Statistics show that schools are very safe places and, in fact, have been getting even safer.
But when a shooting erupts, the statistics go flying out the doors faster than the students. Meanwhile, parents, teachers, school administrators and police can't decide how tightly to turn the security screws. They, too, find little comfort in the statistics. They know they simply can't watch everybody all the time. After that shooting, the Free Press asked area students for their ideas about how to make schools safer, why a troubled young person would explode in such horror and whether young people are affected by it all.