The Gallup organization found important data that demonstrates parents’ concern about their children’s safety during this back-to-school period.
According to the analytics and advisory Washington-based company, the poll was able to detect high levels of parental anxiety similar to those measured in the aftermath of Newtown, Connecticut, and Parkland, Florida, according to new Gallup research.
The return to school of after summer vacation occurs the week before Labor Day, and Gallup recently released some data which indicates that 34% of parents said they fear for their children’s safety at school, and 12 percent said their children have expressed concern for their safety.
The Hill breaking-news journalist, Zack Budryk, recently wrote: “Gallup: No letup in parents’ concerns about school safety”, where he compares recent measurements on the subject.
As an example, last August, near the start of the first school year after the massacre in Parkland´s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School i that left 17 people dead, 35 percent of parents said they were preoccupied.
In August 2013, the first back-to-school period after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in which 26 people died, including 20 children, 33 percent of parents said they were worried, according to Gallup.
Gallup conducted the poll August 1-14, a period that included back-to-back mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, that left a total of 31 casualties. Neither of the shootings occurred at a school.
On Saturday, August 31, another shooting in Texas left at least seven people murdered.
According to Gallup, anxiety among parents of school-aged children reached an all-time high of 55 percent in April 1999, the month of the Columbine High School shooting, where 13 people died. Although the fear had diminished a bit by that fall, with 47 percent it was still a record for that month of August. It fell to 26 percent the following August.
Fear levels have not reached the levels of April or August 1999 in the following two decades, but they increased after several other school shootings, including a 2001 incident in 2001 at Santana High School in Santee, California, and an Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, in 2006, reaching an all-time low of 15% in 2009, according to Gallup.
Gallup surveyed a random sample of 320 parents of children in kindergarten through 12th grade. The poll has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
Translated by: José Espinoza
Noticias Newswire
