We should treat schools as critical infrastructure

Too many moments in our lives are spent in silence.   

Silence mourning for the 21 dead in Texas, or 10 in Buffalo, or the 17 in Parkland or 26 in Sandy Hook. We collectively grieve these deaths, most of us from a safe distance, as we note that nowhere in the world does this slaughter of the innocents occur as it does here. We debate whether the Second Amendment really prevents states or the federal government from banning the sale of assault rifles the way they can ban the private sale of other mass-casualty weapons, such as bazookas or rocket-propelled grenades or fully automatic machine guns. The arguments run in circles. 

Mostly we move on.  

On to the next mass killing, all too often of school-age children, all too often while they are at school. These are acts so gruesome and horrendous that many of us stop reading about them or listening to accounts because we don’t want to ruin our days and we have lost faith in our democracy’s ability to end the violence. We try to ignore the whole thing until it comes back in another iteration at another school with other children. We then repeat the cycle and lose more of life’s moments to silence.  

We shouldn’t succumb to silence; the issues are too important. But to find a way out of this cycle of death, we need to start the conversation in a different place. The fundamental legal issues in this arena — assault rifles in particular, and guns overall, and how the Second Amendment should be contoured, or not — as well as the cultural issues, the role of mental health and blockbuster violent movies and barbarous video games, will take years to resolve, if ever. While the arguments rage on, so too will the killing. Something concrete must be done while the talking heads argue and keep reforms, whatever they may be, in check. 

So, let’s begin the conversation with this grim — and we hope nonpartisan — recognition: These school massacres are fought on battlefields designed principally, if not solely, for learning in an open environment. As of 2012-13, the average age of school buildings in the United States was 44 years; no less than bridges, tunnels and dams, they are the product of an era when their potential as scenes of mass slaughter went unrecognized. Our nation’s school buildings and grounds, in other words, simply were not designed with deranged killers with assault weapons and body armor in mind, and not for a nation with 390 million firearms in circulation and widely available.   

The culture of school as an open learning environment may seem incompatible with the role it too often plays as a place of quasi-military engagement. But no one can deny that this is now the reality. “In 2022 alone, there have been 27 school shootings,” according to Daniel Domenech of the School Superintendents Association. “How are we going to continue the important work of academic recovery and mental health supports in response to the pandemic when we can’t reasonably ensure the core need for physical safety?” 

It’s time to recognize that our schools amount to perhaps the most critical infrastructure because they house our most precious resource: children. But they are also perhaps the softest targets available for those who wish to act out violently. As we contemplate spending trillions of dollars on infrastructure, we should dedicate significant resources to hardening the targets that our schools have become, even to the point of replacing them.     

There is no question that building design can save lives in the event of an attack. In Copenhagen in 2015, for example, the Jewish community’s ability instantly to lock down its synagogue and community center thwarted a terrorist’s attack with an assault rifle that otherwise might have killed many of the 200 people gathered in the community center; in that event, the only fatality was a volunteer security guard who alerted others to the attack, and the wounded were limited to two police officers who responded. 

There are also good examples of building design features that can enhance security without sacrificing the open learning environment that’s considered so vital to education. Restricting visitor entry to single locations far from classrooms; installing central security systems with video monitoring and the ability to lock down each classroom, corridor, gym, library and locker room; using bulletproof glass and alarm systems that activate when doors are left ajar; and increasing investment in school security officers, mental health professionals and training, preferably coordinated with local first responders (although we follow most law enforcement officers in opposing the arming of teachers and non-uniformed personnel, out of a concern that responding officers seeing civilians brandishing firearms may not know whom to target). 

Treating our schools as critical infrastructure under threat will not end the threat; the best it will do is to mitigate it by making it more difficult to kill or wound children. But because the security need is so acute, and the loss of young life so tragic and unnecessary, an agreement to treat schools as critical infrastructure and harden them as targets should be achievable on a bipartisan basis. 

That will be a start. By underscoring the enormous human, cultural and economic cost of indulging an extreme fundamental rights ideology, it may enable us to begin the harder conversation: At what point will the first principles of gun ownership be tempered, like our other fundamental rights, by their collision with the social costs they impose?   

If nothing else, starting at a place of agreement may recapture some silent moments and save precious lives. 

John Farmer Jr. is director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. He is a former attorney general of New Jersey and senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, and the author of “The Ground Truth” (2009) and “Way Too Fast: An American Reckoning” (2022).

Charles B. McKenna is a partner at the law firm of Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland and Perretti, and former CEO of New Jersey’s School Facilities Authority and director of New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness.