Others are unnerved by school shootings and the seemingly frequent mass shootings across the country.

A horrific elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in late May has added to the stress after a police mishandling massacred 19 elementary school students and two teachers.

Students and parents want greater control over potential emergencies. According to counselors and school safety experts nationwide, it’s part of a larger mental and behavioral component to dealing with school violence.

Willow Goldfarb, licensed mental health counselor and chief clinician at Thriveworks in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said of students who received counseling after Uvalde:

She has worked with those affected by the Valentine’s Day 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Nikolas Cruz, who was 19 at the time, opened fire, killing 17 people and wounding 17 others.

The Parkland Massacre Wounds and Cruz Troubled Childhood and Mental and Behavioral Health Examinations reopened this summer as sentencing testimony is heard in a Florida court. Among the witnesses are parents and relatives who are still grieving.

In the wake of Uvalde’s shooting, Goldfarb hears from students, parents and teachers about their concerns about the police response after it took an hour for officers to confront the shooter, Salvador Ramos.

Some students want more unique options for survival, escape and connection with the outside world, Goldfarb said.

Some students have questioned why they can’t arm their teachers and staff when in more gun-tolerant states and territories.

“This is the story of a good shooter shooting a bad shooter,” said Goldfarb.

She also said some students don’t like cell phone restriction policies imposed by some schools. We hear from children who want to share that these rules are a cause for concern.

Students also share that they often feel looked down upon when it comes to school security and safety, according to Goldfarb. They said school districts would be better served if school officials were as supportive, inclusive and transparent as possible.

“I feel that children often get into arguments. Tell them what happens,” said Goldfarb.

She said she is trying to give students who are terrified of school safety the power to follow their instincts in safe school situations.

“I talk to them about trusting their intuition,” Goldfarb said.

Sharon Huber, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said concerned parents want more power, and in light of recent mass shootings, school security and safety should be considered. It says it wants to be more involved in decisions about Director of National School Mental Health Center.

“How are you going to keep my child safe?” is a refrain Hoover often hears from anxious parents heading into the new school year.

“Families certainly want to be at the table,” Hoover said.

Given the ongoing challenge of bullying and the regularity of modern mass shootings, the need to feel empowered and included is just the tip of the mental and behavioral health iceberg when it comes to school. It’s not too much.

According to Brenda High School, addressing bullying and antisocial behavior is essential to addressing the mental health component of school violence.

High co-founded Bully Police USA after his 13-year-old son committed suicide after being bullied at school in Washington. A group in Idaho advocates for tougher anti-bullying laws across US states.

Hai said there are still schoolyards and social cultures that can’t tolerate bullying and help children in distress.

“There will still be many places where it’s ‘boys will be boys’ and ‘girls will be girls,'” Hai said.

Her group helps schools implement more student-focused behavioral programs, including peer groups that help address bullying and abuse among classmates.

She said school mental health counselors also need to be paid more. The median salary for a school counselor is $46,778, with a starting salary of $33,000, according to San Francisco-based staffing firm Zippia.

Reports on these incidents show that many of the school shooters suffered from mental and behavioral health problems and faced bullying or felt bullied or abused.

Their feelings of ostracism and isolation can be dangerously combined with access to weapons and inadequate responses to mental health challenges by parents, schools and law enforcement.

Amy Klinger, professor of education at Ashland College in Ohio and co-founder of the nonprofit Educators School Safety Network, said:

Clinger said not all of the shooters were bullied, but all of them felt abused and cut off from school and classmates.

Klinger said school can be a “living hell” for some kids who face endless bullying and abuse from their classmates. Some are in abusive, traumatic, or toxic situations at home.

Some of those same homes do not support behavioral health counseling, while others provide access to guns and ammunition.

Students and their parents may also be concerned about stigma within their school, family or community and may seek mental counseling.

Goldfarb and other mental health experts say children often follow suit when their parents are gun-obsessed or, conversely, skeptical of behavioral and mental health counseling.

“Kids get that message and they’re acting on it,” she said.

After Uvalde allocated $750 million over five years to assist states with crisis intervention programs such as “red flags” laws that discourage gun purchases and allow guns to be confiscated for mental health reasons, Federal gun control laws were passed earlier this summer.

These efforts face constitutional protections for gun ownership through the Second Amendment and civil liberties concerns about how far the powers of the police and public policy should be extended.

The federal bill also provides an additional $510 million in various mental and behavioral health grants to states, local governments and school districts.

Social divisions and political disagreements over how to handle mass shootings have also generated mixed reactions to proposed school safety measures.

Republicans who oppose the new federal gun laws are calling for more police officers, security guards and more layers of security on campuses.

Some people find it self-confident, but others don’t.

“We found that students of color and students from marginalized communities felt more insecure when there were more police officers around them,” Goldfarb said.

After Minneapolis cops killed George Floyd in 2020, some school districts overhauled and scaled back police and security guards on campus.

However, after Uvalde and other recent shootings, the pendulum has swung back toward increased security and police footprints on campus.

David Moore, police chief in Janesville, Wisconsin, near the border with Illinois, said law enforcement needs to build trust in communities and schools to get help with early detection and intervention.

“We have to trust the community to help us,” said Moore, a resource officer at a local school in Southern Wisconsin.

Law enforcement officials such as teachers and school staff struggle with how to recognize and address behavioral health problems and bullying and harassment.

While many teachers are already very worried about COVID-19 and are suffering from staffing shortages, there is also an increase in firearms-related training, including crisis intervention and treatment of severe gunshot wounds.

Hoover said school districts need to be sensitive to what they are adding to teachers’ job responsibilities. “We really need to be careful about adding one more to their plate,” she said.

Also, social approaches to mental health on and off campus continue to be problematic.

A study by the Center for Treatment Advocacy found that people with untreated mental illness were 16 times more likely to be killed by police. And, according to a Virginia-based group, more than one of his four police shootings has been attributed to a mentally ill person.

A 2020 study by Harvard University found that black people are 3.23 times more likely to be killed by police than white people.

The rush to increase security infrastructure, such as restricting access points, installing cameras, adding layers of fences and barriers, allays concerns, but unnerving for others.

“You can set it up like a prison, but there are people who want to let their kids go,” Klinger said.Teachers and staff follow safety protocols and deal with bullying situations.

“If there is an active shooting incident, the immediate response is to conduct more aggressive shooting drills,” Clinger said.

Hoover said fears about shootings and returning to school combine with some of the stress, conflict and social isolation from the pandemic.

“We do better when we feel stable,” said Hoover, who is also director of the Maryland-based National Center for Safety and Assistance Schools. Nothing felt stable or safe.”