What role do parents play in school safety?
What we find is, parents in both public and independent schools drive safety efforts in either a positive or negative way. Very often parents complain when school officials try to do the right thing. A common example is dress code. It's absolutely, positively, a negative for your child's school if they're not required to tuck their shirts in. Absolutely and positively, dress code reduces gun violations, danger to school and improves the learning environment. It has a positive effect on learning and on a reduction of bullying, for example. But many parents don't understand this and they become co-dependent with their children and they come and complain to school officials because they don't understand the real reason for dress code. They don't think something terrible can happen in their school and many school officials don't do the right thing because of this parental pressure. So parents need to become involved, become informed and become vocal when they do want good school safety - to be supportive. The parents who come to a board meeting are usually there, in our experience, to complain, and a lot of parents sit back silently and are thankful when school officials do what they are supposed to do. But we need to become involved as constituents to help drive things in a positive way.
