It seems to be becoming more common to hear about threats made, attacks committed by students or other groups targeting schools worldwide. These events have encouraged most schools, including ours, to step up security in order to ensure that students feel safe. Even though the news may not show it, schools are extremely safe and are rarely the targets of violence.

On April 14, a student at MAST Academy found a letter in their classroom saying  “On April 17, 2015, I will walk into school and shoot everyone I see.” This letter caused fear not only in students attending MAST, but also parents, teachers and other concerned members of the community. In response to the letter, MAST heightened security and police personnel in order to ensure nothing would happen. The school also made sure students and parents felt safe and excused all absences for the entire week.

Thankfully, April 17 was just like any regular day of school. Just because this incident at MAST was nothing more than an empty threat does not mean that others like it should not be taken seriously by other schools, though; currently, it is actually fairly easy for strangers to sneak into Gables, as there are many open entrances that just about anyone can enter and get through.

“I don’t think it’s very hard for someone to come into our school and blend in, since many students don’t come in uniform anyway so there is no way of knowing who is not supposed to be here,” freshman Yanik Ariste said.

Fortunately, the efforts made by schools seem to be working: the number of incidents at schools has surprisingly gone down and more students feel safe to be at school, which is always a good thing. According to the National Center of Educational Statistics, crime rates at schools have been on a steady decline for over a decade.

Safety at school is of the utmost importance when it comes to a student’s education, and schools always ensure that students will not have to worry about anything bad happening. However, that does not mean that schools can not improve their efforts in order to decrease the already low crime rates.