There has to be a human alertness. And parents have a right to expect that school administrators are paying attention to the warning signs of troubled kids. Parents should work together to ask schools to be more alert, to have strong training of staff to know what to look for, and to try to get help for kids who could be at risk of dangerous behavior. But I don't want to be terrified, and I don't want my child to be, either. We're always balancing the need to be in touch and be aware of things that could be awry with the need not to drive ourselves and our children crazy with fear.
Schools do have ways of checking and being aware of kids with blatant mental-health problems.
We're always faced with the question in this country of where does the right to privacy begin and end and where does the responsibility to protect the larger body of citizens begin and end. We have a long tradition of teachers' business being teaching, that teachers should not interfere. There is an implicit shared cultural agreement that teachers' responsibility is teaching and not judging the behavior and demeanor of children, particularly as they get into the upper grades. But parents now need to encourage teachers to trust themselves when they sense that something is amiss. One of the early lessons we must learn is to pay attention to every threat.