BY MIKE CETERA
No one could blame parents of Oswego School District students if they're a bit jittery these days.
But it's important to note, incidents of school violence are exceedingly rare, and the Oswego administration has appeared to handle the two apparently unrelated incidents in an appropriate manner.
The school district has said there was no legitimate worry that these two incidents would have lead to violence. The schools are safe, they said.
Statistically speaking, they're right.
The annual rate of serious violent crime in schools was less than half in 2003 what it was in 1994, according to the Youth Violence Project. And the overall percentage of students threatened with violence has remained relatively stable since 1993.
Federal government data also shows how rare it is to find a student with a gun. In Illinois 37 students were expelled during the 2003-04 school year for bringing a gun to school. At the time, more than 2.1 million students were enrolled in the state's public schools.
School-related violent deaths are also exceptionally rare. Thirty-two deaths were reported nationwide during the 2006-07 school year, according to schoolsecurity.org.
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