Heritage also said schools should charge tuition for children who are undocumented or who have a parent who lacks legal status.

About 600,000 undocumented children live in the country, and another 4.5 million have a parent who is here illegally. To ensure that parents can send their children to school without fear of immigration agents, the Biden administration declared in 2021 that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could take no actions of any kind at schools and other locations where young people gather, like universities and day care centers. It’s easy to see why schools are such a sensitive site of immigration enforcement. Barring children from the classroom punishes them for their parents’ decisions and disrupts families’ daily rhythm. Most searingly, perhaps, it undermines the hope of bettering the lives of the next generation — a reason for coming to the United States in the first place.

It has always been difficult to deter people from migrating to the United States, given instability in their home countries and the lure of economic opportunity at American businesses that depend on cheap labor. But there is a grim logic to the strategy of keeping children out of school in the United States — that if you go so far as to take away a right fundamental to the American dream, people will leave.

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Illinois schools ask police to stop ticketing students

In the strongest rebuke yet of Illinois school districts that ask police to ticket misbehaving students, the state attorney general has declared that the practice — still being used across the state — is illegal and should stop, reported ProPublica.

The attorney general’s office, which had been investigating student ticketing in one of Illinois’ largest high school districts, found that Township High School District 211 in Palatine broke the law when administrators directed police to fine its students for school-based conduct, and that the practice had an “unjustified disparate impact” on Black and Latino students.

“We strongly encourage other districts and police departments to review their policies and practices,” the office told ProPublica.

But the attorney general’s office did not alert other districts of its findings, which came in July, and did not issue guidance that the common practice violates the law. That means its findings against the suburban Chicago district could have a narrow effect.

The office also said that it is not investigating other districts for similar civil rights violations.

In 2022, a ProPublica and Chicago Tribune investigation, “The Price Kids Pay,” revealed how local police officers were writing students tickets that resulted in fines of up to $750. The tickets, for violating local ordinances, are considered noncriminal offenses and can be punishable only by a fine. The misbehavior included having vape pens, missing class, and participating in verbal or minor physical altercations.

In response, Gov. JB Pritzker and two state superintendents of education said schools should not rely on police to handle student misconduct.

State lawmakers have tried several times to pass legislation intended to stop the practice by specifically prohibiting schools from involving police in minor disciplinary matters. But the bills have stalled. School officials have argued ticketing is a necessary tool to manage student behavior, and some lawmakers worried that limiting officers’ role in schools could lead to unsafe conditions.

Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Democrat from Chicago, told ProPublica this month that he plans to try again next year. “We don’t want police doing schools’ work,” Ford said.

He said revised legislation will aim to address school officials’ concerns and will make clear that school employees can still involve police in criminal matters.

“What will really address this is a state law that would have an impact on all Illinois schools. That is the only possible way I see because it is so pervasive across Illinois,” said Angie Jiménez, an attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, which has pushed for reforms in Illinois law.

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Biden issues executive order targeting 'emerging firearms threats'

President Joe Biden is creating a federal task force to target “emerging firearms threats,” including cheap devices that can convert commonly owned semiautomatic pistols into fully automatic machine guns, reported The Trace. 

The executive order, signed by Biden during an event on September 26, also seeks to crack down on 3D-printed guns and improve school active shooter drills. It likely marks one of the last gun violence initiatives of his presidency, with a little more than a month to go before the 2024 election and four months before the inauguration of his successor.

“The streets are flooded with machine gun conversion devices because the parts are small, cheap, and easy to make. The impact of these devices is devastating,” Biden said. “It’s about sending a clear message to local law enforcement, and cities across the country, that we’re here to help, and together we can save lives.”

The new Emerging Firearms Threats Task Force — composed of leaders from several federal departments and agencies — will be responsible for developing a plan to combat machine gun conversion devices. The devices, also known as Glock switches, auto sears, or trigger activators, have been showing up at crime scenes in increasing numbers.  

One recent example was in Birmingham, Alabama, where four people were killed and 17 injured in a mass shooting on September 21. Law enforcement recovered more than 100 shell casings and believe machine gun conversion devices were used. While the devices are illegal on the federal level, Alabama and some other states do not have state-level bans, leaving local law enforcement with few tools to arrest and prosecute people caught with the devices.

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin was among dozens of gun violence prevention advocates, law enforcement officials, and others who attended the September 26 signing ceremony. 

 “We’ve been working with our U.S. attorney, with the Justice Department, to get machine gun conversions like Glock switches off our city streets,” Woodfin said. “But still, my community, and I imagine other communities, are still finding the use of these devices at crime scene after crime scene.”

The ceremony marked the first time that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic nominee for president, have appeared together at a gun violence-focused event since Biden placed Harris in charge of the new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention one year ago.

“For as much as we have accomplished, more must be done,” Harris said. “We need more leaders like the leaders in this room, in Congress, who have the courage to take action, to stand up to the gun lobby, and to put the lives of our children first.”

To read more CLICK HERE

 

Mangino discusses school threats on WFMJ-TV21 Weekend Today

Watch my interview on WFMJ-TV21 about the wave of school threats in the area with the return to the classrooms.

 

To watch the interview CLICK HERE and scroll to "Wave of School Threats"

SCOTUS temporarily blocks new Title IX rules in some states

The Supreme Court temporarily continued to block Education Department rules intended to protect transgender students from discrimination based on their gender identity in several Republican states that had mounted challenges, reported The New York Times.

The emergency order allowed rulings by lower courts in Louisiana and Kentucky to remain in effect in about 10 states as litigation moves forward, maintaining a pause on new federal guidelines expanding protections for transgender students that had been enacted in nearly half the country on Aug. 1.

The order came in response to a challenge by the Biden administration, which asked the Supreme Court to intervene after a number of Republican-led states sought to overturn the new rules.

The decision was unsigned, as is typical in such emergency petitions. But all nine members of the court said that parts of the new rules — including the protections for transgender students — should not go into effect until the legal challenges are resolved.

“Importantly,” the unsigned order said, “all members of the court today accept that the plaintiffs were entitled to preliminary injunctive relief as to three provisions of the rule, including the central provision that newly defines sex discrimination to include discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The decision handed a victory to the Republican-led states that had challenged the rules. A patchwork of lower court decisions means that the rules are temporarily paused in about 26 states.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the liberal wing and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, issued a partial dissent arguing that the court should have allowed other, undisputed parts of the new regulation to go into effect immediately.

“A majority of this court leaves in place preliminary injunctions that bar the government from enforcing the entire rule — including provisions that bear no apparent relationship to respondents’ alleged injuries,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. “Those injunctions are overbroad.”

The attorney general of Tennessee, one of the states challenging the regulation, welcomed the outcome. “This is a win for student privacy, free speech and the rule of law,” the attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, said in a statement.

Critics said the order erased crucial safeguards for young people.

“It is disappointing that the Supreme Court has allowed far-right forces to stop the implementation of critical civil rights protections for youth,” said Cathryn Oakley, the senior director of legal policy for the Human Rights Campaign.

The issue of transgender rights has become hotly debated as conservative state legislatures have passed a record number of stringent laws, including denying certain medical care and regulating bathroom use and pronouns.

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Massachusetts school district asks governor for national guard

Members of the Brockton School Committee urged the city’s mayor to ask Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey for National Guard support, reported Jurist. Student violence and a high rate of teacher absences instigated the request. Four committee members—Joyce Asack, Tony Rodrigues, Claudio Gomes, and Ana Oliver—specifically requested that temporary National Guard support be deployed at Brockton High School but also voiced concern for the middle school and elementary levels. The school board called for order to be restored, safety for all on the school premises, and an urgent need to address the root causes of what the officials call an educational ‘crisis’ and ‘potential tragedy.’

The letter to the mayor cites instances of students aimlessly wandering the halls, serious physical altercations, and 35 teachers regularly calling in absent. Recent weeks have also seen an uptick in students leaving school grounds without permission and adult trespassers being found on school property. In a press conference, local news WCVB said the committee emphasized that these incidents undermine the learning environment, “jeopardize the integrity of statewide testing processes,” and compound health and safety risks for the students and staff.

The committee members believe the National Guard’s expertise in crisis management and community support could provide a vital temporary intervention. Boston25 news reported committee member Tony Rodrigez stated, “ the National Guard brings positivity, we used them to deploy Covid vaccinations….we are looking for them to step in and act as substitute teachers and hall monitors.”

However, other members of the Brockton High School committee and the mayor voiced concern over the request for the National Guard, citing the militarizated presence might infringe on students’ civil liberties and create an intimidating environment. No official statement from Maura Healey, the Governor of Massachusetts, regarding the request to deploy the Massachusetts National Guard at Brockton High School.

To read more CLICK HERE

Minnesota's ban on physical restraint of students has SROs seeing red

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is weighing whether to call a special session to address law enforcement concerns over a recently passed ban on putting students in chokeholds and other extreme forms of physical restraint, according to the Minnesota Reformer. 

Republican lawmakers are urging Walz to act, claiming that the provision effectively outlaws all forms of physical force by police officers in schools, despite an opinion from Attorney General Keith Ellison stating that “reasonable” force can still be used to prevent injury or death. Several police departments across the state have announced they will not place officers in schools until they get clarification on the new law.

Lurking beneath the debate over how much force cops should use on kids is an even more fundamental question: Do police officers (known as school resource officers, or SROs) in schools make students safer? 

A forthcoming paper by researchers at the State University of New York and the RAND Corporation explores this question using the best available data to date. They find evidence that the presence of an SRO leads to a reduction in some violent incidents at school. 

But that relatively modest reduction comes at a steep cost: a massive increase in suspensions, expulsions and referrals to the criminal justice system, actions that can be ruinous to students’ lives.

To read more CLICK HERE

School board meetings are now the cultural battlefield

Time and again over the last two years, parents and protesters have derailed school board meetings across the country, reported ProPublica. Once considered tame, even boring, the meetings have become polarized battlegrounds over COVID-19 safety measures, LGBTQ+ student rights, “obscene” library books and attempts to teach children about systemic racism in America.

On dozens of occasions, the tensions at the meetings have escalated into not just shouting matches and threats but also arrests and criminal charges.

ProPublica identified nearly 90 incidents in 30 states going back to the spring of 2021. (That’s when the majority of boards resumed gathering in-person after predominantly holding meetings virtually.) Our examination — the first wide-ranging analysis of school board unrest — found that at least 59 people were arrested or charged over an 18-month period, from May 2021 to November 2022. Prosecutors dismissed the vast majority of the cases, most of them involving charges of trespassing, resisting an officer or disrupting a public meeting. Almost all of the incidents were in suburban districts, and nearly every participant was white.

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Seattle schools sue social media giants for student 'mental health crisis'

Seattle Public Schools recently filed a lawsuit in US District Court of Washington alleging that the tech giants behind TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat should be held accountable for a “mental health crisis” among the youth attending their schools, reported Jurist.

The school district argued that the “excessive and problematic” use of social media among students has resulted in widespread financial and operational damage to the school district while social media companies profit.

The lawsuit alleges that the district has been forced to expend resources on additional services as a result of this crisis, including providing counseling services to students, creating lesson plans around the dangers of using these platforms, and investigating online social media threats made against the schools and their students. Further, the suit highlights the impact that this has had on their ability to carry out their educational functions:

Students experiencing anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues perform worse in school, are less likely to attend school, more likely to engage in substance use, and to act out, all of which directly affects Seattle Public Schools’ ability to fulfill its educational mission.

The complaint also asserts that “This mental health crisis is no accident,” claiming that the defendants consciously took action to design and market their platforms to attract young users.

In a statement on the suit, the district highlighted some of the statistics behind their claim, including the fact that one in five children aged 13 to 17 now suffer from a mental health disorder. Seattle Public Schools also noted that, according to the latest data, almost 50 percent of teenagers in the state spend between one and three hours a day on social media, while 30 percent average more than three hours a day. The statement claims:

The evidence is equally clear that social media companies have designed their platforms to maximize the time youth spend using them and addict youth to their platforms […] More than 90% of youth today use social media […] The increase in suicides, attempted suicides, and mental-health related ER visits is no coincidence.

Although many have criticized the negative effect of social media on youth mental health, Seattle Public School’s suit appears to be the first of its kind to be filed by a school district.

To read more CLICK HERE

With NRA funding J.R.O.T.C. brings gun marksmanship to schools

At a time when many districts are going to great lengths to keep guns out of schools, J.R.O.T.C. has become one of the few programs on campuses that promote weapons training, reported The New York Times.

The N.R.A. has donated more than $5 million in money and equipment since 2015 to support competitive shooting programs at schools, as one of several outside organizations that have provided funding to J.R.O.T.C. programs, according to tax records and other documents. Some of the districts that have received N.R.A. funding, such as the one in Lee County, Fla., include schools that automatically enroll students in J.R.O.T.C. classes in some grades, or otherwise push students to take them, though participation on the marksmanship teams is most often voluntary.

The organization has supported J.R.O.T.C. programs by hosting shooting competitions, highlighting teams in its trade magazine and providing special badges to J.R.O.T.C. shooting competitors.

The programs, which utilize air rifles rather than live-fire weapons, are prevalent in many communities where marksmanship and hunting are popular sporting activities, and parents have credited the instruction with teaching young people to handle guns safely. But schools largely prohibit guns on campus, and the marksmanship teams have at times alarmed teachers and students concerned about school shootings and a rise in gun violence. Some districts have dismantled their J.R.O.T.C. marksmanship programs or had heated debates about how to incorporate them into school life.

In a statement, a spokesman for the N.R.A. said that the group was proud to fund the shooting teams and that the J.R.O.T.C. instructors’ promotion of the N.R.A. was their choice, not a requirement for funding.

“The N.R.A. Foundation proudly supports firearms education and training for a variety of deserving organizations,” said the spokesman, Andrew Arulanandam. “Grant recipients sometimes voluntarily promote our efforts to bring awareness to the importance of firearms training, gun safety and shooting sports. We are proud of these activities and the way they positively impact students, schools and communities across the country.”

In their bids to obtain N.R.A. grants to fund marksmanship training and competition on campus, J.R.O.T.C. instructors have said the funding will expand the number of teenagers trained in the safe use of firearms and advance the Second Amendment, according to school district documents obtained by The New York Times in response to more than 100 records requests. Some instructors have promised to encourage cadets to join the N.R.A. and have volunteered students to participate in N.R.A. fund-raising events.

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School shootings reach record level nationwide

As criminologists have built a comprehensive database to log all school shootings in the U.S., we know that deadly school gun violence in America in now a regular occurrence – with incidents only becoming more frequent and deadlier.

Records compiled by The Conversation show that seven more people died in mass shootings at U.S. schools between 2018 and 2022 – a total of 52 – than in the previous 18 years combined since the watershed 1999 Columbine High School massacre.

Since the February 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, moreover, more than 700 people have been shot at U.S. schools on football fields and in classrooms, hallways, cafeterias and parking lots.

Many of these shootings were not the mass killing events that schools typically drill for. Rather, they were an extension of rising everyday gun violence.

There have been shootings at U.S. schools almost every year since 1966, but in 2021 there were a record 250 shooting incidents – including any occurrence of a firearm being discharged, be it related to suicides, accidental shootings, gang-related violence or incidents at after-hours school events.

That’s double the annual number of shooting incidents recorded in the previous three years – in both 2018 and 2019, 119 shootings were logged, and there were 114 incidents in 2020.

With more than two months left, 2022 is already the worst year on record. As of Oct. 24, there have been 257 shootings on school campuses – passing the 250 total for all of 2021.

Many of these incidents have been simple disputes turned deadly because teenagers came to school angry and armed.

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Capital-Star: To prevent shootings, teachers needed to be armed with information, not guns

Matthew T. Mangino

Pennsylvania Capital-Star
August 10, 2022

Schools do not need more resource officers, armed guards or for that matter armed teachers. Schools need to become adept at gathering information, sharing intelligence and, most importantly, making sense of what they learn.

In Uvalde, Texas we’ve learned far too well that good guys—many good guys—with guns can’t always stop a bad guy with a gun.  In Florida, Nikolas Cruz is on trial for his life after killing 17 people at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. The school’s resource officer is also criminally charged for failing to enter the school and confront Cruz.

Nearly every school in America has prepared for a shooting. The Washington Post reported that more than 96 percent of public schools hold active-shooter drills. 

Active shooter training, although needed, is a reaction to a shooting not an effort to prevent one. 

“A pricey, multilayered security plan can be undone by something as small as an open door and a school police force can fail to prevent a worst-case scenario,” according to the Post.

The idea that more police officers, more metal detectors, more drills and more guns will stop school massacres—has stretched the bounds of credulity.  That hasn’t impeded the rush to bring even more guns into schools.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, nearly 60 percent of states allow individuals other than police or security officials to carry guns on school grounds. 

In Florida, according to The New York Times, more than 1,300 school staff members serve as armed guards in 45 school districts, out of 74 in the state. The program was created after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas massacre.

In Texas at least 402 school districts participate in a program that allows designated people, including school staff members, to be armed, according to the Times. This is the same state in which more than 400 armed police officers from the Uvalde Police Department, Uvalde School Police, Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office, among others, failed to enter the building for 78 minutes with an active shooter inside.

In Ohio, employees have for years been allowed to carry guns on school grounds with the consent of the local school board, if they completed the same 700 hours of police officer training required of law enforcement officials or security officers who carry firearms on campus.

After Uvalde, according to the Times, the legislature, with the acquiescence of Gov. Mike DeWine, enacted a new law that provides for a maximum of 24 hours of training before teachers can carry guns at school. 

In Pennsylvania, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor, is proposing legislation to allow school employees to be armed on school property if they have a concealed carry permit and complete a firearm training course.  

School attacks are often the result of meticulous planning. With planning comes the potential for leaving clues. Jeff Kaas, author of “Columbine: A True Crime Story,” wrote in the Post that 81 percent of school shooters tell someone about their plans.

In addition, most attackers engaged in some behavior prior to the attack that caused others concern or indicated a need for help.
An attack involving time-consuming preparation, and a planner who is talking about his lethal intentions, lends itself to being detected and prevented, if those close to the planner—teachers, administrators and staff—know what to look for.

Training and education are keys to prevention. Suspicious conduct, indirect threats, even alarming expressions in school assignments need to be documented. Information must be shared so that a coherent snapshot can be created of a potentially volatile situation.

School districts need to collect, document and share intelligence. To that end, schools should establish fusion coordinators, “Intel Officers,” who can synthesize documented activity occurring in school, outside of school and on social media networks. Teachers, administrators and staff should have regular roundtable discussions about unusual behavior, threats, bullying and social isolation of students.

Here is an example of how important information can fall through the cracks without a designated “Intel Officer.” John Smith is in 12th grade.  His little sister tells the school nurse that her brother has a journal where he draws weird pictures of guns. The nurse passes the information along to the school counselor.  

A classmate of John tells a teacher John said he has thousands of rounds of ammunition for target practice.  The teacher mentions it to the assistant principal. 

Another classmate tells his basketball coach that he overheard John tell someone that January 10 is going be a big day at the high school. John’s social media posts include photographs of him in camouflage, military garb, body armor and what looks like a semiautomatic weapon.

The teacher, school counselor, coach and assistant principal never get together to share their information.  No one is monitoring social media posts.

If John’s school had an intelligence officer designated to receive all reports of unusual or alarming information, the intel officer would have been able to connect the dots and make sense of the multiple bits of information. The intel officer does a follow-up internet search and an intervention is made, possibly averting a tragedy.

The accumulation of intelligence can and must be done without violating a student’s civil rights, and in compliance with Family Educational Rights Privacy Act and other state and federal regulations. 

Would a school district be better served with another armed resource officer or an intelligence office armed with a laptop, cell phone, email and some intelligence software serving as a central point of contact synthesizing information from teachers, staff, students and outside public sources?

Intelligence has been cultivated and used effectively in this country’s anti-terrorism efforts. An intelligence model would not only help prevent a violent rampage, but also assist school districts more effectively reach out to students who need support, counseling or more specific interventions.

Opinion contributor Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly and George. P.C. and the former district attorney of Lawrence County, Pa. His work appears frequently on the Capital-Star’s Commentary Page. Readers may  follow him on twitter @MatthewTMangino, or email him at mmangino@lgkg.com.  

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States arm teachers as new school year approaches

A decade ago, it was extremely rare for everyday school employees to carry guns. Today, after a seemingly endless series of mass shootings, the strategy has become a leading solution promoted by Republicans and gun rights advocates, who say that allowing teachers, principals and superintendents to be armed gives schools a fighting chance in case of attack, according to The New York Times.

At least 29 states allow individuals other than police or security officials to carry guns on school grounds, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. As of 2018, the last year for which statistics were available, federal survey data estimated that 2.6 percent of public schools had armed faculty.

In Florida, more than 1,300 school staff members serve as armed guardians in 45 school districts, out of 74 in the state, according to state officials. The program was created after a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in 2018.

In Texas, at least 402 school districts — about a third in the state — participate in a program that allows designated people, including school staff members, to be armed, according to the Texas Association of School Boards. Another program, which requires more training, is used by a smaller number of districts. Participation in both is up since 2018.

And in the weeks after the Uvalde shooting, lawmakers in Ohio made it easier for teachers and other school employees to carry guns.

The strategy is fiercely opposed by Democrats, police groups, teachers’ unions and gun control advocates, who say that concealed carry programs in schools — far from solving the problem — will only create more risk. Past polling has shown that the vast majority of teachers do not want to be armed.

The law in Ohio has been especially contentious because it requires no more than 24 hours of training, along with eight hours of recertification annually.

“That, to us, is just outrageous,” said Michael Weinman, director of government affairs for the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio, the state’s largest law enforcement organization. By comparison, police officers in the state undergo more than 700 hours of training. And school resource officers — police assigned to campuses — must complete an additional 40 hours.

Supporters say 24 hours is enough because while police training includes everything from traffic tickets to legal matters, school employees tightly focus on firearm proficiency and active shooter response. 

Studies on school employees carrying guns have been limited, and research so far has found little evidence that it is effective. There is also little evidence that school resource officers are broadly effective at preventing school shootings, which are statistically rare.

Yet arming school employees is finding appeal — slight majorities among parents and adults in recent polls.

Of the five deadliest school shootings on record, four — in Newtown, Conn., Uvalde, Texas, Parkland, Fla., and Santa Fe, Texas — have happened in the last 10 years.

It was this possibility that brought Mandi and seven other educators to a gun range tucked amid the hayfields and farm roads of Rittman, in northeast Ohio.

Over the course of three days, Mandi practiced shooting, tying a tourniquet and responding to fast-paced active shooter drills. Her presence on the range, firing her pistol under the blazing sun, cut a contrast to the classroom, where she dances to counting songs with 5-year-olds, dollops out shaving cream for sensory activities and wallpapers her classroom with student artwork.

That she was being trained at all spoke to the country’s painful failure to stop mass shootings, and to the heavy responsibilities piled onto teachers — catching students up from the pandemic, handling mental health crises in children, navigating conflicts over the teaching of race and gender and now, for some, defending their schools.

Mandi, in her 40s, arrived at the training with nervous anticipation. She had been a teacher for a dozen years and has children of her own. She wanted to be sure she could carry her gun safely around students. “I get hugs all day long,” she said.

And then there was the prospect of confronting an actual gunman. Could three days of training prepare her for the unthinkable?

The educators had come from Ohio and as far as Oklahoma for a 26-hour course by FASTER Saves Lives, a leading gun training program for school employees. It is run by the Buckeye Firearms Foundation, a Second Amendment organization that works alongside a major gun lobbying group in Ohio. The lobbying group, the Buckeye Firearms Association, supported the new state law for school employees.

Over the past decade, the foundation estimates it has spent more than $1 million training at least 2,600 educators.

Its approach aligns closely with an argument that has become a hallmark of the National Rifle Association and the gun lobby: “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

In this view, teachers are the ultimate “good guys.”

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An evidence-based profile of mass killers is out there, why isn't anyone listening

Each time a high-profile mass shooting happens in America, a grieving and incredulous nation scrambles for answers. Who was this criminal and how could he (usually) have committed such a horrendous and inhumane act? A few details emerge about the individual’s troubled life and then everyone moves on.

Three years ago, Jillian Peterson, an associate professor of criminology at Hamline University, and James Densley, a professor of criminal justice at Metro State University, decided to take a different approach, according to POLITICO. In their view, the failure to gain a more meaningful and evidence-based understanding of why mass shooters do what they do seemed a lost opportunity to stop the next one from happening. Funded by the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Department of Justice, their research constructed a database of every mass shooter since 1966 who shot and killed four or more people in a public place, and every shooting incident at schools, workplaces and places of worship since 1999.

Peterson and Densley also compiled detailed life histories on 180 shooters, speaking to their spouses, parents, siblings, childhood friends, work colleagues and teachers. As for the gunmen themselves, most don’t survive their carnage, but five who did talked to Peterson and Densely from prison, where they were serving life sentences. The researchers also found several people who planned a mass shooting but changed their mind.

Their findings, also published in the 2021 book, The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic, reveal striking commonalities among the perpetrators of mass shootings and suggest a data-backed, mental health-based approach could identify and address the next mass shooter before he pulls the trigger — if only politicians are willing to actually engage in finding and funding targeted solutions. POLITICO talked to Peterson and Densely from their offices in St. Paul, Minn., about how our national understanding about mass shooters has to evolve, why using terms like “monster” is counterproductive, and why political talking points about mental health need to be followed up with concrete action.

POLITICO: Since you both spend much of your time studying mass shootings, I wonder if you had the same stunned and horrified reaction as the rest of us to the Uvalde elementary school shooting. Or were you somehow expecting this?

Jillian Peterson: On some level, we were waiting because mass shootings are socially contagious and when one really big one happens and gets a lot of media attention, we tend to see others follow. But this one was particularly gutting. I have three elementary school kids, one of which is in 4th grade.

James Densley: I’m also a parent of two boys, a 5-year-old and a 12-year-old. My 12-year-old knows what I do for a living and he’s looking to me for reassurance and I didn’t have the words for him. How do I say, “This happened at a school, but now it’s OK for you to go to your school and live your life.” It’s heartbreaking.

POLITICO: Are you saying there’s a link between the Buffalo and Uvalde shootings?

Peterson: We don’t know for sure at this point, but our research would say that it’s likely. You had an 18-year-old commit a horrific mass shooting. His name is everywhere and we all spend days talking about “replacement theory.” That shooter was able to get our attention. So, if you have another 18-year-old who is on the edge and watching everything, that could be enough to embolden him to follow. We have seen this happen before.

Densley: Mass shooters study other mass shooters. They often find a way of relating to them, like, “There are other people out there who feel like me.”

POLITICO: Can you take us through the profile of mass shooters that emerged from your research?

Peterson: There’s this really consistent pathway. Early childhood trauma seems to be the foundation, whether violence in the home, sexual assault, parental suicides, extreme bullying. Then you see the build toward hopelessness, despair, isolation, self-loathing, oftentimes rejection from peers. That turns into a really identifiable crisis point where they’re acting differently. Sometimes they have previous suicide attempts.

What’s different from traditional suicide is that the self-hate turns against a group. They start asking themselves, “Whose fault is this?” Is it a racial group or women or a religious group, or is it my classmates? The hate turns outward. There’s also this quest for fame and notoriety.

POLITICO: You’ve written about how mass shootings are always acts of violent suicide. Do people realize this is what’s happening in mass shootings?

Peterson: I don’t think most people realize that these are suicides, in addition to homicides. Mass shooters design these to be their final acts. When you realize this, it completely flips the idea that someone with a gun on the scene is going to deter this. If anything, that’s an incentive for these individuals. They are going in to be killed.

It’s hard to focus on the suicide because these are horrific homicides. But it’s a critical piece because we know so much from the suicide prevention world that can translate here.

POLITICO: I’ve heard many references over the last few weeks to “monsters” and “pure evil.” You’ve said this kind of language actually makes things worse. Why? 

Densley: If we explain this problem as pure evil or other labels like terrorist attack or hate crime, we feel better because it makes it seem like we’ve found the motive and solved the puzzle. But we haven’t solved anything. We’ve just explained the problem away. What this really problematic terminology does is prevent us from recognizing that mass shooters are us. This is hard for people to relate to because these individuals have done horrific, monstrous things. But three days earlier, that school shooter was somebody’s son, grandson, neighbor, colleague or classmate. We have to recognize them as the troubled human being earlier if we want to intervene before they become the monster.

Peterson: The Buffalo shooter told his teacher that he was going to commit a murder-suicide after he graduated. People aren’t used to thinking that this kind of thing could be real because the people who do mass shootings are evil, psychopathic monsters and this is a kid in my class. There’s a disconnect.

POLITICO: Do you get criticism about being too sympathetic toward mass shooters?

Peterson: We’re not trying to create excuses or say they shouldn’t be held responsible. This is really about, what is the pathway to violence for these people, where does this come from? Only then can we start building data-driven solutions that work. If we’re unwilling to understand the pathway, we’re never going to solve this.

POLITICO: So, what are the solutions?

Densley: There are things we can do right now as individuals, like safe storage of firearms or something as simple as checking in with your kid.

Peterson: Then we really need resources at institutions like schools. We need to build teams to investigate when kids are in crisis and then link those kids to mental health services. The problem is that in a lot of places, those services are not there. There’s no community mental health and no school-based mental health. Schools are the ideal setting because it doesn’t require a parent to take you there. A lot of perpetrators are from families where the parents are not particularly proactive about mental health appointments.

POLITICO: In your book, you say that in an ideal world, 500,000 psychologists would be employed in schools around the country. If you assume a modest salary of $70,000 a year, that amounts to over $35 billion in funding. Are you seeing any national or state-level political momentum for even a sliver of these kind of mental health resources?

Densley: Every time these tragedies happen, you always ask yourself, “Is this the one that’s going to finally move the needle?” The Republican narrative is that we’re not going to touch guns because this is all about mental health. Well then, we need to ask the follow-up question of what’s the plan to fix that mental health problem. Nobody’s saying, “Let’s fund this, let’s do it, we’ll get the votes.” That’s the political piece that’s missing here.

POLITICO: Are Democrats talking about mental health?

Densley: Too often in politics it becomes an either-or proposition. Gun control or mental health. Our research says that none of these solutions is perfect on its own. We have to do multiple things at one time and put them together as a comprehensive package. People have to be comfortable with complexity and that’s not always easy.

Peterson: Post-Columbine there’s been this real focus on hardening schools — metal detectors, armed officers, teaching our kids to run and hide. The shift I’m starting to see, at least here in Minnesota, is that people are realizing hardening doesn’t work. Over 90 percent of the time, school shooters target their own school. These are insiders, not outsiders. We just had a bill in Minnesota that recognized public safety as training people in suicide prevention and funding counselors. I hope we keep moving in that direction.

Densley: In Uvalde, there was an army of good guys with guns in the parking lot. The hard approach doesn’t seem to be getting the job done.

POLITICO: Do you support red flag laws?

Peterson: Our research certainly supports them, because so many perpetrators are actively showing warning signs. They are talking about doing this and telling people they’re suicidal. But what Buffalo showed us is that just because you have a red flag law on the books doesn’t mean people are trained in how it works and how they should be implementing it.

POLITICO: What has to change to make the laws more effective?

Densley: There are two pieces. One is training and awareness. People need to know that the law exists, how it works and who has a duty to report an individual. The second piece is the practical component of law enforcement. What is the mechanism to safely remove those firearms? Especially if you have a small law enforcement presence, maybe one or two officers, and you’re asking them to go into somebody’s rural home and take care of their entire arsenal of weapons.

POLITICO: What should have happened in Buffalo, given that the state of New York has a red flag law?

Peterson: From what we know, it sounds like there should have been more education with the police, the mental health facility and the school. If any one of those three had initiated the red flag process, it should have prevented the shooter from making the purchase.

It really shows the limitations of our current systems. Law enforcement investigated, but the shooter had no guns at that moment, so it was not an immediate threat. The mental health facility concluded it was not an immediate crisis, so he goes back to school. If it’s not a red-hot situation in that moment, nobody can do anything. It was none of these people’s jobs to make sure that he got connected with somebody in the community who could help him long term.

Densley: Also, something happens to put people on the radar. Even if they’re not the next shooter, something’s not right. How can we help these individuals reintegrate in a way that’s going to try and turn their lives around? That gets lost if we fixate just on the word “threat.”

POLITICO: I was struck by a detail in your book about one of the perpetrators you investigated. Minutes before he opened fire, you report that he called a behavior health facility. Is there always some form of reaching out or communication of intent before it happens?

Peterson: You don’t see it as often with older shooters who often go into their workplaces. But for young shooters, it’s almost every case. We have to view this “leakage” as a cry for help. If you’re saying, “I want to shoot the school tomorrow,” you are also saying, “I don’t care if I live or die.” You’re also saying, “I’m completely hopeless,” and you’re putting it out there for people to see because part of you wants to be stopped.

We have to listen because pushing people out intensifies their grievance and makes them angrier. The Parkland shooter had just been expelled from school and then came back. This is not a problem we can punish our way out of.

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New Mexico National Guard fill in as substitute teachers

For the last month, dozens of soldiers and airmen and women in the New Mexico National Guard have been deployed to classrooms throughout the state to help with crippling pandemic-related staff shortages, reported The New York Times. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has also enlisted civilian state employees — herself included — to volunteer as substitute teachers.

New Mexico has been the only state to deploy National Guard troops in classrooms. But since the fall, when districts around the country began recruiting any qualified adult to take over classrooms temporarily, several other states have turned to uniformed personnel. National Guard members in Massachusetts have driven school buses, and last month, police officers in one city in Oklahoma served as substitutes.

The scenes of uniformed officers in classrooms have solicited mixed reactions. Some teachers see it as a slight against their profession, and a way to avoid tackling longstanding problems like low teacher pay. Other critics have worried that putting more uniformed officers in schools could create anxiety in student populations that have historically had hostile experiences with law enforcement.

But the presence of New Mexico’s state militia — whose members are trained to help with floods, freezes and fires as well as combat missions overseas — has largely been embraced by schools as a complicated but critical step toward recovery. Teachers have expressed gratitude for “extra bodies,” as one put it. Students were mostly unfazed but aware that, as Scarlett Tourville, a third grader in Colonel Corona’s class put it, “This is not normal.”

Superintendents were given the choice of whether to have the guardsmen and women wear regular clothes or duty uniforms; most joined Cindy L. Sims, the superintendent of the Estancia Municipal School District, in choosing the latter. “I wanted the kids to know she was here, to know why she was here,” Dr. Sims said. “I wanted them to see strength and community.”

For Dr. Sims, Colonel Corona’s presence breathed new life into a campus that had been scarred by death. In December alone, Dr. Sims attended seven funerals of people who died from Covid-19. Among them: the husband of a staff member who had contracted the disease at school and took it home, and a father who left behind a first-, seventh- and twelfth-grader. The week before Christmas, the district held a double funeral in the high school gymnasium for a father and grandmother of two students.

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Instances of gunfire on school grounds up dramatically

There were at least 136 instances of gunfire on school grounds between Aug. 1 and Dec. 31, according to a report Friday from the gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, reported the USA Today. The figure is nearly four times the average for that period since Everytown began tracking gunfire on school grounds in 2013.

The shootings killed 26 people and wounded 96, marking the most recorded instances of gunfire and people shot in the five-month period since 2013, according to the report.

"This has been by far the most violent first half of the school year in recent history," said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, which is part of Everytown.

The new report comes nearly four years to the day after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida. On Valentine's Day 2018, a former student walked into the school's freshman building, fired more than 100 rounds over the course of six minutes and killed 17 students and staff and wounded 17 others.

The gunman pleaded guilty last year to first-degree murder charges. His sentencing trial, which could result in the death penalty, has been repeatedly delayed.

Gun violence has risen across the U.S. during the coronavirus pandemic. More Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2020 than in any other year on record, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. More than half were deaths by suicide.

Children and teens have been particularly affected by the gun violence surge. In 2020, the numbers of kids fatally shot both increased by more than a third from the previous year, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group that uses a combination of police statistics and media reports.

The surge continued into 2021, when more than 1,500 kids were killed and more than 4,000 injured, according to the archive. So far this year, more children and teens have been shot compared with the same time last year, according to the archive.

The new Everytown report focuses on gunfire at K-12 schools, colleges and universities, where gunfire includes unintentional discharges, arguments that escalate to gun violence, gun violence that comes onto school grounds, shootings at sporting events, random shootings and more.

Data from another research group reveals similar trends. The K-12 School Shooting Database found there have been at least 190 shooting incidents at K-12 schools since August.

The database, based at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security, documents every instance a gun is brandished or fired or a bullet hits school property for any reason.

"The number of incidents in this time period alone is four-to-eight times more than the full years in the database between 1970-2017," said lead researcher David Riedman.

During that time frame, 171 people were killed or injured on school property, the youngest being 6 years old, Riedman said. Most of the victims were teachers or students, and some were nonstudents attending high school football or basketball games. Most of the shooters were students, a few were parents and one was a teacher.

Shootings in schools typically capture national attention only when they are mass shootings, often defined as four or more people killed, not including the shooter. The issue drew concern again in November, when a student at Oxford High School outside Detroit fatally shot four students and injured seven others.

But many more school campuses have seen smaller-scale or targeted shootings inside or outside school buildings or after dismissal. Other incidents have happened on school grounds but have not involved members of the school community.

The incidents this year have happened across the country – in urban, suburban and rural areas – and no specific region has a higher concentration of incidents, Riedman said.

"This is truly a nationwide problem," Riedman said. "These shootings are representative of the increase in gun violence that is occurring across the country. Most of these incidents are simple disputes between students that escalate into a serious shooting because someone involved is carrying a gun."

"On the four-year anniversary, it's nice to look back at the work that we've done that's continuing to help improve the safety of schools," Kaufman said. "There's been a lot of work that I've done with Students Demand Action and Everytown in the past four years with secure storage policies and red flag laws being passed at the state level."

Education on how to securely store firearms and clear guidelines for schools that choose to conduct active shooter drills are key to reducing shootings on school grounds, according to Everytown. The group released initial school safety recommendations for the Biden administration earlier this year.

Among other points, the recommendations direct the Department of Education to "develop a strategy to encourage school districts to send parents secure firearm storage information and raise awareness about the importance of secure storage in keeping schools safe."

The recommendations also "direct the Department of Justice to enforce the laws that prevent underage students from purchasing firearms and continue to call for Congressional action to close the loopholes in the background check law."

Everytown estimates that about half of gun owners don't store their guns securely, and at least 5.4 million children live in a home with at least one unlocked and loaded firearm. About 80% of people who engaged in mass shootings at K-12 schools stole guns from family members, according to a recent report from the Justice Department's National Institute of Justice.

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Police in schools do not reduce school shootings, but do increase student suspensions, expulsions, and arrests

New research finds that police deployed in schools, commonly called school resource officers (SROs), do not reduce school shootings, but do increase suspensions, expulsions, and arrests of students, reported Reason.

A working paper published last week by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University and written by researchers at the University at Albany, SUNY and RAND Corporation bills itself as the broadest and most rigorous examination at the school-level of how SROs impact student outcomes. Using national school-level data from 2014 to 2018 collected by the U.S. Department of Education, the paper found that while SROs "do effectively reduce some forms of violence in schools," they do not prevent school shootings or gun-related incidents.

"We also find that SROs intensify the use of suspensions, expulsions, police referrals, and arrests of students," researchers wrote. "These effects are consistently over two times larger for Black students than White students."

The study found that the introduction of SROs to schools did appear to improve general safety and decrease non-gun-related violence, like fights and physical assaults. However, the authors say, those benefits come at the cost of increasing both school discipline and police referrals.

The study further found that SROs increase chronic absenteeism, especially for students with disabilities.

During the nationwide debate over policing last year, school districts across the country began reconsidering the use of SROs, and several major cities—Minneapolis, Denver, Seattle, Charlottesville, and Portland, Oregon—ended their SRO programs in public schools. Other jurisdictions significantly cut their budgets for school policing.

The number of police in schools has skyrocketed in schools over the past four decades, first in response to drugs, then mass shootings. Police departments and organizations like the National Association of School Resource Officers argue that well-trained SROs act as liaisons between the school and police department. A good SRO, they argue, can actually reduce arrests.

Civil liberties groups and disability advocates, on the other hand, have long argued that increases in school police and zero-tolerance policies for petty disturbances have fueled the "school-to-prison" pipeline and led to disproportionate enforcement against minorities and students with disabilities.

Other recent research has come to similar conclusions as the new working paper. For example, a study published last August by researchers at the University of Maryland and the firm Westat found that increasing the number of police in schools doesn't make school safer and leads to harsher discipline for infractions. The study found that increasing the number of SROs led to both immediate and persistent increases in the number of drug and weapon offenses and the number of exclusionary disciplinary actions against students.

After Florida mandated that all K-12 schools have at least one SRO or armed guardian following the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, a study found that the number of school arrests—which had been declining for years—suddenly started to rise. There was also a sharp increase in the use of physical restraint against students.

As Reason reported last June, Florida civil liberties groups and disability advocates warned that the hiring surge was leading to a disturbing number of arrests of children. The research appeared to confirm at least some of their concerns. The study found that the presence of SROs "predicted greater numbers of behavioral incidents being reported to law enforcement, particularly for less severe infractions and among middle schoolers." 

While overall youth arrests in the state declined by 12 percent, the number of youth arrests at school increased 8 percent. Florida police arrested elementary-aged children 345 times during the 2018–2019 school year, the study reported. It also found four times as many incidents of physical restraint in 2018–2019 as there were in the previous year.

Florida has also been the site of several recent viral videos of small children being arrested. Last year, body camera footage emerged showing officers in Key West, Florida, trying and failing to handcuff an 8-year-old boy, whose wrists were too small for the cuffs. An Orlando SRO made headlines last September when he arrested a 6-year-old girl.

Such viral incidents have sparked national outrage and calls for SRO programs to be curtailed. Chicago activists who want to defund the school system's police program have cited a 2019 video in which Chicago police officers kick, punch, and taser a 16-year-old girl. The Justice Department's 2017 report on civil liberties abuses by the Chicago Police Department included findings that officers beat and tasered teenagers in school for non-criminal conduct and minor violations.

Just yesterday, Hawaii News Now reported on a 10-year-old girl who was handcuffed and arrested for drawing an offensive picture that upset another student's parent.

Earlier this year, the city of Rochester, New York, released body camera footage of officers pepper spraying a handcuffed 9-year-old girl. 

A North Carolina mother filed a civil rights lawsuit last October against a policeman who handcuffed and held her autistic 7-year-old son prone on the ground for nearly 40 minutes.

The list could go on and on: a school resource officer at a high school in Camden, Arkansas, was relieved of duty after video showed him putting a student in a chokehold and lifting the student off the ground. A North Carolina SRO was fired after he brutally body-slammed a middle-schooler. A Broward County sheriff's deputy in Florida was arrested and charged with child abuse after a video showed him body-slamming a 15-year-old girl at a special needs school.

In response to incidents like these, legislators in states around the country have been introducing legislation to raise the minimum age at which children can be arrested.

The authors of the new working paper say that school districts should weigh the benefits of safer hallways against the high cost of putting more kids in contact with the criminal justice system.

"The results of this study present a difficult set of tradeoffs," researchers conclude. "Although our study does not perform a cost-benefit analysis, we encourage districts to consider these effects of SROs in comparison to other potential investments to prevent violence in schools, including restorative practices."

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