In the months since a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, a growing number of Connecticut school districts have moved to beef up security in an attempt to prevent their students are victims of similar tragedies.
But as increased security features, such as armed guards and metal detectors, have become increasingly common, some critics in Connecticut and elsewhere have begun to question: How far these measures do they really make a difference? And do their advantages justify adding weapons to environments designed to feel cozy and comfortable?
The trend toward security improvements in Connecticut schools dates back at least a decade, to the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown. Since then, many districts have added sworn police officers, sometimes called school resource officers. Others have hired armed security guards. Last winter, after threats of online violence, Hamden High School installed new metal detectors. Months later, the Waterbury school board raised the possibility implementation of high-tech weapons detection systems.
The rush to improve security has only accelerated since the Uvalde shooting in May. Officials a Montville and the district it includes Lyme and Old Lyme recently voted in favor of the implementation of armed security guards, while those who are there Brookfield i East Hampton have publicly considered doing the same. In Stamford, the local school board recently approved 15 new security officers and the school district’s director of security expect to add more layers of securitysuch as entrance halls known as ‘mantraps’.
In other parts of the country, teachers themselves have done it every time he started bringing weapons into the classroomalthough this has not happened in Connecticut in significant numbers.
“Any of these tragedies cause any superintendent and city leader to reevaluate their safety precautions,” said Fran Rabinowitz, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents. “Since Sandy Hook, it’s certainly been one of the core issues we’ve had: making sure our kids are as safe as they can be.”
Rabinowitz said he recently surveyed Connecticut superintendents and found that about 11 percent of districts currently use armed security guards in their schools, while about half have school resource officers.
In districts that have tried to increase security in recent years, officials say the goal is to protect children at a time when mass shootings, at schools and elsewhere, are more common than ever. In some cities, surveys have shown that the vast majority of parents want greater safety for their children.
“I like to use [armed guards] as one more safety feature of our school,” said East Hampton Superintendent Paul Smith. “It’s another level of getting people to think twice [the fact] that this is not such an easy place to break into or shoot and have access to students.”
Others, however, are not so sure. Abbey Clements, a teacher who worked at Sandy Hook Elementary during the 2012 massacre there and remains in the Newtown school district today, said she worries that school safety sometimes goes too far, especially when it comes to more extremes such as arming teachers.
“The responsibility for the epidemic of gun violence should not rest on the shoulders of families, educators, community members and school districts,” said Clements, who co-founded a group called Teachers Unify to End Gun Violence. “And we see that it is on our shoulders.”
As Clements sees it, school districts must consider how to protect students without compromising their comfort. While he doesn’t mind armed security guards whose weapons are concealed, he feels that metal detectors and other conspicuous forms of security send a dangerous signal to students.
“I fear that implementing metal detectors will send a message that students are being targeted as potential criminals,” he said. “Schools are supposed to be safe places and we have to think about what the students’ perception is.”
According to a 2021 report by New Haven-based Connecticut Voices for Children, schools with resource officers are associated with a “significant increase” in suspension and expulsion, especially for black and Latino students, while students in schools with school resource officers were more than three times more likely to be arrested than those in schools without them. Meanwhile, the report found no evidence that school resource officers reduce the frequency of unsafe incidents or increase academic achievement.
These findings are consistent with national research showing that police presence in schools takes more suspensions, expulsions and detentions, especially for students of color, without well-documented safety improvements.
When Waterbury officials earlier this year proposed leasing more than a dozen high-tech gun detection systems for use at the district’s middle and high schools, local racial justice advocates lead fierce opposition, arguing that increased security risks criminalizing black and Latino students.
Robbie Goodrich, co-founder of Waterbury-based Radical Advocates for Cross-Cultural Education, said heavy-handed security “takes a toll on the psyche of young people and families,” without significantly increasing student safety.
“There is nothing about an armed security guard that will stop any kind of violence in schools,” he said. “It doesn’t happen.”
Kate Dias, a math teacher at Manchester High School and president of the Connecticut Education Association, a teacher advocacy group, noted that different communities might have different attitudes toward police in schools and, therefore, they could pursue different policies.
For Dias, the trend toward enhanced security is an extreme response to extreme circumstances.
“It’s an unfortunately necessary turn,” he said. “Nobody really wants to see increased security in our schools, especially armed security, but with the influx of experiences we’ve had and what seems to be no end in sight, I don’t know how many other options districts have schoolchildren have.”
In the Lyme-Old Lyme School District, a proposal to add armed guards to local schools drew a decidedly mixed response. In the a busy meetingparents spoke both for and against armed security, with some arguing that the action was necessary in an era of mass shootings and others expressing concern about the presence of a gun in schools their children
A recurring sentiment, shared by several parents and several board members, was that the district should slow down and research the pros and cons of armed security at schools before continuing to hire them.
In the end, however, the board was not convinced. They voted 7-2 to add armed guards, which will begin this fall.
For Superintendent Ian Neviaser, the issue was simple: “We believe this will allow us to have an opportunity to stop a potential shooter before they harm students and staff,” he said.
alex.putterman@hearstmediact.com