Schools must remain transparent
With people of the United States still feeling shock and grief over the massacre of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, last month, officials of school districts across this country have embarked once again on the task of assessing security at their respective educational facilities and regarding students’ participation in various activities.
While students and teachers get a break from what often is referred to as the classroom grind, not so for administrators and school boards, both of whom are tasked with assessing what went right and what went wrong during the just completed school year and what topics need to be addressed before children return to classes in late August or early September.
On May 31, the Wall Street Journal published an article reporting that schools across America had tightened security or were considering additional safety options due to what happened in Texas. Although that article focused specifically on the Los Angeles Unified School District, one point that the article brought out poses a question that needs to be asked and answered in every school district across this land.
And there is more beyond that needing to be weighed amid school systems’ responsibility to keep in touch with students’ families and their communities as a whole. We’ll explain later in this editorial.
But first, L.A. School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho told the Journal that when he assumed his current administrative position, he was surprised to learn that first responders did not have access to district schools’ floor plans. He recognized that troubling reality would likely limit responders’ efficiency and effectiveness if they were summoned to an emergency.
A question for school districts in this region:
Do emergency responders have floor plans of all of your buildings, including administrative facilities and offices? Are emergency responders aware of all points of potential danger?
It would be good if every school district sponsored a summer session where representatives of all local emergency services would have the opportunity to review in person the makeup of school facilities and security measures already put in place or proposed.
And now the “more beyond that needs to be weighed,” referred to earlier:
What seldom or never is discussed by districts’ officials as they talk about their school system’s security measures is how much transparency about those measures is necessary and appropriate.
To help district parents and other residents feel as comfortable as possible about their district officials’ security aggressiveness, does there really need to be total transparency about what has been done, what is in the process of being implemented, what cannot be accomplished at this time and why, and what beef-up might not be possible until perhaps sometime after next year?
Should those who would hurt or kill children, like that killer in Texas, have the “benefit” of knowing?
As a newspaper, the Observer-Reporter values transparency in government and in public institutions, but right-thinking media know that there are some situations when exceptions are necessary.
The details regarding districts’ security measures in these violent times are one of them.
School officials should know how to inspire confidence in their ability to make the right decisions on this crucial topic without actually having to disclose all of the details.