Today, it’s common across the country for children as young as 4 and 5 to participate in active-shooter drills and shelter-in-place lockdowns about as often as they take standardized tests. That includes the Jefferson County School District, where Columbine High School resides.
The Columbine of today has classroom doors that lock from the inside and a single-point entry for students, staff and visitors. It’s equipped with many visible and invisible ways to prevent and/or limit the impact of a mass-scale emergency, a kind that had not been on the national radar before the mass shooting.
While many people may believe school security is about physical barriers and policing threats, those working in the building today, including principal Scott Christy and social studies teachers Sam Bowersox and Jeff Garkow, say safety at Columbine is also about culture. As a result, the sum of those safety measures is far greater than the parts.
“Kids can’t learn if they don’t feel safe, and teachers can’t teach if they don’t feel safe. And so it’s everything. It’s incredibly important,” said Christy. “I think Columbine is the safest school in the world. My hope is that staff and students don’t think about what happened 25 years ago. They see it as they see their school as a home, a place that they’re proud to be a part of, and a place that they know that they’re loved and cared for.”
Still, security has changed since the April 20, 1999 shooting.
John McDonald wasn’t at Columbine that day, but like countless others, his life was forever changed by the tragedy. Nine years later, he became the executive director of school safety for the Jefferson County School District, including Columbine, and, since moving on, has continued to work to make schools safer.
“I hate to say good came out of it,” said McDonald. “But what came out of (the Columbine shooting) was the commitment to protect kids.”
Before the tragedy, school officials and security officers focused on the potential dangers outsiders might inflict on their buildings. Overnight, they had to shift their thinking to consider that students could be threats, too, and how that might impact school safety plans.
Doing so took its toll. Between 1999 and 2008, the school district had multiple executive directors of school safety.
“The job was difficult,” said McDonald, who held the position for 14 years starting in 2008. “It was overwhelming for people.”
McDonald, who is now the chief operating officer for the National Council of School Security, was recognized internationally as the architect of the Columbine High School security and emergency management plan.
In April 1999, with no incident command structure in the district, school security consisted of a handful of cameras outside the school and a few school resource officers. There was a disconnect with local law enforcement agencies, who were unfamiliar with the insides of the school, critical information that would be useful for saving lives during an incident.
According to a 2018 Federal School Safety Commission report, there was a rush by leaders across the country to add security officers and speed up response times, among other measures. Security experts also began considering how students, who often hear firsthand about planned attacks or suicidal ideations, might help tip them off. As a result, the Colorado Trust awarded a $375,000 grant to establish the anonymous 24/7 hotline Safe2Tell.
Safe2Tell has striven to build trust between students, staff and law enforcement, according to McDonald. As a result, he’s seen weapons at schools get reported, bullying episodes prevented, interventions taken when there’s abuse in kids’ homes and even active suicides stopped.
“If you’re brave enough to share and tell us what you know, we will respond to it and do everything we can to protect you,” said McDonald.
It’s difficult to know precisely how the immediate security changes impacted students. Walking into Columbine in August 1999, Kelley Kellogg said she didn’t focus on the added security or the changes to the school other than being relieved that the library where the majority of the deaths occurred had been walled off.
Instead, she felt the typical nerves and excitement of any student on their first day of high school. As a freshman, she hadn’t been there on the day of the shooting, but she knew several classmates who had, including one whose sibling had died.
“Mostly, we didn’t talk about it, even my friend who’d been directly impacted,” said Kellogg. “But I felt incredibly safe. Everyone was super vigilant and protective. Frank DeAngelis (the principal at the time) and all of the teachers took such good care of us, shielded us from the media attention and made us feel loved and cared for.”
A 2021 Students’ Reports of Safety and Security Measures Observed at School published by the National Center for Education Statistics indicated four measures became more prevalent in the ensuing years, from 2009 to 2019.
Students saw an increase in the use of one or more security cameras, a locked entrance or exit door during the day, student identification badges and security guards or assigned police officers.
The sitting Jefferson County School District Executive Director for the Department of School Safety, Jeff Pierson, said that in addition to more alarmed doors, secure classrooms, and vestibules to check identification, more information and security is coming with added cameras and security guards.
“I think it sends a message to our kids and our parents that we’ve got an additional set of eyes that are highly trained individuals watching out for and keeping an eye on what’s going on in our buildings,” said Pierson.
Six years ago, McDonald hired Pierson as the district’s director of safe school environments. In this role, he focused on enhancing partnerships between schools, district leadership, and the Department of School Safety, seeking to establish a more proactive approach.
Before taking on this role, Pierson was the principal at Standley Lake High School in Westminster and trained in federal and police safety and policing programs. Pierson said having first responder training and the lens of an educator has helped him break down barriers to how schools should operate.
Far more than the enforced wearing of student IDs and the additional patrol cars posted outside, Kellogg said safety came from a sense of belonging.
“I feel like everyone just kind of tried to get along,” she said. “Because even though this really tragic thing happened, I felt like we were a part of a family. Kids are kids, and stuff still happens, but I felt like everyone tried their best to take care of each other.”
Evolving approach to safety and security
McDonald noted that school districts across Colorado struggled to create cohesive security plans until 2008, when state lawmakers passed a law creating the Colorado School Safety Resource Center “to assist schools in preventing, preparing for, responding to, and recovering from emergencies and crisis situations and to foster positive learning environments.”
Additionally, the Standard Response Protocol, created by the I Love You Guys Foundation, was released in 2009 and is now used by countless districts across states. The guidelines made a difference for the school district because they were an “emergency prepared, not emergency scared program” that everyone understood.
Early in his career, Pierson implemented a mandatory administrator basic training academy where all administrators go through a safety training course, which takes them through various types of active events and discusses scenarios.
“We help them acclimate themselves to potential threat assessments,” said Pierson, “so they get a better understanding of their potential role.”
Gradually, as more school shootings like those at Sandy Hook Elementary and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shocked the nation, state policymakers began enacting a greater number of laws focused on bullying prevention, mental health screening and harassment and discrimination.
School resource officers, or SROs – law-enforcement officers who work in schools – are no longer employed solely to discipline poorly-behaved students or keep order. They are trained in crisis intervention, de-escalation techniques and how to spot warning signs that a student needs mental health services.
Today, the small, anonymous hotline Safe2Tell, which began in 2004, has received 162,381 reports since its inception and a nearly 40% increase in reporting this current school year over last, according to Safe2Tell Director Stacey Jenkins. Safe2Tell attributes some of this increase to greater awareness and the addition of another trainer.
“From the program’s inception, as a nonprofit supported by the Colorado Attorney General to its integration within our office in 2014, Safe2Tell has evolved alongside technological advancements and best practices in school safety,” said Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser. “What began from a simple premise – anonymous reporting as a lifesaving tool for addressing critical school safety concerns – has grown into a nationally and internationally recognized program in anonymous reporting, serving as a crucial link that saves lives.”
Columbine today
On a bright Tuesday morning, mere days before spring break, the energy at Columbine is relaxed and playful. The school’s 1,668 students walk the halls with ease, chatting with friends and making their way to class.
They aren’t worried about potential threats or the possibility of something terrible happening. That’s because safety is baked into the very fabric of the school’s culture, and the students know it, explains Columbine SRO Eric Ebling.
Columbine is the only school in Jefferson County with two SROs, Ebling and Dan Wonner, who have been there since 2017 and 2019. SRO Joella Gallegos works at one of the feeder middle schools and communicates constantly with Ebling and Wonner. Because of its storied past, Columbine also has more unarmed campus supervisors than others in the Jefferson County School District.
Yet, safety doesn’t come only from the number of officers.
“It’s people. It’s communication, and it’s philosophy,” said Ebling. “It’s not mind-reading technology or drones. The only reason we can make this work every day is with the mindset that everyone’s job is safety and security. Security is not just Dan (Wonner) and me, the sheriff’s office or even campus security. If you’re on this property, your job is safety and security.”
Pierson adds that “culture is one of the biggest mitigators.”
“If you have a culture that embeds safety, connections, knowing your student by name, strengths and needs and making sure they have a reporting mechanism for when they hear or see something, those things are easy to implement, and they’re free,” Pierson said.
Columbine sophomore Madison Price sees the school’s security measures but also feels safe because, like Kellogg, who graduated long before her, there’s a sense that everyone in the school is dedicated to taking care of them.
“I do feel safe at school,” Price said. “There’s people here to protect us.”
Garkow, who attended Columbine and graduated in 2006, recalled a time during his sophomore year when someone spray-painted a threat on the side of the building. “There were people who weren’t sure if they wanted to go to school that day,” he said.
“I remember sitting in my math class that day, and my teacher Terry Havens telling us that nothing would happen to us in the building. He talked about how we take care of each other and how he would make sure we were safe. That made a huge impact on me because I remember thinking, ‘Wow, he’s looking out for me.’
“That’s just what it feels like in the building. I believe Columbine is the safest school in the country, and I’m proud to work there because of how we look out for one another.”
Price also added that many students have good relationships with the SROs. Ebling, Wonner and Gallegos said they work hard to create a bond with the student body.
“While the job is challenging and keeping up with the speed of technology changes and teen lingo is a 24/7 job, the ability to be a positive adult presence in these students’ lives gives us immense satisfaction,” Ebling said.
Wonner said SROs have watched students grow and graduate.
“What’s most gratifying is when a kiddo who was frequently on our radar returns after graduation,” Wonner said. “We’ve had them apologize for giving us a hard time back in the day and say they really appreciate what we did. And it’s cool just to see kids get their life back on track.”
Today, the district’s Department of School Safety, which has over 100 security staff working round the clock, continues to work directly with law enforcement and speak with other districts. It established a group of school safety administrators who meet once a month to discuss hot topics and are also part of a group that gives feedback to legislators.
Part of the culture is balancing the fine line between having too much of a physical environment that creates a prison-like mentality and keeping the physical presence there while maintaining a calm, inclusive and safe atmosphere.
“It has to be completely controlled internally,” said Pierson. “Which means student voices, teachers’ voices, parents’ voices, all those stakeholders have to be completely involved and not just involved but invested in what looks like a safe school environment.”
The measures in place at Columbine are “night and day from what the security measures were back then,” said Pierson. “But our job is to continue to stay up with the times and keep our buildings as safe as they can be.”
The Columbine tragedy forever changed school safety and security measures as we knew them. Yet, the one thing the massacre couldn’t change was the unbreakable spirit of the Columbine community, which continues to embody former principal DeAngelis’ rallying cry: “WE ARE COLUMBINE.”