And they have few, if any, phones in classrooms. Every school, he says, should have a professional security assessment done, whether by a school resource officer, a local police agency or an outside consultant. And then they should come up with a plan for improving the school's safety. While many schools copy other districts' plans to save money, plans need to be specific to each school. Equipment such as metal detectors, for example, are essential in some situations but are overkill in others.
Few schools invest in the safety training needed.
Most school administrators have searched kids for concealed weapons, but few have been trained how to do so. They need to be trained how to detect drugs and bombs. Even support staff needs training. Custodians, for example, are the ones most likely to find a bomb. The most common trends in school violence in the past two years are bomb threats, use of homemade bombs, and use of school computers for counterfeiting and hacking, Trump says.