All of this raises the issue of perspective.  Certainly the background of those writing the report is not in question: their expertise in security and prosecution is noteworthy.  However, the school environment is unique, presenting issues and concerns in a myriad of options unlike those of business; so much so that pre-school safety is different from secondary school safety and both different from university safety.  The problems of the education industry: funding, implementation, authority, knowledge, staffing, providing for minors, dealing with parents, the rights of both, contractual provisions and limitations, mental health, training, and many others, differ significantly from private industry and so solutions require special approaches.

     In this writing, the authors are clearly knowledgeable in matters of security and investigation.  While questioning the findings presented by those authors is a portion of the purpose of this writing, perhaps it is the perspective of their approach that is more relevant.  Where the authors commonly deal with private entities, where decisions can be made quickly and every position connected to implementation of policies are responsible for doing so, schools are a very different environment in which to apply safety and security measures.  As Idaho School Safety and Security Regional Lead Guy Bliesner says, “high schools are like small cities where the entire population moves every hour.”  Thus, their findings would be completely appropriate in another venue, though they do not apply here in the same way.

     In our society, problems are usually addressed so readily that the process of doing so is often overlooked.  It is one thing to identify the problem, another to find solutions (reviewing data on possibilities, vendor vetting, administrative and board approval), yet another to fund those solutions, and another to implement them (policy and procedure creation, with training and support), and finally another to maintain those solutions (this requires initial training of new staff and ongoing training of current staff, program support and administrative review). In schools, all of these steps have been an issue, especially with safety matters; this is not to say that schools do not care, they    simply do not have what is needed for them to work through the process of resolving safety concerns.

  Inarguably, in this incident, there were issues.  The perspective of which the events are viewed, however, changes whom is held accountable.  Consider only the matter of funding (setting aside issues of staffing, institutional requirements, contracts, training availability and the like): in the first three months following the Oklahoma City bombing, the federal government allocated $95 million to improve federal buildings, almost three-times what it offered schools nationally following Parkland; comparatively, the U.S. Congress allocated $75 million in school safety grants for fiscal year 2018 and $100 million for fiscal years 2019 through 2028.*1  Much (if not all) of this money was allocated to states and their agencies, not to schools themselves.  The Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services has also announced nearly $50 million in school safety funding through its School Violence Prevention Program (SVPP).*2  In Michigan, money was issued to individual districts through the Competitive Safe Schools Grant Program, administered by the Michigan State Police.  While leading the Michigan School Safety Task Force in 2018, whose final report advocated Comprehensive School Safety Planning, the organization’s grant approvals followed the tradition of physical security improvements, not providing for much of what is cited in the report, nor providing standardly for all schools across the state.  As a result, local school districts were – and are – left to their own determination of solutions and their communities for funding the chosen avenues.

   The report further made specific critiques regarding some of the physical security measures and responses to the crisis.  As Oxford High School (OHS) had more security measures than were readily available in the vast majority of districts in Michigan, this response will focus on the discussions of bag searches and camera monitoring.

  As recent incidents in Newport News, Virginia*3, and Denver, Colorado*4 show, searching bags or backpacks at schools is not an automatic guarantee to prevent school shootings.  Shooters may use the search as the initiative to attack.  Those conducting the search must be properly trained to do the search, as well as be thorough in the search.  Staffing must be provided for searching, as searching must be applied to all students meeting the criteria.  Of course, school districts must outline that policy and designate which staff will make the determination and which staff will search.

   As school staff are frequently criticized for their actions, consideration for human behavior must also enter the picture. Behaviors likely to have immediate or certain consequences have greater engagement than behaviors with future or uncertain consequence.  When considering searching a student or their belongings, it is human nature for school employees to worry about what will happen as a result of their search; given that the likelihood of parental complaint or even lawsuit is high, while that of a school shooting is low, people will be inclined not to search.  Clear direction, administrative involvement, board policy, training and support are all needed to expect actions differing from that inclination.

  The immediate search is complicated by other factors as well.  If security is lacking at the building outside of the school day, the opportunity for attack in those hours, or the use of that time for preparation for a school day attack, can lessen the reason for school day searching.  The policy on searches – especially regarding indirect cases such as this – and instructions for process in making the determination to search, the frequency of similar searches, the familiarity of the staff member with searching, the availability of support for the staff member and that person’s familiarity with searches, the tools available to be used in the search and staff training and familiarity with them; these are all additional considerations for searching.  In this report, only the schools’ use of searching students for vapes is mentioned, without addressing individual familiarity and training.