Columbine. Sandy Hook. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. Oxford High. Robb Elementary. These names evoke heartbreak and horror, marking tragedies that have shaken America’s education system over the past 25 years. These are just a few of the devastating mass shootings that have unfolded in schools, devastating communities and forever changing the lives of countless families.
For parents, these violent events have turned into an unbearable reality, occurring with alarming frequency since 2022. With more than 50 million students attending over 95,000 public high schools across the nation, ensuring school safety is one of the most urgent priorities for educators, families, and policymakers alike.
Since Columbine in 1999, the Washington Post has documented 428 school shootings, leaving over 700 students injured or killed and nearly 395,000 directly affected by gun violence. The response has been monumental in scale, with an estimated $2 billion invested in school police, surveillance systems, metal detectors, and threat assessment programs.
However, the effectiveness of these security interventions is under scrutiny. Research increasingly suggests that such measures sometimes fail to ensure safety and may even cause unintended consequences, including emotional harm, particularly for marginalized students. A recently published study from the University of New Mexico offers an alternative solution to this problem. The evidence points to an underutilized resource that could play a transformational role in addressing school safety issues: school psychologists.
