Counting up tragedies

The number of U.S. school shootings inched up last year, although the total number of fatalities didn’t. That’s according to data from Education Week, which analyzed shootings on school grounds that resulted in deaths or injuries. The education news publication counted 39 such school shootings, up from 38 in 2023. Both years’ tallies were markedly lower than in 2022, when 51 school shootings occurred.

Fatalities from school shootings have somewhat decreased in the past two years. Eighteen people died in 2024, by Ed Week’s count, down from 21 in 2023 and far fewer than the recent peak of 40 casualties in 2022.

The Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as one where at least four victims are injured or killed. In 2024, four school shootings fit that description: Last January, a teenage shooter killed two people and injured six in Perry, Iowa. In February, a student injured four fellow students in Atlanta. Elsewhere in Georgia, a student killed four people and injured nine at Apalachee High School in September. A student killed two people and wounded six in December at a Christian school in Madison, Wis. Only one school shooting qualified as a mass shooting in 2023, while 2022 saw nine mass shootings on school grounds.

Among the prevention strategies advocates have proposed are stricter gun control laws, armed teachers, or increased funding of intervention programs for students facing mental health crises. Another approach—­specific to the courtroom—is to prosecute parents for negligence in relation to their children’s alleged crimes: After the Apalachee High School shooting, authorities arrested both the 14-year-old shooting ­suspect and his father, Colin Gray. They await trial on various charges, including murder and involuntary manslaughter.

Associated Press/Photo by Chris O’Meara

Dark chapter in Florida education

More than 800 people met a Dec. 31 deadline to apply for restitution from the state of Florida for alleged physical and sexual abuse suffered as former students at two now-closed boys’ schools.

Dozier School for Boys opened in 1900, and its sister school, Florida School for Boys at Okeechobee, opened in 1955. At their peak, the state-run reform schools housed hundreds of boys, including orphans, runaways, or youth convicted of small crimes. Former students reported solitary confinement or beatings over minor rule infractions such as mispronouncing a teacher’s name, and some reported sexual abuse. About 100 Dozier students died at the school, including some from gunshot wounds. The circumstances of the deaths are not all clear.

Officials closed Dozier in 2011 and the Okeechobee school in 2020. In 2013, researchers discovered 24 buried bodies that Dozier officials hadn’t accounted for. Last year, the Florida Legislature passed a bill to allocate $20 million to compensate victims of the schools. —L.D.