High-tech School Security Is On The Rise

VIOLENCE AT SCHOOL

School year Total deaths

2006-2007 13 (to date)
2005-2006 27
2004-2005 39
2003-2004 49
2002-2003 16
2001-2002 17
2000-2001 31
1999-2000 33

Source: National School Safety and Security Services

ATTACKS IN SCHOOLS

Violence has wracked schools across the country in the past two weeks:

Oct. 9: A 13-year-old aims an assault rifle at a principal and several students in Memorial Middle School in Joplin, Mo. After arresting the boy, police also find a note referring to explosives in his backpack and the school is evacuated. No one was injured and no explanations have been given.

Oct. 2: Milk truck driver Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, storms a one-room Amish schoolhouse at West Nickel Mines, Pa., and barricades the door. He releases 15 boys and four adults, then ties up the 10 girls in the room and shoots each one, then kills himself. Five of the girls died.

Sept. 29 15-year-old boy who confronted teachers and the principal after complaining that other students teased him brings two guns to school and kills the principal in Cazenovia, Wis.

Sept. 27: Duane Morrison, 52, takes six girls hostage at a high school in Bailey, Colo. He molests the girls and sexually assaults at least two of them, according to the sheriff. He kills a 16-year-old as SWAT team officers break into the room.


From Edweek.org:

Nearly 1,000 cameras watch them all day. Every visitor — parents, volunteers, the guy who fills the Coke machine — must surrender his or her driver's license to a secretary who checks it against a national database of sex offenders. This fall, nearly one in three schools literally trap visitors inside a "secure vestibule," a bulletproof glass room, until they're checked out. USA Today: October 10.