7 School Security Storylines That Topped 2024 — and Will Evolve in 2025

School (in)Security is our biweekly briefing on the latest school safety news, vetted by Mark Keierleber. Subscribe here.

Inhale. Exhale. 

If you’re reading this, that means you’ve made it through 2024. (Congrats!) But don’t get too comfortable, because in 2025, the student safety and well-being beat is in for some major changes.

With Donald Trump’s second inauguration just weeks away, I figured I’d take a moment to highlight the defining developments in the School (in)Security universe over the last year — and how the landscape could evolve over the next 365 days.

1. The first-of-its-kind sentencing of a school shooter’s parents

Michigan parents Jennifer and James Crumbley became the first in U.S. history to be sentenced on criminal charges stemming from a mass school shooting perpetuated by their child. Each was sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter. 

• Prosecutors accused the Crumbleys of ignoring warning signs that their son had a desire for violence when they gave him the gun he used to kill four classmates and injure seven others. | The Detroit News
• In Georgia, the father of a 14-year-old accused of carrying out a mass shooting that left four dead was arrested on murder charges. Authorities alleged the father “knowingly allowed” the teenager to possess the gun that was used to carry out the attack. The Washington Post
• Parents not liable in Santa Fe: The parents of a former student accused of killing 10 people at his Texas high school in 2018 were sued for negligence, but a jury found them not responsible. | Austin American-Statesman 
• The big picture: I wrote a deep dive into the history of holding parents accountable for their kids’ bad behavior — and why the Crumbley case was unprecedented. | The 74

2. An Apology from Big Tech — and a failed bid for new online safety rules

Amid heightened concerns over social media’s impact on youth mental health, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg did something this year that perhaps nobody saw coming: He apologized. | The 74

• The apology to parents who say their kids suffered, or died, because of their social media use came during a heated Senate hearing where lawmakers accused Big Tech of failing to prevent youth suicides and child sexual exploitation. It was part of a larger panic over teens’ TikTok addictions. | The Wall Street Journal
• Despite the outcry, a federal effort to implement new online safety rules for children has faltered again. And again. And again. | The 74, The 74, Electronic Frontier Foundation

3. Did somebody say TikTok?

The Supreme Court is set to hear 11th-hour arguments about whether the government’s effort to ban the Chinese social media app violates the First Amendment. Justices will hear the case Jan. 10, nine days before the prohibition is set to go into effect. | The Verge

• Claiming it posed a surveillance threat from the Chinese government, President Joe Biden signed a law in April to ban the enormously popular video-streaming app in the U.S. unless parent company ByteDance relinquished ownership. | NPR

4. Scrutiny of AI’s role in student well-being

Try going 10 seconds without reading something about artificial intelligence. I dare you. As emerging AI tools promise — or threaten — to disrupt K-12 education as we know it, they’ve also been oversold, misused and unevenly supervised. 

• The Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement with Evolv Technology, the maker of an AI-powered security screening system used in some 800 schools, after accusing the company of making false claims about its ability to detect weapons and keep kids safe. | The 74
• Joanna Smith-Griffin, the founder and former CEO of the once-celebrated education technology company AllHere, was indicted on charges she defrauded investors of nearly $10 million as the maker of AI chatbots for schools fell into bankruptcy. | The 74
  • Why you should care: AllHere had only a few customers, court records reveal, before it was hired to build a buzzy, $6 million chatbot for the Los Angeles school district. A former-employee-turned-whistleblower told me the overwhelmed startup took shortcuts that put students’ privacy at risk. | The 74
• In a first-of-its-kind criminal case, two teenage boys were arrested in Florida and accused of creating AI-generated nude images of middle school classmates without their consent. | WIRED 
• ‘Distrust, detection & discipline’: As students increasingly turned to generative AI like ChatGPT for help with assignments, educators said they lacked clear instructions on how to thwart tech-assisted cheating. | The 74

5. School-based police officers under fire

The Department of Justice released a scathing report on the police response to the 2022 school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. “Cascading failures” defined a slow police response, the report stated, and officers acted with “no urgency” to confront the gunman. | The Associated Press

• A harrowing investigation found that predatory school resource officers have routinely used their position and authority to meet and groom students. | The Washington Post
• Impact, baby! In response to the article, the department issued guidance urging that school police be trained on setting appropriate boundaries with children. | The Washington Post

6. A small school cybersecurity grant program attracted massive interest

As schools and libraries nationwide fell victim to a surge of cyberattacks, the Federal Communications Commission rolled out a $200 million pilot program in a bid to stop the hackers. Illuminating the scale of the problem, demand far exceeded the available federal funds: The commission received more than 2,700 applications for some $3.7 billion in requests. | K12 Dive

7. The Trump effect comes back into focus

• After Trump faced backlash for his family separation immigration policy in his first term, the president-elect has floated the idea of deporting all members of mixed-status families — a policy with the potential to affect millions of households with at least one U.S.-born child. | Axios  
• The incoming president has pledged to impose wide-ranging restrictions on transgender students and roll back Biden-era civil rights protections. | The Associated Press

Emotional Support

Editor Bev Weintraub’s party animal Marz rang in the new year with something a little stronger than catnip.

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