With the de­ploy­ment of armed po­lice of­fi­cers in schools on Mon­day, the most ur­gent ques­tion is no longer whether the mea­sure was nec­es­sary, but how long it will last.

So far, the mea­sure has re­ceived more sup­port than con­dem­na­tion from the pub­lic, giv­en the alarm­ing lev­els of school vi­o­lence with knives, cut­lass­es, and even firearms turn­ing up on school com­pounds. 

Amid the wor­ry­ing es­ca­la­tion of vi­o­lence in this coun­try's learn­ing in­sti­tu­tions, stu­dents have been beat­en on cam­era, teach­ers have been threat­ened, and gangs have ex­tend­ed their grip in­to the very spaces where young peo­ple should be pro­tect­ed. 

Par­ents un­der­stand­ably want as­sur­ances that their chil­dren will not be­come the next vi­ral video vic­tim.

The aim of hav­ing armed of­fi­cers in schools, there­fore, is to pro­vide an im­me­di­ate sense of safe­ty and to keep hard­ened crim­i­nals from prey­ing on vul­ner­a­ble stu­dents. But short-term re­lief must not blind us to long-term risks. 

The Gov­ern­ment and the po­lice must es­tab­lish a clear plan for when this pol­i­cy will be phased out, and what oth­er sig­nif­i­cant mea­sures will be put in place to erad­i­cate school vi­o­lence in that time­frame. 

Fail­ure to do so risks turn­ing what was meant to be an emer­gency re­sponse in­to the new nor­mal.

Schools are sup­posed to be safe spaces for learn­ing, cre­ativ­i­ty, and growth. 

If, for too long, the mes­sage sent to stu­dents is that the on­ly way their class­rooms can func­tion is un­der the shad­ow of armed of­fi­cers, then we risk cre­at­ing a gen­er­a­tion of young peo­ple who as­so­ciate ed­u­ca­tion with sur­veil­lance and fear, not with op­por­tu­ni­ties for their fu­ture. 

A last­ing so­lu­tion de­mands a mul­ti­fac­eted ap­proach that ad­dress­es the root caus­es of in­dis­ci­pline. 

The roots of school vi­o­lence lie in gang cul­ture, fam­i­ly break­down, the ab­sence of con­struc­tive out­lets for young peo­ple, and a weak­en­ing of dis­ci­pline both at home and in class­rooms.

For these rea­sons, holis­tic ef­forts to end school vi­o­lence must in­clude a cal­cu­lat­ed plan by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices to strength­en par­ent-teacher part­ner­ships, bet­ter equip guid­ance units, and pro­vide men­tor­ship from pos­i­tive role mod­els. 

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion must al­so col­lab­o­rate more ef­fec­tive­ly with par­ents and com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions to fos­ter a cul­ture of re­spect and ac­count­abil­i­ty, be­gin­ning in the home.

The work of law en­force­ment must al­so go be­yond se­cur­ing schools to of­fer­ing mean­ing­ful guid­ance and di­rec­tion to stu­dents in need of such in­ter­ven­tions.

On­ly when these com­pre­hen­sive mea­sures are firm­ly in place can we be­gin to en­vi­sion a time when armed guards will no longer nec­es­sary. 

That time­line, along with the mea­sures of suc­cess, how­ev­er, must be es­tab­lished now.

As it stands, the de­ploy­ment of armed of­fi­cers in schools - though ar­guably an un­avoid­able re­sponse to a fright­en­ing re­al­i­ty - on­ly buys us some time. 

But that time will be wast­ed with­out the re­al work of re­form. 

If we are se­ri­ous about pro­tect­ing our chil­dren, then the plan must al­ways point to­wards one goal: a fu­ture where our schools are sanc­tu­ar­ies of learn­ing, not com­pounds guard­ed by po­lice with guns.