Safe Schools

"I feel that with the baggy clothes kids wear, the backpacks that are left unchecked and the easy access to lockers that are near exterior doors without metal detectors, leave the high school extremely vulnerable to a Columbine-style event. Please get this in the media, or at the very least, provide teachers and students with Kevlar vests."

Count it good luck that the school district hasn't had another on-campus fatality since Donnie Lee Bolden Jr. was gunned down in Eldorado High's cafeteria on August 26, 1990. Count it a miracle because dozens of guns annually find their way onto campuses: 35 so far this academic year, compared to 46 for 2005-06, including 21 pellet guns.

Some guns aren't used: Earlier this month, 18-year-old Liberty High student Jordan Smith was arrested for having an AR-15 assault rifle and a shotgun on campus; in October, four schools in North Las Vegas were locked down because of reports of a teenager roaming with a gun; two firearms were confiscated during a Cheyenne High football game in September.

Some guns are used, often to brutal effect: In January, an enraged driver fired six shots in the parking lot at Western High School, hitting two teenagers; a teen was arrested in September for a parking-lot shooting at Legacy High School; that same month, 17-year-old Canyon Springs High student Teren Evans fired five shots at a school bus, striking a passenger (he's serving four to 12 years in prison). Police, in 2004, fatally shot a gunman who shot a man outside Galloway Elementary then stormed through the school looking for his ex-girlfriend.

Security concerns recently prompted Canyon Springs Principal Ronan Matthew to ask the school district to install walk-through metal detectors. Concerned about keeping officers from bolting to better-paying law-enforcement agencies, school police union representative Phil Gervasi began pressing the issue with school brass late last year. He said campus cops are overworked (they recovered 10 loaded firearms, a compound bow with 20 arrows and 14 knives, and responded to two stabbings in the first month of school) and underpaid.

So, to interminable struggles with growth and No Child Left Behind mandates and epic battles with lawmakers to increase education funding, add the near-improbable task of making schools safe.

Never far from the surface of any discussion on school safety is the "C" word—Columbine. That massacre exploded the notion of campuses as safe zones. It's why school officials are on heightened alert during the anniversary, why they drop the hammer on students who mention the word in class, via notes, e-mail or the Internet.

Working on a campus is risky business. But school district police Lt. Ken Young isn't sure schools are more dangerous these days. We won't know if there's been an uptick in batteries and weapons confiscations until crime figures are tabulated in July. Even then, Young says, it might hard to draw conclusions since much of the crime data isn't broken down into specific subsets—for example, there's no way to tell how many of the 779 batteries recorded in the 2005-06 academic year were student-on-faculty assaults. And the term battery is fluid: It can refer to a simple push or an actual fistfight.

"Many [battery incidents] are a one-hit or one-push scenario," Young says. "Generally, the scuffles we see are between students. It's rare for students to get physical with teachers and school staff. But what we are seeing is that more students are becoming verbally aggressive."

Mary Ella Holloway, president of the 13,000-teacher Clark County Education Association union, says student-on-faculty assaults are generally isolated incidents. Twenty years ago when she was at Jim Bridger, a kid hit a teacher with an attaché case, "but the kid had a history of problems." These days physical violence is rare, she says, even at alternative and court continuation schools.

As it stands, lip service from school district brass about better pay for campus police has been just that. And metal detectors, Young says, work well when there are single points of entry and exit; schools have multiple entry/exit points. "No one's explored the fiscal impact of buying equipment and hiring extra personnel to put these changes in place," he says.

Monetary expenditures—hiring more security, installing more cameras and building gated entrances that could improve safety—aren't likely to occur until after the legislative session, or at all. This leaves an overworked and undermanned school police force and the brave students who tip them off to trouble as the major lines of defense against campus violence. You have to wonder if our luck will run out.