Answer Doesn’T Lie In Arraying Gadgetry Making Headway Schoolyard Killings Have Been Declining For Six Years.

From Moses Lake, Wash., to West Paducah, Ky., disturbed children have made combat zones of schools and battlefield casualties of teachers and classmates. The latest was last week’s tragedy in Springfield, Ore.

Where next, anxiety-ridden parents wonder. And how to prevent it?

Security guards and metal detectors, some answer, admitting in their next desperate breath that no perfect solution exists to ensure the safety of their children.

But before administrators call in the contractors - or the National Guard - they should remember something about the glut of school carnage that has made news in the past year: It’s not getting worse, it’s getting better.

Schoolyard killings have been declining for six years. Killings by juveniles are down rather than up. In Spokane Public Schools, Superintendent Gary Livingston says fewer guns are coming to school and there are fewer fights.

It’s not mere coincidence that schools are making headway at the same time they have been taking steps to curb violence less expensively and less disruptively than posting security guards and installing metal detectors.

Schools have started educating kids about anger management and conflict resolution. They have devised emergency plans for the kinds of challenges today’s social pressures may ignite. They have indeed added security staff in many schools, largely to prevent intrusion by non-student troublemakers.

Resorting to metal detectors is an overreaction that would steal dollars from textbooks and technology, school nurses and smaller class sizes - all resources that would touch more lives and do more collective good than metal detectors.

Spare no expense, urge those who normally warn against quick fixes if it means investing more money in public schools. They like solutions that go clang but disdain what they call “touchy-feely” responses such as hiring sufficient counselors.

No metal detector would have stopped 13-year-old Mitchell Johnson and 11-year-old Andrew Golden from gunning down a teacher and four schoolmates from a hillside outside the school, and no amount of counselors will head off every potential killer.

But current strategies are making headway. The proposed alternative is unproven and expensive. This is no time to panic.