Superintendent Will Schofield Thursday spoke on WDUN’s The Martha Zoller Show about school safety measures Hall County is taking in both the immediate and long term.
Schofield’s discussion with Martha Zoller followed a column he wrote for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Wednesday. He opened the interview Thursday with comments on some current measures being taken in schools.
“Metal detectors, additional cameras or razor wire — I just am convinced that while those things might make us feel a little better, at the end of the day, that is not what is going to keep us safe and not what's going to change the trajectory that we're on,” Schofield said.
Schofields view of school safety centers on emotional education, citing today’s gun violence issues as being a symptom of a “tremendously dysregulated” group of people who struggle to address their feelings in an effective way. While it is important to keep schools locked and use measures that make accessing facilities difficult, Schofield emphasizes there’s much more that goes into solving the root cause of the issue.
“What we know about the last five to 10 years in these terrible events that have happened, the common denominator is not how many armed guards were around,” Schofield said. “And it's not how locked the doors were or how many cameras we had. It's that the individuals who committed these events, over 70 percent of them had diagnosable mental illness situations, and they weren't receiving treatment. And I would suggest that 100 percent of them had tremendous emotional issues going on, and they were not being supported in ways that might have changed the outcome.”
Schofield’s outlook is centered on teaching children better ways to weather the difficult times that inevitably crop up in life. Managing stress, combatting anxiety and lessening the inclination for impulsive or aggressive actions are all techniques Schofield believes are long-lasting solutions.
“We somehow have to help our entire culture get out of this black and white thinking — that you're good or you're bad, that you're right or you're wrong, that you're blue or you're red,” Schofield said. “And we are seeing some tremendous results with our young people in the Hall County School District teaching them these dialectical skills.”
Hiring hundreds of new therapists to help children work through issues might seem like an attractive option, but Schofield said it is completely unrealistic, as the county doesn’t have the budget for it and it would fail to produce results as an added measure into a child’s situation.
Instead, Schofield believes implementing emotional regulation tactics into existing classroom settings with teachers and counselors who are already on campus and know the kids will build a strong foundation for generations to come.
“What we're really trying to help kids do is to be able to look at the situations in their life, not as black and white, not as good and bad, but accepting the reality of what's in front of you,” Schofield said. “And realizing that you have control to make some decisions to change your trajectory, to change your future. And that you're not a victim of circumstances.”
While Hall County's emotional regulation approach to combatting violence can be applied to many different stressful situations, a major concern currently is gun violence. Schofield's comments follow a high number of mass shootings seen in the United States this year. The U.S. has seen 192 mass shootings in 2023, with 22 of those taking place in Georgia, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The Archive defines a mass shooting as involving four or more people who are shot or killed, not including the shooter.
