WA Superintendent focuses on school safety with gun violence on the rise

There have been 54 U.S. mass shootings in the 22 days after the massacre in Uvalde, Texas. 62 people have died and another 223 have been injured, according to Gun Violence Archive.

“It’s not unusual in terms of that behavior pattern in past violent incidences, unfortunately,” Chris Reykdal, Washington Superintendent of Public Instruction, said on the Gee and Ursula Show on whether or not the increase of gun violence in schools is new. “I wish it weren’t the case. What is new is with so many young people, their awareness is high. They’re on social media. They’re seeing these threats even when they’re not material. So we just have a lot more awareness, which is good.”

Mass shootings are defined as a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident.

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“It’s weighing on students in terms of mental health, and it weighs on all of us,” Reykdal said. “And the worry is real. It’s interesting this time of year that we will essentially wrap up schools in the next week and a half almost everywhere in the state. And so it’ll appear to sort of shut off rapidly, mostly because they won’t be in school.”

Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill earlier this year to give K-12 schools more guidance on how to conduct active-shooter lockdown drills. The bill prohibits schools from conducting drills involving life-like simulations or reenactments of active shooter scenarios that are not “trauma-informed and age and developmentally appropriate.”

“Active shooter drills are associated with increases in depression, anxiety and fears about death among children as young as five years old to high schoolers, their parents and teachers,” Rep. Amy Walen, D-Kirkland, said during a press conference. Walen was the prime sponsor of the bill.

Reykdal stated that Washington schools will use this summer to prepare for the upcoming academic year.

“Our training has gotten a lot more sophisticated for the last four or five years. We always have a framework around student safety. There are training modules that we have in place for our staff that happen every year across the state,” Reykdal said. “We obviously have security staff who go through quite a bit more of that than when they’re hired locally. Students are going through this now in ways that we never have.”

Earlier this week, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill into law that makes it easier for teachers and staff to carry guns on school premises. The bill reduces the hours of training required for armed school personnel from 700 to 24, according to the legislation.

“The only statistic that is ultimately consistently proven true, is the density of firearms, the amount of firearms per 100,000 population is the tightest and highest correlation to murder, homicide, and suicide,” said Reykdal. “So more guns is never the answer to gun violence. We saw in the two most high-profile shootings in the last 30 days, the active shooter was confronted with an armed officer well trained and did nothing to be able to stop that.”

All of this, on top of working in schools during a pandemic, has caused morale to rapidly decrease for teachers nationwide.

“It’s still a tough, tough moment right now due to very intentional political efforts to vilify public school teachers, and they don’t deserve it. They are amazing,” Reykdal said. “They’re heroes to me still, and they’re still going to educate a million kids every year for 1,000 instructional hours and lay the foundation for our future labor force. We desperately need them, and we need them to be really satisfied in their work.”

Listen to Gee Scott and Ursula Reutin weekday mornings from 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.