Safety first in city schools

Weapon scans could be daily—Making students and their teachers feel safer in school might make the investment worthwhile.

At a cost of $4.5 million, marching Memphis City Schools students through X-ray machines and past metal detectors on a daily basis seems like an extravagance.

According to the US Department of Education, 12 to 20 homicides occur each year in the nation’s entire school system, and school violence has dropped by half in the last decade.

Ticking off statistics doesn’t mean much, however, when a child’s life is lost.

When 14-year old Asa Coon shot and wounded two teachers and two students before taking his own life at Success Tech Academy in Cleveland last October, only nine days passed before the district announced plans to install $3.3 million in metal detectors and X-ray machines on campuses all over the city.

Memphis might be going through the same exercise today if the gun that accidentally discharged Oct. 24 in a Manassas High School classroom had done more than wound a classmate of the student who was carrying it in a coat pocket.

The Memphis Board of Education’s decision to study the issue is a grim recognition of harsh reality: Guns are too prevalent in society, even among our youth.

Imposition of a daily scanning process at every middle school and high school, where scans are now less frequent, would reinforce a stigma that already exists for inner city schools, where fights, gang activity, and bullying have created a negative image.

The process could turn out to be cumbersome, school day-extending distraction fro the district’s core educational mission.

But all options should be on the table as the school board moves forward on the issue. The process could be imposed at every middle and high school campus. Or officials here could follow the lead of Baltimore, where last month school system officials began surveying principals, staff members and parents at each school to assess community support for daily scans and X-rays, leaving the decision ultimately to each principal.

Fortunately, the machines are already in use in many urban middle and high schools around the country, giving Memphis board members a wealth of information to go on as they move toward a local decision.

The goal would be to create a deterrence for any student who is thinking about taking a weapon on campus and a safety net in cases where guns are inadvertently left in backpacks, book bags, or coat pockets.

It would be folly to think of scanning students as a foolproof barrier to violence or even weapons. The National Transportation Safety Administration has not even been able to catch every gun that airline passengers try to carry on board that nation’s passenger airlines.

To the extent that the process would make students and teachers feel safer and soothe the concerns of frightened parents, however, the investment might be worth it.

From the Commercial Appeal January 2008