As a new school year gets under way around the country, school administrators are placing more emphasis than ever on safety concerns. Tragic shootings that occurred over the past two years in Littleton, CO, Jonesboro, AR, Paducah, KY, and elsewhere have received a great deal of media attention, ratcheting up fears of parents and students alike. In Chicago, the District's CEO, Paul Vallas, has chosen to require see-thru backpacks for students, which he says are no more invasive than previously instituted random locker searches.
Many schools employ armed guards, and utilize metal detectors.
Video monitoring is becoming more and more common. To some, the safety solutions being put in place are infringing on students' rights and making schools appear more like prisons. Safety concerns have risen on the scale of reasons why people are inquiring with state home school organizations. Exact data is difficult to come by, but in Arkansas, in the year following the shootings at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, home school numbers rose by 30 percent according to Jerry Cox, Executive Director of The Education Alliance, the primary home school organization in the state. Cox noted that there was an approximate 1,000 student increase in home school numbers during the state education department's reporting period immediately following the shootings that occurred in March 1998.