eSchool News » Safety & Security

Everything we know about the hero teachers from the California shooting

staff and wire services reports — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 14:39:09 +0000

As details emerged from Thursday’s shooting at Taft High School in Taft, California, the teacher present in the classroom and a classroom supervisor emerged as heroes for successfully talking the gunman into putting his shotgun down and surrendering before police arrived, the Atlantic Wire reports. Multiple reports identify Ryan Heber as the science teacher whose first period class was interrupted when one of his students entered the class late with a shotgun and fired on another student. The shooter had planned to fire on another student, but Heber and classroom supervisor Kim Lee Fields, who responded once she heard gun shots, didn’t overreact. Heber just participated a shooting emergency prepared class that morning. Heber and Fields were able to talk to the shooter while Heber evacuated the rest of his class to safety. Eventually, they convinced him to put the shotgun down without hurting anyone else. They disarmed the shooter even before police officials could get there…

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Report: Most kids who need mental health care don’t get it

staff and wire services reports — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 14:35:29 +0000

Hot off the presses, here’s a report from the Government Accountability Office on the state of children’s mental health care. It reveals some major problems, the Huffington Post reports.

“Most children whose emotions or behavior, as reported by their parent or guardian, indicated a potential need for a mental health service did not receive any services within the same year,” the GAO wrote.

The report comes after Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), and Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (Calif.) requested that the GAO look into how psychotropic drugs affect the long-term development of kids who grow up in foster care. While the report is very specific in its scope, it’s sure to be a relevant piece of evidence as the Obama administration formulates policy to deal with the ramifications of the Newtown, Conn. elementary school shooting. The shooting has sparked a nationwide debate on gun control, but it has also directed America’s attention to the state of its mental health care system…

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Calif. teachers fund moves to divest from firearms

staff and wire services reports — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 14:49:46 +0000

The nation’s largest teacher pension fund took the first step Wednesday toward divesting from companies that make guns and high-capacity ammunition magazines that are illegal in California, the Associated Press reports. State Treasurer Bill Lockyer made a motion to begin the divestment process after pension fund officials determined that the fund invests in the owner of a company that manufactured one of the weapons used in the Connecticut school shooting. The California State Teachers’ Retirement System’s investment committee unanimously approved the motion.

“CalSTRS’ action targets ammunition clips that turn ordinary guns into killing machines, assault weapons and other firearms that pose extreme dangers to public health and safety,” Lockyer said.

The pension fund has investments in private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP, which owns the manufacturer of an assault weapon used at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The pension fund also owns shares of Sturm, Ruger & Co. and Smith & Wesson Holding Corp., two publicly traded gun-makers…

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Hundreds of Texas, Ohio teachers flock to gun training

staff and wire services reports — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 14:57:57 +0000

School teachers in Texas are flocking to free firearms classes and hundreds more in Ohio have signed up for training in the wake of the Connecticut elementary school massacre, some vowing to protect their students with guns even at the risk of losing their jobs, Reuters reports. In Ohio, more than 900 teachers, administrators and school employees signed up for the Buckeye Firearms Association’s newly created, three-day gun training program, the association said. In Texas, an $85 Concealed Handgun License course offered at no cost to teachers filled 400 spots immediately, forcing the school to offer another class, one instructor said. The two Texas classes graduated about 460 educators.

“Any teacher who is licensed and chooses to be armed should be able to be armed,” said Gerald Valentino, co-founder of the Buckeye Firearms Association. “It should be every teacher’s choice.”

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Judge: School can move girl in ID-tracking case

staff and wire services reports — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:28:49 +0000

“Today’s court ruling affirms [the district's] position that we did make reasonable accommodation to the student,” the district said.

A Texas school district can transfer a student who is citing religious reasons for her refusal to wear a so-called “smart ID” card that is part of an electronic tracking system, a federal judge ruled on Jan. 8.

The parents of 15-year-old Andrea Hernandez had requested a preliminary injunction that would have prevented the school district from transferring their daughter from her San Antonio high school while the lawsuit on whether she should be forced to wear the ID tracking badge went through federal court.

Last fall, the Northside Independent School District began experimenting with a “locator” chip in student ID badges on two campuses, allowing administrators to track the whereabouts of 4,200 students with GPS-like precision.

Administrators say the chips make students safer and will help boost attendance records that are used to calculate badly needed state funding. They say the technology could bring in an additional $1.7 million in funding.

(Next page: What the ruling said)

Two New Jersey school districts install armed police guards

staff and wire services reports — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 14:26:27 +0000

At least two New Jersey school districts this week put armed police guards at the entrance to public schools in the wake of the Connecticut elementary school massacre, Reuters reports. In Marlboro Township in central New Jersey’s Monmouth County armed guards were on duty on Wednesday to check every child, teacher and visitor as they arrived and left any of the district’s eight schools, which serve children in pre-Kindergarten through eighth grade. Further north, in Passaic County, the Totowa School District on Wednesday also started using armed police officers in its two elementary schools, according to local media reports. Marlboro Schools Superintendent David Abbott said the reaction from the community has been mixed, but he is defending the decision…

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Share With 911: Empowering the school community to keep kids safe

staff and wire services reports — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 14:13:25 +0000

Sharewith911 may just be the best solution I’ve seen for improving school safety, says Christopher Dawson for ZDNet Education. And it’s incredibly simple, leveraging ubiquitous classroom and consumer technology. I took a lot of flack before the holidays when I called on schools to roll out simple, low-tech physical security measures to improve student safety in the wake of the Newtown school shooting. Although a number of readers thought I was politicizing a tech blog (I wasn’t), the article was important, in my opinion, because it addressed the idea that school safety doesn’t have to be all about ID cards or RFIDs integrated with student information systems. Instead, as with all things in education, we need to look at the most effective tools and solutions, regardless of their technical wow-factor (or lack thereof). More importantly, though, the article led the folks at Share With 911 to reach out and tell me about the new service they’re rolling out this year. Share With 911 is brilliant, both in its simplicity and its game-changing ability to empower both school staff and emergency personnel to quickly and proactively act and communicate in a variety of emergency situations…

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Watch: Utah teachers get free gun training in response to Newtown shooting

staff and wire services reports — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 14:01:30 +0000

Kasey Hansen, a special education teacher from Salt Lake City, Utah, says she would take a bullet for any of her students, but if faced with a gunman threatening her class, she would rather be able to shoot back, Reuters reports. On Thursday, she was one of 200 Utah teachers who flocked to an indoor sports arena for free instruction in the handling of firearms by gun activists who say armed educators might have a chance at thwarting deadly shooting rampages in their schools. The event was organized by the Utah Shooting Sports Council in response to the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, this month that killed 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The council said it has typically attracted about 16 teachers each year to its concealed carry training courses. But Thursday’s event near Salt Lake City, organized especially for educators in the aftermath of Newtown, drew interest from hundreds, and the class was capped at 200 for space limitations…

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Parents hesitant about NRA’s proposal for more guns in schools

staff and wire services reports — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 14:33:37 +0000

Reactions to the NRA’s proposal for more guns in schools have ranged from supportive to disgusted.

The nation’s largest gun-rights lobby on Dec. 21 called for the placement of an armed police officer in every school, but parents and educators question how safe such a move would keep kids, whether it would be economically feasible, and how it would alter student life. Their reactions ranged from supportive to disgusted.

Already, there are an estimated 10,000 sworn officers serving in schools around the country, most of them armed and employed by local police departments, according to a membership association for the officers. Still, they’re deployed at only a fraction of the country’s approximately 98,000 public schools, and their numbers have declined during the economic downturn.

Some departments have increased police presence at schools since this month’s shooting rampage at a Connecticut elementary school that left 26 dead, but they say they can only do so temporarily because of funding.

The National Rifle Association said at a news conference that it wants Congress to fund armed officers in every American school, breaking its silence on the Connecticut shootings. The idea made sense to some anxious parents and teachers, but provoked outright anger in others.

“Their solution to resolve the issue around guns [in schools] is to put more guns in the equation?” said Superintendent Hank Grishman of the Jericho, N.Y., schools on Long Island, who has been an educator for 44 years. “If anything, it would be less safe for kids. You would be putting them in the midst of potentially more gunfire.”

Where school resource officers are already in place, they help foster connections between the schools and police, and often develop a close enough relationship with parents and children that they feel comfortable coming forward with information that could prevent a threat, said Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers.

But an Oklahoma educator who teaches at a school with armed school resource officers described the National Rifle Association’s proposal as a “false solution,” though she’s not opposed to the presence of more police.

(Next page: Why the NRA’s proposal might not work)

Changes in law aim to protect kids’ internet privacy

staff and wire services reports — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 13:40:19 +0000

Data known as “persistent identifiers,” which allow a child to be tracked over time and across websites, no longer can be collected without a parent’s permission, under the new rules.

Aiming to prevent companies from exploiting online information about children under 13, the Obama administration on Dec. 19 imposed sweeping changes in regulations designed to protect a young generation with easy access to the web.

But some critics of the changes worry they could stifle innovation in the market for educational apps.

Two years in the making, the amended rules to the decade-old Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act go into effect in July. Internet privacy advocates said the changes were long overdue in an era of cell phones, tablets, social networking services, and online stores with cell-phone apps aimed at kids for as little as 99 cents.

Siphoning details of children’s personal lives—their physical location, contact information, names of friends, and more—from their internet activities can be highly valuable to advertisers, marketers, and data brokers.

The Obama administration has largely refrained from issuing regulations that might stifle growth in the technology industry, one of the U.S. economy’s brightest spots.

Yet the Federal Trade Commission pressed ahead with the new kids’ internet privacy guidelines, despite loud complaints—particularly from small businesses and developers of educational apps—that the revisions would be too costly to comply with and would cause responsible companies to abandon the children’s app marketplace.

As evidence of internet privacy risks, the FTC last week said it was investigating an unspecified number of software developers that might have gathered information illegally without the consent of parents.

(Next page: What the new rules say)