On Nov. 30, 11 people were shot, four fatally, at Oxford High School, about 45 miles north of Detroit. The crime scene investigation understandably closed the school for a week. Threats of copycat violence then closed the school again.
Shooting threats typically increase after a high-profile school shooting because the public is on high alert and violence is socially contagious. Michigan's online threat reporting system received more than 3,000 anonymous tips after the Oxford shooting. Many threats were hoaxes or not credible, but officials closed schools anyway out of an abundance of caution.
The problem was not limited to Michigan. Over 500 school systems across the country, including Philadelphia, Houston, Oakland, North Texas, and Bellingham, Wash., closed owing to shooting threats in recent weeks. In the tiny Cuba Independent School District, 85 miles north of Albuquerque, school officials ended fall semester early following threats posted on Instagram.
And on Dec. 17, schools nationwide, including in Minnesota, closed in response to an anonymous threat on TikTok warning against students attending class. The viral trend encouraged students to participate in "National Shoot Up Your School Day."
School closures offer no long-term solution to school violence. Our research shows that the lead-up to a school shooting is years of trauma, isolation and hopelessness, and months of preparation.
Would a student who has assembled a hit list and an arsenal of "ghost guns" simply give up on the plan of attack because school was closed that day?
School closures also are expensive. The cumulative economic cost of shuttering schools nationwide last week is billions of taxpayer dollars. That's on top of the costs to frustrated parents missing work to home-school their children and anxious children missing valuable classroom learning time to process the prospect of potentially being shot and killed at school.
The problem is schools are already overburdened and they don't know what more they can do. All schooling is local. Responses to threats vary and rarely do they follow best practices in threat assessment and crisis response. Many school systems struggle to buy textbooks and tablets. Absent the resources needed to conduct a formal assessment and make an intervention plan, they have no choice but to close their doors.