Dr. Amy Klinger in Emergency Management Magazine

 “The problem is we’ve spent a lot of time and energy on stuff — access control systems, and metal detectors, and visitor sign-ins and all this — but have not spent equal time and money on training people, and education is a people business.”

Dr. Amy Klinger in the Independent (UK)

School threats since the Florida shooting include dozens on social media, about 10 incidents where a gun was brought to school and 22 bomb threats, said Amy Klinger, director of programmes for the Ohio-based Educators School Safety Network. 

Dr. Amy Klinger in the LA Times

Amy Klinger, co-founder of the Ohio-based Educator's School Safety Network, said that rather than arming them, schools should train teams of educators to assess threats. The calls by Trump and others for guns in schools have "really taken the focus off things that are more effective," she said. "We need to do things that work, not that feel good."

Klinger said more guns on campus can lead to more accidental shootings, including two earlier this month in Minnesota and Florida, and it's unreasonable to expect even armed staff on large campuses to be able to stop a mass shooter.

"We need to train our teachers how to identify these people. People don't want to hear that — they want a quick fix," she said.

Dr. Amy Klinger in the Des Moines Register

"There’s always a copycat echo situation, but this is significantly higher than what you would expect," Klinger said.

Iowa isn't alone in the increase of school threats. Across the United States, since Feb. 15, at least 600 threats and incidents have occurred, according to Educator's Safety School Network. The organization tallies an "incident" when a student actually brings a weapon to school or breaks into a building.

ESSN data in the Calgary Sun

School threats on the rise nationwide since the Florida shooting include dozens on social media, about 10 incidents where a gun was brought to school and 22 bomb threats, said Amy Klinger, director of programs for the Ohio-based Educators School Safety Network.

Amanda Klinger, Esq. quote on Wisconsin public radio

The Educator’s School Safety Network is a nonprofit that provides safety training for schools and tracks these threats nationally. Officials there report an increase in school threats nationwide.

The organization reports 33 school-based violent incidents and threats in Wisconsin during the entire fall 2017. In the five days after the Parkland shooting, they recorded nine threats.

Amanda Klinger is one of the authors of the report. She said the number of threats they have recorded is likely an under-reporting of what is known to exist. 

Amanda Klinger, Esq. quoted in the Houston Chronicle

The Educator’s School Safety Network, an advocacy group, has tracked more than 70 threats and incidents per day at U.S. schools after Parkland, including bomb and gun threats. Typically, that organization says, the figure is about 10. Most of the threats were delivered by social media.

Amanda Klinger, the network's director of operations, said the vast majority of those threats impacted high schools.

"Higher education has been very, very low," she said.

Amanda Klinger, Esq. quoted by The News & Observer

School shootings commonly lead to copycat threats, said Amanda Klinger, director of operations for the Educator’s School Safety Network, an Ohio-based group that tracks school threats. The number of school threats has jumped from an average of 10 a school day nationally to more than 50 a day since the Florida shooting, Klinger said, adding that the actual number of threats is likely much higher.

Dr. Amy Klinger on NBC news

Dr. Amy Klinger, director of programs and co-founder of the Educator's School Safety Network, a nonprofit that supports safer schools, said she found it "ironic and sad" that the only training being discussed for teachers is weapons training.

"How about training in violence prevention, or all of the other threats that schools face, like severe weather, noncustodial parent fights, and bus accidents?" she asked. "I'm thrilled that the president is having this conversation about school safety. But I'm concerned that we're not looking at the really effective options first."

Dr. Amy Klinger on CBS9 in Los Angeles

“It is alarming,” Klinger said. “We’ve seen a pretty dramatic increase. Normally, we track around 10 or 11 incidents a day and since the tragedy in Florida, we’ve been tracking anywhere from 50-65 threats a day.”

Partly to blame for the increase? What she calls the “copy cat” factor.

“You have this copy cat mentality,” she says ,”where if it worked over there, I could do that, too, and I want to be famous and I want people to be afraid of what I’ve said.”

The number of threats will, likely, go down in time. But Klinger believes the increased conversation about school safety will be a good thing.

“Any threat to a school and any incident in school is one too many,” she says, “so even when the numbers go down, we still need to keep this a priority.”

Dr. Amy Klinger in the Cincinnati Enquirer

There is always a spike after a school shooting, Klinger said, but these numbers are unusually intense. She thinks it reflects the intensity of the Florida shooting, one of the worst in America’s history, and the intensity of the conversation surrounding school safety and gun laws.

People are paying attention, Klinger said, and students interested in causing chaos know that now is their time.

“I would expect this to continue for a while,” she said.

Dr. Amy Klinger on fatherly.com

“You’ve seen a huge spike in kids being arrested,” says Klinger. “We can’t joke about having a bomb in our bag in an airport, and so now we can’t say we’re going to shoot up our school and say that’s a joke ⏤ it’s not.”

Dr. Amy Klinger interview with the BBC

"We always know there's an uptick after an event like [Florida's school shooting] - a contagion effect, a copycat effect," Ms Klinger, who has a 28-year career in education, said. "But this is a significant spike."

Dr. Amy Klinger on Texas Public Radio

While an increase in threats often occurs after a school shooting, Klinger said this time there are more than normal.

“I can make a threat on social media that gets passed around and may impact 10 or 15 schools, not just one school. So I think that is certainly a big part of it,” Klinger said. “It’s a reflection of the intensity of the conversation that’s erupted after Parkland.”

Educator's School Safety Network data in the Washington Post

Ordinarily, according to the Educator’s School Safety Network, about 10 threats or violent incidents are reported each day in American schools. Since Parkland, the network, which has been tracking these incidents for years, said reports have increased sevenfold. The network is recording about 70 incidents every day — 673 since the Parkland shooting.

Dr. Amy Klinger quoted (again) by the New York Times

“It’s reflective of the feeling in the country,” Ms. Klinger said. “You have to think about what someone who’s making a threat wants to get out of it. They want chaos, fear, for people to be upset.”

Dr. Amy Klinger quoted by the New York Times

“These kids are begging us to stop them,” said Amy Klinger, a co-founder of the Educator’s School Safety Network, who consults on school safety from the perspective of the former teacher and principal that she is. “We just have to be better at picking up the warning signs.”

The schools alone cannot do it. Arguably, Dr. Klinger said, the failure to identify Mr. Cruz as troubled was a failure of the entire community, along with law enforcement agencies that had been warned about him.

“A school can identify the individual of concern, but they didn’t create that individual,” Dr. Klinger said. “So yeah, there is a role that the community and parents and our society has to play in identifying and dealing with those individuals as well.”

...

“After Sandy Hook, a lot of schools got very panicky and bought $5,000 buzzer systems,” Dr. Klinger said. “They bought the system that was breached by the intruder in the first 30 seconds of Sandy Hook. He shot out the door and walked into the school. So your buzzer system did absolutely no good.”

Dr. Amy Klinger on Fox News

“There is just not enough evidence to support the idea that a teacher would be able to neutralize a threat,” Amy Klinger, the director of programs at the Educator’s School Safety Network, told Fox News. “What makes us think that a social studies teacher can do something that law enforcement has trouble doing?”

Klinger seconded O’Neill’s comment and added there are other safety concerns that should be addressed before school decided to put guns in the hands of teachers.

Among the changes Klinger suggested were better mental health programs in schools, and implementing systems to identify students who potentially pose a threat, better building and perimeter security on campus and changing the arrival and dismissal procedures.

Teachers and school officials in districts that allow concealed carry firearms don’t disagree with Klinger that there are other issues at play. But they say arming educators is something that can immediately make a difference – particularly when other tactics fail.

Educator's School Safety Network Data quoted in the New York Times

Since the Florida shooting, schools around the country have seen an uptick in threats, incidents of violence and false alarms reported in the media. A group that tracks such reports, the Educator’s School Safety Network, says an average of 70 incidents have occurred daily in the weeks since the Florida shooting, as compared to a more typical pace, of about 10 to 12 incidents a day. Hard to measure, though, is how many of these incidents represent an increase in false alarms, due in part to heightened vigilance, and how many reflect a new surge in truly dangerous threats.

ESSN data (slightly mis-quoted) by Petula Dvorak

Ordinarily, according to the Educator's School Safety Network, about 10 threats or violent incidents are reported each day in American schools. Since Parkland, the network, which has been tracking these incidents for years, said reports have increased sevenfold. The network is recording about 70 incidents every day -- 673 since the Parkland shooting.