DOE slow to assess schools’ vulnerabilities to violence

Even though school shootings and mass shootings nationwide have hit historic levels — with a record-high 51 school shootings that killed or injured 140 people in 2022 — fewer than half of Hawaii’s 258 public school campuses have been evaluated for vulnerabilities to targeted violence, and department officials say it will take three more years for them to finish.

Meanwhile, threats of harm or violence received by the islands’ public schools are rising dramatically, state schools Superintendent Keith Hayashi reported Tuesday in a school-safety briefing before lawmakers on the state House Education Committee.

There were 103 threats to students and/or staff in 2019, falling to 47 during remote learning in pandemic 2020 but then spiking again to 124 in 2021 and 152 in 2022, Hayashi said.

The threats have come by various channels, including social media, graffiti, emails and phone calls, Hayashi said. “These range from vague to very specific, and all threats are taken seriously,” he said. “It takes a collective effort to ensure the safety of our campuses. So our schools emphasize to students, families and community members that if you see something, say something.”

Hayashi emphasized in the briefing that the state Department of Education is tackling preparedness for and prevention of targeted violence on multiple fronts.

“While we hope to never be faced with this type of unspeakable tragedy, we do have emergency preparedness plans and programs in place to equip our schools to the best of our ability,” Hayashi said. “These plans are designated to help ensure our schools are prepared to respond to mitigate and recover from man-made and natural disasters.”

Finding weaknesses

But so far the state Department of Education has conducted just 116 campus “vulnerability assessments” since 2017, with 17 more scheduled, according to data Hayashi included in the briefing. They were paused in the 2020-2021 school year because students need to be on campus during the assessments, he said.

“These assessments help identify weaknesses on school campuses and provide recommendations to mitigate those risks,” Hayashi said. “Areas of weakness may include, for example, supervision during student transition periods, such as pickup and drop-off and recess, leveraging information technology resources to enhance security on campus, controlling entry and exit points, securing the perimeter around facilities, adding additional signage in high-traffic areas. The assessments also include what is known as a red team intruder drill to review the vigilance and situational awareness of school staff and students.”

One reason the assessments are considered critical by many educators is the open design of Hawaii’s school buildings and grounds — unlike mainland schools, which tend to cluster classrooms inside buildings that can be more easily locked down.

With three years to go until assessments are complete, not including efforts to fix problems found, “That’s just ridiculous, it’s so long,” Osa Tui Jr., president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, said in an interview after the briefing.

House Education Committee member Amy Perruso said after the meeting that the length of time the vulnerability assessments are taking is “yet another way in which our starvation of our public school system endangers our kids, in my view.”

The vulnerability assessments currently are not available to the public.

The Honolulu Star- Advertiser since last summer has submitted multiple requests to the DOE for access to the assessments so that parents, students, educators and taxpayers can learn how their neighborhood campuses may be vulnerable, how problems are being addressed and how taxpayer dollars are being used.

The department has declined, saying the media outlet must file a Uniform Information Practices Act request via the state Office of Information Practices. The DOE’s response to the formal request has been that it can release only redacted versions of the vulnerability assessments, for a fee of $7,142.50, effectively making them inaccessible to typical community members.

Preventive training

Hayashi said that among the DOE’s other major efforts are trainings for more than 1,000 DOE employees so far in “preventive behavioral threat assessment.” The sessions in June, July and December have taught school employees to “assess when a student is at risk for potential harm to themselves or others and strategies designed to disrupt, prevent or mitigate a potential act of targeted violence,” Hayashi said.

Lina Alathari, chief of the National Threat Assessment Center, the U.S. Secret Serv­ice center that is trying to prevent targeted attacks on schools, visited Hawaii in August to assist with training local school and college officials and law enforcement to find and stop potential threats. While here she issued a warning: The Aloha State is not immune, and it is possible that such violence can happen here.

The record high in school shootings in 2022 included the second-deadliest K-12 shooting in history, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two adults were killed by a gunman.

There have been three school shootings just a week and a half into 2023, according to the industry periodical Education Week. They include a Jan. 6 case in which a 6-year-old boy injured a teacher at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Va. The teacher was hospitalized, and on Tuesday was listed in stable condition.

Combating violence

Also among the DOE’s numerous strategies against targeted violence that Hayashi and other school officials addressed in the briefing:

>> Emergency operations plans. Plans for natural and man-made emergencies are required for the state DOE and all 15 complex areas and individual schools, Hayashi said. They are updated annually and submitted to the DOE’s Safety, Security and Emergency Preparedness Branch. On-site reviews are done on a triennial basis.

>> Active-shooter response training. Also known as “run-hide-fight” training, it is provided to schools by request via contractors, Hayashi said, and 80 schools so far have done them. Although such training is not required, “we are looking to change that,” Hayashi said, although he did not say how or give a timeline.

>> Security guards. Hayashi acknowledged that the DOE has had some difficulty filling all security guard positions, but did not provide numbers.

Tui said some teachers have told the union that on occasion they are told by their administrators, “Today we have no security guards, so just be on the lookout.”

House Education Chair Justin Woodson had called for the DOE briefing to turn a spotlight on school safety issues due to rising community concern. Asked afterward whether he agrees with Hayashi’s assessment that Hawaii’s public schools are as safe as possible, Woodson took a long pause and said: “My honest answer is, I don’t know.

“Part of the reason for the informational briefing was so that the department can internally ask themselves that question. … Are we safe? Are we ready for this particular type of situation? Do my teachers and administrators know what to do in this situation?” Woodson continued. “And I think probably, if I had to guess, I would say there’s probably a varying degree of readiness, depending upon the school.”

While the school-safety briefing also briefly addressed COVID-19 issues, the vast majority of the time was spent on violence prevention issues.

Woodson also said he is concerned that there isn’t a way to tell whether the state’s 37 charter schools are all adequately prepared. Officials with the state Charter School Commission said during the briefing that the schools are required to have formal emergency plans, but since they operate independently, they could not say what kinds of consistent preparations have been made against targeted violence.

School shootings

School shootings in the U.S. reached a record high in 2022, with 51 shootings on K-12 school properties that resulted in firearm-related injuries or deaths, according to a tracker maintained by the industry periodical Education Week. Thirty-two children and seven school employees or other adults were killed in those shootings. It was the most school shootings in a single year since Education Week began in 2018 to report annual tallies.

2018 – 24

2019 – 24

2020 – 10*

2021 – 35

2022 – 51

* First year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many campuses closed and shifted to online learning

Mass shootings

Mass shootings in U.S. locations of all types have skyrocketed since 2014, when the Gun Violence Archive began reporting annual totals. The independent nonprofit data and research group defines a mass shooting as an event where a minimum of four victims are shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident.

2014 – 273

2015 – 336

2016 – 383

2017 – 348

2018 – 336

2019 – 417

2020 – 610

2021 – 690

2022 – 648