First, it was Columbine in 1999, followed by Sandy Hook in 2012, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, Oxford High School in 2021, and Robb Elementary School in 2022. These are just a few of the most notable mass shootings that have occurred in America’s public schools over the last 25 years. For parents, this violence represents a nightmare that has unfortunately become a near-weekly reality, especially since 2022. With 50 million children attending more than 95,000 public high schools nationwide each year, ensuring school safety is a top priority for everyone.
Since Columbine, the Washington Post has recorded 428 school shootings, which have resulted in over 700 students being injured or killed and nearly 395,000 kids being directly affected by gun violence. An astonishing $2 billion has been spent on school police and related interventions, such as cameras, metal detectors and threat assessments, since 1999. Despite this expenditure, some studies suggest that these measures can be ineffective and may even cause more harm than good. However, new research from the University of New Mexico offers an evidence-backed alternative for keeping students safe: School Psychologists.
Credit: Unarresting School Safety
Professor Maryam Ahranjani from the University of New Mexico School of Law recently published the research in the Nevada Law Journal. Titled Unarresting School Safety her article explores the concept of school safety broadly, addressing psychological and educational safety as well as the protection of student rights. She shares the story of a high school junior, Amara Harris, who had a run-in with school police in which she was falsely accused of stealing AirPods. The article evaluates the costs and benefits associated with having on-site school resource officers (SROs) and other campus policing strategies, while also discussing the potential for school psychologists to play a more significant role in ensuring student safety.
“If you think about the role of school psychologists, they are very important, increasingly more since COVID,” she said. “In the article, I talk about how the law currently supports psychologists’ role and how they could further support the safety of children in schools, broadly defined.” She defines safety broadly because the relatively infrequent instances of mass violence are overshadowed by much more frequent student safety concerns.
Research shows the policing ‘safety’ measures have a high cost (physical, emotional, educational, constitutional), often outweighing the benefits, especially for black and brown children or children with disabilities. While some argue to remove police from schools completely, Ahranjani takes a middle ground approach, scaling back the presence of police and restrictive policing measures, and instead giving psychologists, who are better trained in mental health, a more vital platform to intervene. According to her research, psychologists help students build resilience, connect with resources, and contribute to a child’s daily needs.
“Psychologists address real daily safety needs that children have – food insecurity, housing instability, health issues affecting their learning – those things are threats to their safety more so daily than anything else,” she said.
Credit: Unarresting School Safety
The article also examines the connection between the school-to-prison pipeline and the role that officers may play in it. According to Ahranjani, evidence indicates that contact with officers early in life can lead to later criminal behavior. “Black and Brown children, kids with disabilities, children in foster care, are much more likely to have contact with school police officers and to be disciplined, and that’s a real problem,” she said.
“School psychologists occupy a unique position in terms of potentially interrupting the harm caused by school policing for several reasons. First, they provide front-line support to students, so they know better than other school actors how policing and “safety” measures affect children’s sense of physical and emotional safety at school. Second, their special professional training and experience sensitizes them to see the signs of harm and facilitates their ability to resolve conflicts. Third, their positionality within public school systems as highly skilled, well-paid, and respected professionals may mean that their concerns carry more weight than other stakeholders. Fourth, school psychologists’ ethical obligations under The Professional Standards of the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) mandate that they stand up for students and school communities. Finally, most states and the District of Columbia have passed legislation around school safety that either explicitly invites school psychologists to be partners or provides entry points for them to facilitate training, collaborate with school resource officers (SROs) in addressing safety concerns, and sound the warning bell when they have concerns about how students are treated by SROs and other adults.”
This research is significant to Ahranjani, who experienced a mass shooting at her own elementary school nearly 40 years ago in her Chicago suburb when she was 11 years old and in middle school. The groundwork for this particular article started taking form in early 2020 following the murder of George Floyd. Ahranjani and others formed a group to examine the role of school resource officers. This initiative attracted local media attention and caught the interest of Dr. Lisa Peterson, a school psychologist and director of the School Psychology Program at New Mexico State University. This collaboration led to Ahranjani speaking at conferences and connecting with professionals in the field, ultimately resulting in the creation of this article.
“After having done a lot of work with school psychologists in the last couple of years, I have learned more, appreciated more the work they do, and advocate for the support they deserve in our schools,” she said. “They would like to do more work around safety, collaborate more with officers on their campuses.”
The bottom line: Fewer SROs and more school psychologists. Ahranjani hopes to expand on this research by writing a book on school policing in the future. “I hope everyone, including those who believe police are essential in schools, will approach these ideas with an open mind because the research is clear,” she said.
