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School Safety - Leave the cell phone at home.

By Steve Lombardi

Today, we discuss the National School Safety and Security Services site. What do they claim to do? Here is what the site says is the purpose and service.

National School Safety and Security Services

Our school safety consulting services are used by school boards, superintendents, and school administrators to:

· prevent and manage school violence

· reduce safety risks and liability

· improve school-community relations on school safety issues

School leaders use our school safety services because we understand the unique K-12 educational climate and culture dynamics involved in K-12 school safety, school security, and school emergency planning.

Our school safety web site also has free information for school leaders, public safety officials, parents, and others interested in safe schools.

As a lawyer and parent whose raised four children and coached for ten years I have to ask why did Columbine ever happen if the US Government has for the past 25 years been studying school safety issues? I don't get it. What has Pepperdine University learned from this joint venture that they've incorporated into their education safety system that other schools could use to improve?

Three common questions considered to begin assessing school threats could include:

1. What is the motivation of the threat maker and credibility of the threat?

2. Could the threat maker have the information on how to carry out the threat (such as information on how to make bombs or homemade weapons, for example)?

3. Could the threat maker have access to the tools, and the capability, to carry out the threat?

People criticize personal injury lawyers for asking such questions but it comes with the turf, so to speak. We are faced daily with questions of safety and systematic failures within institutions that lead to someone getting hurt. We are constantly measuring risk and prevention measures that work or don't work. We see corporations making post-accident statements that don't make sense; in other words the explanation is nothing more than a cover-up of a systematic failure to do their job. Lawyers don't promote unsafe conditions we respond to post injury requests by people who suffer economic losses they didn't ask to receive. I say this because I'm constantly seeing comments from readers who believe it's appropriate to say because IB writers are personal injury attorneys who earn a living from litigation our advice is somehow tainted. Well if that's true then so is your doctor's advice about cutting out that cancerous tumor. Would you not listen to the surgeon's advice just because he or she earns a surgical fee? No of course you wouldn't so refusing to listen to the lawyer's advice and refusing to even consider what it has to say about risks in your life is ridiculous and ignorant.

In other words stop blaming the personal injury lawyers for society's problems.

Stop blaming personal injury lawyers for product defects that manufacturer's bring into this country.

And stop blaming personal injury lawyers for the number of law suits brought about as a result of the personal injury that fellow citizens suffer due to nothing having to do with the practice of law.

And stop blaming personal injury lawyers for jobs going to Asia. We aren't the Congress that passes laws encouraging factories to ship your jobs overseas. Like you we lawyers don't like it.

So I'm back to all this money being spent to study school safety and security and why Columbine and Virginia Tech-like incidents occurred. What are we getting for our tax dollars? Why spend the money if it's not working?

If you as a parent want to know what you can do to improve school safety don't allow your child to take their cell phone to school. Make them leave it home. Cell phones with text messaging capabilities are adding to the heightened anxiety of the school environment. Students need to have books, paper, pencils and pens. They don't need a phone. They are there to learn and phones have nothing to do with learning. Student cell phones only increase the number of distractions teachers are faced with on a daily basis. Do the teachers a favor and have your child leave the cell phone at home.

National School Safety and Security Services is tracking more and more school incidents across the nation where rumors have disrupted schools and have even resulted in dramatic decreases in school attendance and even school closures due to fears of rumored violence. The issues of text messaging in particular, and cell phones in general, were credited with often creating more anxiety and panic than any actual threats or incidents that may have triggered the rumors.

And don't say your child is different and needs their cell phone to arrange rides and for after-school activities. Learn to plan and teach your child to plan. In my age group, I'm 53 years old, we didn't have cell phones and we did just fine. So do us all a big favor and leave the cell-toy at home. ©

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Steve Lombardi

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on September 05, 2008 (boomark / email).