Five years after Columbine, the insecurity lingers

"There have been some specific things that have taken place that are designed to make schools safer, and that's a very good thing," says Dr. Elliott. "But the level of preparedness and attention to doing what schools could do is still fairly low."

Last October the National Association of School Resource Officers surveyed its members. Seventy percent reported that aggressive behavior in elementary school children has increased in their districts in the past five years, and 87 percent of these school-based police officers believe school campus crimes are underreported.

For principals and administrators, it's a constant effort to keep the focus on school safety.

After class at Thurston High the other day, assistant principal Ed Mendelssohn chaired a new "positive behavioral support" team meeting of a dozen teachers and staff, including Officer Akins (who also coaches freshman football). The school has just got a grant to develop a program designed to improve school climate as well as focus on students inclined to skip school, drop out, or exhibit antisocial behavior.

Including as many responsible adults as possible in the day-to-day activity of students is part of the philosophy here.

"My mantra is 'every adult is in charge'," says principal Doug Jantzi, who was principal at a youth correctional facility before coming to Thurston High this year. "Students need to respect a classroom aide just as much as they do me... It's about people and relationships."

Mostly, that attitude applies to students and how they treat each other at an age when being excluded, bullied, or disrespected can hurt deeply. Some Thurston students have older siblings or friends who were here in 1998, and many have been reminded by adults in their lives that they bear some daily responsibility for preventing another tragedy.

"You have to treat people the way you'd like to be treated," says senior Nichole Lewelling. "That's how my parents broke it down."

As is often the case with kids, "do what I say and not what I do" does not work.

"Children watch how their parents act when involved in road rage or other forms of rudeness," says Jack Spencer, a sociologist at Purdue University. "If parents modify their own behavior and talk to their children about respecting and being sensitive to others, we could reduce the number of these incidents."

In the wake of Columbine, many factors were blamed for school violence: cliques and bullying, violent video games and music, easy access to weapons and explosives, gang activity, overdependence on questionable drugs to treat adolescents diagnosed with mental or behavioral problems, disengaged and distracted parents.

Attention to all these things is good, says family therapist Michael Gurian of Spokane, Wash., but deeper issues need to be addressed. Mr. Gurian has written several books on boys and male development, most recently "What Could He Be Thinking? How a Man's Mind Really Works."

Some of this has to do with "emotional literacy," says Gurian, which means helping boys to understand and communicate feelings of fear, anger, and alienation without resorting to violence. Just as important, he says, has been the recent "boys' movement."

This movement recognizes that boys have character development and educational needs distinctly different from girls'; that what sometimes seems like rambunctiousness is not necessarily a "problem" that needs to be criticized or punished.

"I think we are better off now than we were five years ago, mainly because parents are insisting on better education for their sons and they're insisting that professionals don't just look at girls but look at boys," he says.

"They're also insisting that our responses aren't just that boys have to cry more but go deeper into 'where's Grandpa, where's Dad, where's Mom; who's attached to the kid; where are the aunts and uncles; who are the mentors; who's watching after my kids during latchkey hours; what's day care about?' Those bigger things are starting to get talked about, so I'm optimistic."

Back in the quad at Thurston High, senior Brett McEldowney drifts toward a conversation about school violence.

He's short and muscular, with a sweatshirt identifying him as a "power lifter." Asked what he thinks the answer is, he says quietly: "Treat people the way you want to be treated."

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