Smaller, Safer Schools in Cambridge

I grew up in a small town so I know what safe feels like. It was comforting for me to know that most people I ran into on any given day probably knew my name and likely knew my parents. People are generally safer in small towns because of the relationships that develop over the years. Patterns emerge and anything out of the ordinary is immediately noticed.

Schools are not much different; smaller schools are inherently safer than larger ones for the very same reasons that smaller towns are safer than larger cities.

Small schools are well-known across North America to foster stronger and safer communities of learning. The Chicago Public Schools system, for example, says the following:

Small schools offer students a personalized learning environment, where they are known well by a group of teachers. Students in large schools sometimes fall through the cracks because it is easier for them to go unnoticed. In a small school, a student is usually only one in 300 to 400 students, rather than maybe one in two thousand, and is known by all the members of the small school community. Teachers talk about how students are doing, and compare information across classes and over the years. All of the students know each other. If a student is having trouble, all the student’s teachers can meet with the student and/or parents to talk about the problem and create a plan to help.

Small schools are significantly safer than large schools. Incidents of violence and drug abuse are far less common in small schools. For example, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), only 7.9% of urban small schools reported a incident of serious violent crime (physical attack or fight with a weapon) while 26.5% of urban schools with an enrollment of 1,000 students or more reported such a crime to police (NCES, “Principal/ School Disciplinarian Survey on School Violence, 1997).