To your point, Belly, this was posted by the Superintendent of the school district I grew up in:
With yet another school massacre occurring yesterday, many of you may be wondering what we do here at Licking Valley to prepare for and try to deter such heinous acts in our schools. Let’s start by acknowledging that if someone with a weapon wants to come to the school and do harm it can be difficult, if not impossible, to stop. That doesn’t mean that we won’t do everything in our power to stop the individual and protect your child, but it will depend on the circumstances and each of these events is unique. If there is a form of prevention it is relationships. Of all of the safety and security measures we have undertaken and implemented here at Licking Valley over the last 8 years, none of them is as powerful as relationships, and I would argue that no school staff anywhere does a better job of focusing on and intentionally and actively building relationships with our students and families. We have to know our kids, we have to know their parents, we have to know when bad things have happened in their lives, we have to know when they are hurting and need to be loved, we have to know when they need help we may not be trained to provide them, we have to know when they need compassion before education: first and foremost, we have to know our kids, there is no other effective deterrent.
Those relationships build trust. Our kids have to trust us. They have to be willing to walk up to an adult in the school and tell them when they know something, saw something, heard something, fear something, sense something. I’ve remarked to many people in the 15 years that I’ve been at Licking Valley as an administrator that I am so proud of the fact that our kids do just that, all the time. You don’t know this, but over that 15-year period of time many a dangerous situation has been stopped in its tracks for ONLY this reason; a student trusted us enough to tell us about something that scared them. We can never take that trust for granted and we must actively foster and nurture that trust every day with every kid. The fact that we love our kids makes that a fairly natural thing for us to do.
Parents, this is where your role in school safety comes in: you have to help us foster and nurture that trust with your children. We need positive and productive relationships with you, and you have to trust us so that you will tell us when your child is experiencing some form of trauma, or depression, or mental illness. You have to trust us so that you will encourage your children to trust us; and yes, we have to earn and build that trust with you. We need you to actively and repeatedly encourage your children, when they see something or hear something, to say something to an adult in the school, or even to you so you can tell an adult at the school. This is the only effective deterrent.
We can train our staff and students in all of the latest best practices around school safety, and we have, and we can spend tens of thousands of dollars to install the latest, cutting-edge school security equipment, and we have, and we can do all of the necessary drills, and we do, and if we don’t have positive relationships and trust as a foundation for our school community, it can happen here. RELATIONSHIPS. TRUST. VIGILANCE. COMMUNICATION.
David Hile
Superintendent, LVLS