Safe Havens Adjunct Analyst Steve Satterly encountered this rattlesnake during a school safety assessment in Texas this week. Safe Havens clients have reported concerns ranging from Mountain Lions, Alaskan Brown bears and even aggressive eagles over the years. Like other types of hazards, potentially dangerous animals can be mitigated with appropriate responses.

Unusual School Safety Hazard Found

Steve Satterly encountered a rather unusual school safety hazard while conducting a school safety assessment in Texas this week. Steve is part of a team of analysts assessing school safety, security, climate, culture and emergency preparedness for the district. Steve and four district personnel encountered the snake just outside the loading dock door of an elementary school. Earlier this month, another one of our analysts had to address an incident with a water moccasin on a school campus followed soon after by an alligator in a pond adjacent to one of his district’s schools.

Potentially Dangerous Animal Hazards

School officials should keep in mind that different people have varying levels of fear regarding what they perceive as dangerous animals. Though very few people die from snakebite, bear and mountain lion attacks in the United States each year, many people are understandably terrified of these animals. Handling these situations properly can not only reduce the actual level of danger posed by animals but the high levels of fear of animals that many students and staff experience.

Our client schools and districts have often reported challenges relating to a variety of wild and domestic animals including bears, mountain lions, white tailed deer, wild pigs, scorpions, poisonous spiders, and a variety of other critters. One of the independent schools we assessed in Africa has a significant problem with eagles snatching food out of the hands of students when they eat outside. Several students have been injured by the talons of these beautiful but massive birds. While many people assume that urban schools do not face these types of issues, a number of our urban school clients have experienced bears and mountain lions on campus.

Far more typically, aggressive dogs are a problem.   One of our clients had a terrible incident where a kindergarten teacher and four of her students were badly mauled on a playground by a large Rottweiler. Proper training and use of the all hazards approach to school crisis planning can go a long way to prepare students and staff for these types of hazards. Our Texas client has provided staff with information on the recognition of poisonous snakes to employees.   Many schools have reported success with reverse evacuation protocols when bears, dogs, and other animals have shown up on campus.

As with other types of hazards, a proper all-hazards approach to school safety can reduce the danger posed by potentially dangerous animals. Calm and rational approaches can help reduce the actual risks of danger as well as the intensive fear that can result from animals on campus.

A team of law enforcement officers practicing responses to an active shooter incident in Ashville, North Carolina. While intensive media coverage of mass casualty incidents has heightened our awareness of school violence, the types of horrific events date back to the first mass casualty school attack in America in 1764. As with drunk driving and child molestation, our awareness of problems that have existed for decades has increased more than that actual rate of incidents.

Was school violence an issue in 1979?

1979 was a rough year at Central High School in Macon, Georgia. In the most brutal act of school violence I have ever witnessed, I watched a girl smash a soda bottle against a brick wall and savagely slash another student twice across the chest with the jagged glass during a fight. I will never forget the young girl being strapped to a stretcher drenched in her own blood – at my high school.

Another student was stabbed with a pocketknife and one of our favorite teachers was beaten to the floor of his classroom. His attackers were a group of thugs who entered an unlocked side door armed with pool cues. It seemed so terribly wrong to me that a man who had dropped into Normandy by parachute to defend our nation and came home to serve as an educator could be treated this way.

The school was truly dysfunctional in 1979. Towards the end of the year, I was slashed with a box cutter when a faculty member left my class unattended in a gym. The school principal opted not to call the police because he “didn’t want to hurt the school’s long standing reputation”.

School safety myths

As we demonstrate with careful, research in our book Staying Alive – How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters, many students and staff have died in mass casualty attacks on K12 schools in the United States long before the Columbine and Sandy Hook massacres. While these terrible attacks were truly catastrophic events, the brutal murder of 95 staff and students by means of an arson fire at the Our Lady of Angels Sacred Hearts School in 1958 was also a horrific and painful event that we should not forget. Dozens of major acts of violence in K12 schools in America go as far back as colonial times with the brutal murder of headmaster Enoch Brown and all but one of his pupils in western Pennsylvania. I am not minimizing modern day mass casualty attacks, but rather attempting to correct a common school safety myth that such attacks are a new phenomenon.

Accurate perspectives result in safer schools

Like tornadoes, school fires, earthquakes, accidents, and medical emergencies, school violence has been with us since the days of the one room school house. Lessons from these tragedies still have much value today. Understanding this can be a life and death matter. Having a balanced, analytical, and logical approach to school safety is the best way to prevent any life-threatening event.

I have had a great time keynoting two school safety conferences for the Maine Department of Education last week. I have been fortunate to have been asked to keynote conferences for the Maine Emergency Management Agency, the Maine Department of Education, and the Maine School Facilities Director’s Association earlier this year. This week’s conferences near Bangor and Portland were also well-attended and productive events. It was truly a pleasure to interact with so many dedicated and caring advocates for the children in this beautiful state.

School Safety Efforts Based on the All-hazards Approach

Like their counterparts in many other state departments of education we have worked with recently, the Maine Department of Education has been emphasizing the need for school and public safety officials to maintain a balanced and assessment-based approach to safety. With alarmist and emotive approaches to school safety that have not been validated becoming so common, we are pleased to see so many state departments of education taking thoughtful and fact-based approaches.

Multi-disciplinary Collaboration is a Key to School Safety

The Maine Department of Education has been collaborating extensively with the Maine State Police, Maine Emergency Management Agency, and Maine State Fire Marshall’s Office.   State agency personnel and representatives from many professional associations have also been working closely with one another to help further enhance the state’s efforts to support local school systems. The state legislature has also been a driving force in what has been one of the more thoughtful statewide approaches to school safety assessment in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy.  This has helped to prevent the highly emotive and ineffective knee-jerk reactions we have seen in a few regions of the country.

An Assessment-based Approach to School Safety

The Maine legislature directed the Maine Department of Education to conduct a statewide school safety assessment in 2013. Safe Havens was honored to be selected to assist the Department in conducting this assessment. More importantly, we are thankful that the leadership from so many key organizations in Maine have collaborated in school safety approaches that are based on a thorough assessment process. We applaud the thoughtful, patient, and practical efforts that are providing so many free resources for Maine school officials and community partner agencies.