Every Day I Worry My Kids Will Be Killed at School

A few days before spring break, there was a shooting at the school my 14-year-old is supposed to attend this fall, Denver East High School. Two deans were shot by a student, who needed support but was instead put onto a “safety plan” by the school. The safety plan required deans to pat the child down and check for weapons each day. The faculty survived the violence, but the child did not. He killed himself later that night, alone in the mountains. It was the third shooting involving the school this year, and the second student death from gun violence in the space of a month.

My daughter texted me about the shooting before it hit the news. “Mom, there’s been another shooting at East.” She knew about it because her friend texted her during class. The friend knew about it because her brother goes to East and texted her from lockdown. The kids are still playing telephone, but now it’s not a game; it’s a cry for help.

Before she got home, I got a text from my daughter: “I am as afraid of going to school as I am of not going to school. I don’t know what to do. What are we going to do?” I told her I understood. We’d figure out what comes next together over spring break. We were going to New York City for the first time as a family. While we walked and watched and ate, the answer would come to us. We just needed some time.

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I was 14 and in middle school when the Columbine High School massacre happened. As I watched the news footage of kids running from the high school, I understood the rules had changed. High schoolers could be executed at lunchtime. When I finally started high school, I coped with my fears by sitting apart from large groups of kids. And I tried not to draw the attention of any of the boys who made me feel nervous.

My oldest daughter was four and in preschool when the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened. The rules changed again. Six-year-olds could be executed during circle time. I coped by making sure we had good mornings before school. A kiss goodbye would lead to a kiss hello. Maybe we could create the reality we wanted to live in.

But there’s no home-cooked breakfast or kiss on the cheek that can protect children from high-velocity bullets. I read about the Covenant Christian School shooting while I sat between my kids on a flight to New York City. Six more people executed in an elementary school—three of them nine-year-old children. They should have had so much more time. I stayed awake our first night in New York, trying to find the answer; it didn’t come, but my oldest daughter slept for the first time in days. And that was enough.

As my kids have grown older, I’ve tried to help them understand that school shootings are not unexplained phenomena. I cannot protect them from the terrorism, but I refuse to mythologize it. Like most of our social issues, mass shootings are a product of policy, culture, and our current form of capitalism. The attacks are the result of Republican-sponsored gun extremist legislation, the far-right’s first-person shooter lifestyle, and algorithmic radicalization.

Mass shooters are not vengeful demons. They are insurgents in a broad coalition including Christian nationalists, MAGA politicians, and accelerationist venture capitalists. They’ve all come together to restrict access to the public sphere, “some through terror, some through Twitter. If people cannot access the public sphere, they cannot access, or share, power.”

The fear of a mass shooting is enough. Over the past year, East High School has had to go through so many lockdowns. Kids are learning to expect tragedy and, much too early, to experience loss. After one false report of an active shooter last September, East High kids ran from lockdown and fell crying into their parents’ arms.

I have never found an answer that is both reassuring and true. What good does understanding the cause of shootings do when you are a child worried you’ll never be held by your parents again? After every school shooting, my two oldest kids ask some version of, “If this happens in my school, will I be okay?”

Our first morning in New York City was a good one—not because I purposely made it good because I was afraid it could be a last morning, it was just good because life among people is generally good. We stood on platforms, sat on trains, and walked along the High Line, an old elevated rail line that’s been turned into an accessible public space full of art, gardens, and people. My eldest daughter held her five-year-old sister’s hand and showed her the flowers blooming between steel tracks. Look what we can grow when we try.

I sat on a bench and watched my 11-year-old practice ballet with a railing as her barre. An older woman stopped and said she couldn’t wait to see her dance with the New York City Ballet someday. My daughter beamed. I did too. What are we going to do? I still didn’t have our answer, but I had the hope of one. And there was still time.

After the second shooting at East High School, we started talking about homeschooling. It’s not the first time we’ve had the conversation. But my kids love lunchtime, talking in the halls, learning new things from new teachers, school plays and after-school clubs. Being separated from those things during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic affected them in ways I still find frightening to contemplate. Forming community with people who are not part of their household is a vital part of their lives. There are just some things that can’t be replicated in the home.

One night in New York City, I sat in between my two oldest daughters as they watched their first Broadway play, Funny Girl. The play opened with Fanny Brice, played by Julie Benko, sitting in front of a mirror, looking at herself before she says, “Hello, gorgeous.” When she said those words, most of the audience knew what was coming, so they cheered. But my girls didn’t, so they politely clapped. I watched them watch the play, with wide eyes. By the end of the show, they loved Brice. They loved Benko. When she started to sing the reprise of “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” the girls understood what had been and what was coming. They cheered with everyone else. They became part of the community in that room.

We were wandering through the Met museum when my daughter got a text from another friend. It was just a link to a news story. Her middle school principal had gone to the media. There is a child at her school that was recently charged with attempted first-degree murder and illegal discharge of a firearm. That child doesn’t need incarceration; the child needs help. But teachers are not trained to give that help. The district rejected the school’s request that the student be moved to online schooling. Instead, the child goes to school every day and receives a daily pat down from untrained school staff before going to class. This student is on the same safety plan as the student who shot two deans before spring break. My daughter showed me the text and asked again, “What are we going to do?”

My two oldest girls went to see a preview of the new musical New York, New York with their dad that night. I stayed behind with their youngest sister. She’s too young for Broadway, but nearly old enough to be killed at school.

School shootings have accelerated since Sandy Hook, in both frequency and severity. According to a 2018 study, there are more guns in America than people. And since the start of the pandemic, gun sales in America have nearly doubled. In recent years, gun manufacturer stock prices have leapt after mass shootings. Our children’s deaths help the bottom line. My daughter goes into kindergarten next year. I wish the rules would have changed by now. I wish circle time were safe again. But it’s not. What are we going to do?

After she fell asleep, I paced the room. We’d walked miles through the city, but maybe the answer was just a few more steps away. While I paced, the people in power circled the same failed solutions. The Denver School Board approved the return of school resource officers to Denver high school campuses. Studies show that when a school resource officer is present during a school shooting, the “rate of deaths [is] 2.83 times greater” than when one is not present. And when there are not mass casualty events, SROs disproportionately target and harshly discipline Black students and students of color. Their presence creates a school-to-prison pipeline.

As funerals began for the children killed at Covenant, Tennessee governor Bill Lee announced $140 million in funding for schools to hire armed guards and make “significant physical security upgrades.” The assault weapons mass shooters use are designed to blast through people and locked doors. But the only thing that $140 million will work to protect is Lee’s chance to get reelected.

What are we going to do? If the we in that question refers to our society, there are many answers. Common sense gun safety laws are a start. Moderate politicians can work to build off-ramps from MAGA extremism. Make gun manufacturers liable for their own death machines. Divest from white supremacy, in the halls of power and in the halls of our homes. Care for one another through affordable housing, health care, and education. It sounds like too much, but it’s not. Many hands make light work, and there are so many of us ready to get to roll up our sleeves. But there are no answers to my daughter’s question at an individual level. So in America, the land of the individual, there are no answers and there will never be enough time.

I sat between my 14-year-old and five-year-old on the plane ride home. My youngest couldn’t wait for the drink service. When she got her orange juice, she smacked her lips and sighed, “Ah, so good.” I squeezed her hand, “Isn’t it delicious?” She took a big gulping drink as a reply. My oldest quieted down as we made our way home. She spent most of the flight looking out the window.

Right before we landed, I pulled out my phone and texted her, “I love you.”

She looked down at her phone, smiled, and then turned to me, “I love you too, Mom.”

Meg Conley

Meg Conley is a writer whose work has appeard in Slate, The Guardian, and GEN Mag.