PETITION FOR BETTER SCHOOL SAFETY PROTOCOLS

Southwest High School - Spring 2025
To: [School Board/District Administration/Principal]
From: Concerned Students, Parents, and Community Members

OUR STORY:
We pass through the same doors as you every morning. We sit in the same classrooms and eat in the same cafeteria. Just like you, we should be able to focus on learning, on friends, on growing up-not on whether or not today will be the day our school will be the next headline.

WE BELIEVE:
All students deserve to learn in an environment where they feel physically and emotionally safe. No student should ever be forced to endure active shooter drills without the confidence that their school is doing everything it can to ensure such a scenario never occurs.

The CDC numbers exposing guns as the leading cause of death for young people like us are not just a statistic—they are real lives, real families, and real futures cut short (Sheehan, 2023).

When research shows that gun violence is centered in the vicinity of schools, with shootings happening within a walking distance of schools, we cannot pretend this isn't our reality too (Barboza-Salerno & Meshelemiah, 2023).

The normalization of school shootings over the last decade has left students like myself dealing with anxiety and trauma that affect our ability to learn and grow (Sheehan, 2023).

WE ASK YOU TO:

• Keep Our Community Safe by conducting security checks of our campus with safety experts who know both security needs and school environments
• Invest in Our Safety- Installing advanced camera systems that can detect danger before catastrophe occurs
• Single-entry procedures with enough screening that balance security and openness
• Improved door security systems that can lock out harm while allowing quick evacuation in an emergency.
• Prioritize Our Wellbeing by allocating adequate funds for these safety measures in the upcoming budget—because our safety should never be compromised due to budget constraints
• Being Informed by providing regular updates to students, parents, and staff

THE RESEARCH THAT DRIVES US:
Our petition is supported by great research:

1. Kids in some areas risk gun violence merely attending and returning from school, studies showing the incidents "dense at all distances along walking networks" around K-12 schools (Barboza-Salerno & Meshelemiah, 2023).
2. Researchers in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania identified trends and risk factors that, if alleviated through comprehensive safety protocols, could keep guns from being brought into schools (Buker, Buker & Bullion, 2024).
3. The CDC states that guns have emerged as the top killer of individuals our age, and school shootings have increased exponentially in the last decade (Sheehan, 2023).
4. Security consultant Jesus M. Villahermosa, president of Crisis Reality Training and former director of campus safety at Pacific Lutheran University, stresses how critical it is to employ security professionally within schools (Villahermosa, 2008).
5. Researchers are currently examining which safety measures work best in K-12 schools nationwide, showing that this is not just our problem—but a national problem in need of evidence-based solutions (Buttar et al., 2024).