NEA Today, January 2024

Editor's Note: The Power to Stop Gun Violence

Lockdown drills. Metal detectors. Bulletproof windows. Staff trainings on how to pack gunshot wounds. This is everyday life—not in a war zone, but in many of our nation’s schools.

Since 2021, there have been 159 shootings in our nation’s pre-K–12 schools and on college campuses that resulted in someone being injured or killed. These horrific incidents, memorialized on the cover of this magazine, include the mass shootings seared into the national consciousness—Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas; Michigan State University, in East Lansing; Morgan State University, in Baltimore; and too many others. They also include dozens of incidents of guns fired in schools, injuring or killing a classmate, an educator, someone’s sister, brother, son, daughter, mother, father, friend.

When we first designed this cover, we attempted to list every school shooting that has taken place since the massacre at Columbine High School, nearly 25 years ago. We even tried a fold-out cover that would triple its size. Still, the shootings wouldn’t fit.

Let that sink in. They wouldn’t fit.   

Then we tried to list school shootings from the last 10 years, 5 years—all too long.   

Every single one of these shootings is a tragedy. Every one shakes the community to its core. Every one is the reason school safety has climbed up the list of concerns for parents and educators in poll after poll.   

It’s easy to let the sheer magnitude of the problem lull us into passivity—into accepting that this is just the way it is. But we are not helpless. There is not one solution, but many that collectively will stanch the bloodshed and fear in our classrooms. And, as educators, we are uniquely positioned to make a real and lasting difference.

This month’s cover story, “We. Can. Change. This.” shows how we can channel our outrage and fear into real change. Together, we can raise our collective voice and mobilize our schools, our communities, our states, and our nation. We. Can. Change. This.

—Anitrá Speight, Associate Publisher and Director