1 . A school district in Michigan has banned all backpacks from school buildings, in response to growing safety concerns.

Flint Community Schools announced last week that backpacks would be banned and the ban would be in place for the rest of the school year. The new policy went into effect on Monday.

“We are doing all that we can to create a safe and secure environment for our scholars, families, teachers and staff,” Superintendent (主管) Kevin Jones wrote in a letter posted on the school district’s website.

Jones cited growing threatening behavior happenings across the country, including weapons being brought to schools, as the reason for the backpack ban.

“Backpacks make it easier for students to hide weapons, which can be taken apart and harder to identify than hidden in pockets, inside books, or under other items,” he said.

Following the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, last May, where 19 students and two teachers died, schools began taking policies requiring students to use clear backpacks. However, Flint Community Schools have gone a step further and banned clear backpacks from school buildings, with the superintendent saying that it doesn’t resolve the issue.

“By banning backpacks altogether and adding an increased security presence across the district, we can better control what is being brought into our buildings,” Jones said.

Students are allowed to store personal items like wallets, keys, hygiene products (卫生用品) and phones in small purses, bring lunchboxes or place their gym clothes in clear plastic bags, all of which will be subject to searches.

If a student brings a backpack to school, parents or guardians must pick it up from the school, according to Jones.

The Flint Board of Education, the district’s administration and headmasters approved the policy change, Jones said, adding that the district received support from the Flint Police Department.

I remember the day as clear as glass. I was in 6th grade and my teacher had just announced it was a class break, a time we were allowed to eat snacks and move around the classroom. But on that day, I reached a breaking point.

My friend sat across from me. Two classmates who were attention seekers were making fun of him again. They did something mean to him every day: stealing his school supplies, calling his sister ugly, or laughing at his big head. On this day, they were singing a song about him, “Chicken, chicken Josh.” They sang endlessly and cruelly. Those words were like a bite of hot pepper to my friend, who turned red with anger and embarrassment, while tears of frustration dropped from his eyes. I could see how hopeless he felt.

Normally, I would just sit and watch it all. I was very shy. I rarely spoke during breaks or raised my hand in class. I was so shy, in fact, that my teacher made me a chart to tick every time I raised my hand. She said I’d receive a prize if I filled it up. But I never did. It didn’t help with my shyness; it just made me more self-conscious. But on this particular day, I took a stand. I’d had enough. I stood up and shouted, “Leave him alone!” Silence broke out, all eyes in the room fell on me. But the silence was short-lived as everyone went back to enjoying their break. For the rest of the day, every time the bullies would laugh at my friend during class, I would scream, “Stop troubling him,” or, “It wouldn’t hurt to be nice.”

But these words didn’t help. In fact, it made the situation worse: I too became a victim. From that afternoon on, the two bullies began to make up songs about me. They chanted, pronouncing my name in a different dialect to show I was different from them. This mocking and disrespect upset me a lot. I felt helpless.

A few weeks later, I spoke to my teacher after class.

One day, my teacher finally said, “David, I think it’s time to get the principal involved.”

This morning, our school held a fire drill.

5 . Beside pencil sharpeners and calendars in classrooms throughout Minnesota’s Lakeville Area Schools, there are now big blue boxes with a red button and the word POLICE. The button sends a text message to emergency correspondents, alerts the rest of the school to potential danger, and _______ 1,200 pounds of magnetic (磁性的) force to keep the door shut.

It’s one of the measures that Michael Baumann has employed to _______ the schools in his district and protect against active shooters since he became supervisor in 2017. He hired four more advisers to improve mental-health services. He established a team to monitor _______ threats of violence. He spent $14.4 million installing the emergency-alert system and building panels into walls that are designed to stop bullets—all _______ helping students and teachers survive an active shooter.

“Everybody goes to bed and thinks, ‘That’ll never happen in my school district. ‘ Well, I can tell you as a supervisor, that’s the _______ dream,” says Baumann, who previously served in the Army. “I felt like it was my _______ to do what I could.”

Fear of shootings has turned school security into a _______ industry. The market for school-security equipment and services reached $2.7 billion in 2017, according to a report by the research firm Omdia. That was before the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., further increased the focus on security measures at schools.

The school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24 this year has restarted the discussion about whether safety measures at schools can _______ mass shootings. And many politicians, after indicating that they are _______ to support gun-safety lawmaking, have argued instead that heightened physical security measures are necessary to prevent future attacks.

________ , experts say it’s not clear that such measures actually make schools safer. Research shows that the number of deadly shootings at schools has increased since 2012, during a period in which protective measures also ________ . There also isn’t clear evidence that school resource officers (SROs) improve safety. SROs were ________ in Uvalde and in Parkland before the gunmen entered the schools, but failed to stop those shootings.

“When we add metal detectors, observation cameras, increased police presence, active-shooter drills, and we turn schools into this mix of castles and ________ ,” says Bryan Warnick, an education professor at Ohio State University.

Although many school districts invest in security in the hopes of preventing shootings, some worry that reinforcing schools ultimately makes ________ responsible for solving the gun-violence outbreak.

“Schools are ________ with trainings and new procedures,” Warnick says. “It’s a larger social problem of easy access to guns, of lack of access to mental-health care.”