The Painful Journey Toward Schoolhouse Security and Safety

School policy has been evolving for decades, sometimes in reaction to major incidents of school violence, sometimes in response to societal changes and trends in the area of public safety. In some cases, districts have been forced to expel or suspend students in recent years because of state and federal laws. More recently, states and individual districts have, to some extent, been turning away from policies that allow unfettered use of consequences that lead to students’ absence from school.