The Apalachee Shooting: What We Can Learn

Two students and two teachers were killed on September 4th in a school shooting that occurred at Apalachee High School in Georgia. According to The New York Times, during the morning of the attack, the school went into lockdown after gunshots were heard. Newly installed alarms and locked doors are suspected to have prevented further violence.
Although they have been prevalent over the past decade, school shootings have surged since 2021. According to statistics from CNN, there was an average of about 47 school shootings per year from 2016 to 2019. This jumped to a whopping average of 78 per year from 2021-2023.
As of September 6th, there have been 46 school shootings in 2024, according to CNN. This has caused some worry among Hastings High School students. Olive Berko, a sophomore, expressed her concerns: “[School shootings] make the idea of school feel less safe.”
She also added that when a specific incident occurs, it causes her to think about school shootings and safety more, explaining that “there is this air of violence and fear… it definitely doesn’t make school better”.
Luckily, Hastings High School prioritizes student safety. According to Dr. William McKersie, Superintendent of the Hastings-on-Hudson School District, “the first thing [he worries] about as superintendent is safety and security”.
The Hastings School District takes many measures to protect students, including a good core of security personnel, a close relationship with local police, and technical security mechanisms.
“All our doors are alarmed”, said Dr. McKersie. “We want to know when a door is opened.”
He also shared that the school insists on people going in and out of certain doors and will be doing more of that in the future.
Although Hastings has never experienced any form of gun violence in the years that Dr. McKersie has been here, he emphasizes that a school shooting anywhere in the country is a concern.
“We use it as a chance to review whatever we’ve learned from that situation,” Dr. McKersie shares. “We can make sure our procedures are excellent.”
Earlier in his career, Dr. McKersie worked as a superintendent in the Greenwich, Connecticut school district around the time of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in 2012.
After the event, the state of Connecticut “put millions upon millions of dollars to ‘harden the schools,’” according to Dr. McKersie. This involved installing security systems and door alarms as well as other measures.
Dr. McKersie stressed that although the chances of a school shooting are low, it is a priority to make sure students feel safe in school.
He shared, “we want our students to feel safe, free, and open to do what they want to do within the school day.” He also stressed that although schools are statistically the safest place for students to be, students should share their concerns: “In Hastings, we have a lot of adults who care.”