Pennsylvania School Safety Programs Will Begin At The Source

In the wake of horrendous school shootings, state lawmakers are looking for answers. Pennsylvania school safety is getting a boost from new funding. Bi-partisan politicians approved $60,000,000 to create sustained assistance to schools.

PA Rep. Dan Miller said,

“Many schools used…money (to) improve the physical safety of their buildings, but many more asked for more sustained assistance in relation to trained professionals to help connect the kids to improve learning and address problems before they occur.”

Basically, the issue is, that increasing school security does not address the root problems. Adding more cameras, armed guards, and other assets can be helpful, but they don’t help students who are troubled or struggling.

Rep. Mike Sturla from Lancaster says,

“Those are the things that we need to address in the schools and not wait until we have a tragedy like we just saw in Colorado…”

Even when analyzing Google search results for things like, “school shooting,” we see a spike in search volume immediately after an incident. In between school shootings that receive national attention, there are virtually no searches for this term. There is an instinct to avoid considering the possibility of a tragedy like this ever occurring. In any event, it is fortunate that the state of Pennsylvania is beginning to allocate more resources for preventative interventions.

Schools Need Even More Support

Rich Askey, President of the Pennsylvania State Education Associations notes, “These talented and dedicated people are spread so thin and wear so many different hats that they just can’t do everything they’d like to do for our children.” That is a huge problem we need to address as a society. Our schools should be some of the safest places for young people to go. It should be a major priority to provide these institutions what they need to ensure the safety and security of all students & faculty.

Improvements Take Time

More improvements to school safety must be made. Those improvements will take time, effort, and money to address. Therefore, as different attempts are made, people must be patient. Some solutions can address preventative measures. Others will be defensive in nature. A well rounded approach will yield the best results. The sad an uncomfortable truth is that school shootings are haphazard events which are difficult to predict.

What we can all hope for is that the root causes of this kind of violence are discovered and dealt with successfully. No student should ever be alienated to the point they take such drastic devastating action.

As a result, ZeroEyes will continue to create solutions to keep children safe in the unfortunate event tragedy strikes.