Another School Year, Another School Shooting

 

By Mark Keierleber, The 74

This story first appeared at The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more like this in your inbox.

School (in)Security is our biweekly briefing on the latest school safety news, vetted by Mark Keierleber. Subscribe here.

As students across the country return to school, a mass school shooting in Minneapolis has again reignited debates about the proliferation of guns in the U.S., campus security — and youth embrace of violent online extremism.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz this week announced plans to convene a special legislative session to consider tougher gun laws in the wake of the Annunciation Catholic School shooting that took place while students attended an annual Mass to kick off the new academic year. Two children were killed and 21 people, 18 of them students, were injured.

Vice President JD Vance and his wife went to the church Wednesday, met with the parents of the two slain children and visited one of the hospitalized young survivors. The injured girl’s father, Harry Kaiser, questioned Vance on whether he would “earnestly support the study of what is wrong with our culture, that we are the country that has the worst mass shooter problem?”

As has happened in shooting after shooting, attention quickly turned to the assailant’s online presence as people sought to understand what could motivate such a heinous act. On social media, unfounded claims about the shooter’s motives — from anti-Christian hate to the radicalization of transgender people — reached millions of eyeballs.

The 23-year-old perpetrator died by suicide after the rampage. Like other shooters, the Minneapolis attacker left a paper trail indicating mental health struggles, suicidal ideation and, perhaps most importantly, a deep fascination with mass killers.

The attacker “appeared to hate all of us,” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said during a briefing. “More than anything, the shooter wanted to kill children.”

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In the news

A ‘catastrophic’ hack: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Wednesday against education technology giant PowerSchool, which fell victim to a massive cyberattack last year that compromised the sensitive data of some 60 million students and 10 million educators globally. The state alleges the breach, which affected some 880,000 Texas teachers and students, occurred because PowerSchool “failed to implement even the most basic security features.” | The Texan

• The move is the latest in a slew of lawsuits from parents, students and school districts adversely affected by the massive hack. | The 74
• Matthew Lane, a 19-year-old from Massachusetts, is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court next week after pleading guilty to the extortion scheme over the summer. | MassLive

As Texas and other Republican-controlled states seek to erode the separation of church and state by endorsing Protestant Christianity over other faiths, Paxton has urged students to use a new law allowing prayer time in public schools to practice the Lord’s Prayer “as taught by Jesus Christ.” | The Texas Tribune

Victims speak out: Haley Robson, who was 16 when she was first sexually abused by financier Jeffrey Epstein, recounted on Wednesday how she was forced to recruit young victims from her high school. | BBC

Florida’s surgeon general announced plans to end state vaccine mandates for children attending public schools, while officials in California, Oregon and Washington joined forces to preserve access to the life-saving shots. | The Washington Post

The Los Angeles school district has settled a lawsuit filed by parents who allege the pandemic-era remote learning policies of the country’s second-largest K-12 public education system discriminated against students of color, English learners and those with disabilities. | CalMatters

The Walt Disney Company has agreed to pay $10 million to settle a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit over alleged children’s privacy violations after the entertainment behemoth improperly uploaded kid-focused videos to YouTube and enabled targeted advertising. | Axios

• Meanwhile, the FTC announced a settlement with a Chinese robot toy manufacturer accused of illegally collecting U.S. children’s location data. | CyberScoop

Stainless steel water bottles made by Stanley and Yeti are all the rage. But this New York district says they’re a no-go on campus — claiming they pose safety risks. | News 12

Trump vs. trans kids: As the administration seeks to clamp down on districts that don’t inform parents when their children identify as transgender at school, the Education Department revived an obscure 12-year-old privacy case to access district emails. | The 74

• Two Northern Virginia school districts have sued the Trump administration challenging the federal government’s assertion that policies allowing transgender students to use restrooms and locker facilities violate anti-discrimination laws. | Politico
  • The legal dispute has been fodder in the state’s gubernatorial race, in which Republican candidate Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears has placed anti-trans bathroom policies among her top campaign issues. | The 74

• In South Carolina, state officials filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court after an appeals court blocked enforcement of a new law denying trans youth access to facilities that align with their gender identity. | Politico
• The Trump administration warned officials in 40 states they could lose federal funding unless they scrap lessons from sexual education materials that focus on LGBTQ+ issues. | The Associated Press

An online group that calls itself Purgatory has claimed responsibility for a string of swatting calls that drew massive law enforcement responses to college campuses at the start of the new academic year. | The New York Times

In a middle-of-the-night operation, the Trump administration scooped up 76 unaccompanied minors as they slept at federal shelters, in a deportation bid that was then temporarily blocked by a federal judge. | NPR

A new Florida law will require educators to get parents’ permission before spanking students as a form of school discipline. | Florida Phoenix

• Student activists lobbied for the law after an investigation by The 74 revealed that Florida educators most often used corporal punishment to address minor infractions like “excessive talking,” “insubordination” and “horseplay.” | The 74

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Emotional Support

Sinead ponders summer’s end while boating over Labor Day weekend. : Kathy Moore

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This story was produced by The 74, a non-profit, independent news organization focused on education in America.

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