The full ex­tent of the hor­ror that un­fold­ed at Robb El­e­men­tary School in Uvalde, Texas, is still be­ing processed al­most two weeks lat­er with de­tails still emerg­ing of how a gun­man in­vad­ed that school com­pound and fa­tal­ly shot 19 stu­dents and two teach­ers. Here in T&T, al­though thou­sands of miles away, it is easy to re­late to the pain and fear that tragedy has caused to res­i­dents of that small com­mu­ni­ty as school vi­o­lence is a clear and present dan­ger here too. For any­one who thinks it can­not hap­pen here, two in­ci­dents in the re­cent past are sober­ing re­minders that lo­cal schools are at con­sid­er­able risk and that the dan­ger can come from with­in. Two decades ago, T&T had its own ex­pe­ri­ence of a fa­tal school shoot­ing when Phillip Seer­at­tan, a 17-year-old stu­dent at the In­ter­na­tion­al School of Port-of-Spain in West­moor­ings, was shot and killed af­ter hold­ing fel­low stu­dents hostage and shoot­ing a se­cu­ri­ty guard. In an­oth­er fa­tal in­ci­dent at a lo­cal school, in 2013, Re­nal­do Dixon, a stu­dent at Wa­ter­loo Sec­ondary School, was stabbed to death on the school com­pound. And with Uvalde still very much in the head­lines, just this past week there was an in­ci­dent at the Pen­te­costal Light and Life Foun­da­tion High School, To­ba­go, where a 17-year-old stu­dent threat­ened to shoot up the school. That is why it is dif­fi­cult to draw any com­fort from the claim by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion that school fights are now “down to al­most ze­ro.” Fights are on­ly one as­pect of the school vi­o­lence prob­lem in this coun­try. At a me­dia con­fer­ence on Fri­day, min­istry of­fi­cials and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) said re­cent mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed to curb vi­o­lence and in­dis­ci­pline in schools were yield­ing re­sults. Based on these promis­ing re­sults, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Sharon Gomez-Coop­er said po­lice pa­trols will con­tin­ue to be con­duct­ed at spe­cif­ic schools. Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer (CEO) Dr Pe­ter Smith an­nounced that a mer­it/de­mer­it point sys­tem was be­ing con­sid­ered as an ad­di­tion­al mea­sure to help com­bat school in­dis­ci­pline and vi­o­lence. Still to be made pub­lic are the full rec­om­men­da­tions of the mul­ti-sec­toral com­mit­tee that draft­ed a school dis­ci­pline ma­trix and re­cent­ly hand­ed in that doc­u­ment, which con­tains so­lu­tions to curb in­ci­dents of school vi­o­lence. It is a com­plex and var­ied prob­lem and over many years there have been nu­mer­ous con­sul­ta­tions, rec­om­men­da­tions, and in­ter­ven­tions every time the prob­lem gets se­ri­ous enough to prompt pub­lic out­cries. Many moons ago, dur­ing the tenure of then ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Clive Pan­tin, a re­spect­ed and ex­pe­ri­enced ed­u­ca­tor, there was a Na­tion­al Con­sul­ta­tion on Vi­o­lence and In­dis­ci­pline in Schools. That 1989 con­sul­ta­tion re­sult­ed in the White Pa­per on Ed­u­ca­tion that guid­ed the plan­ning and ed­u­ca­tion poli­cies of suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions. When school vi­o­lence flared up again in the times when Dr Tim Gopeesingh and then An­tho­ny Gar­cia held the port­fo­lio, more con­sul­ta­tions were held, and rec­om­men­da­tions im­ple­ment­ed. The prob­lem sub­sides but nev­er goes away com­plete­ly, so yet again ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials are search­ing for fresh so­lu­tions to a long-stand­ing prob­lem. It is time to re­vis­it past ef­forts and re­view the mea­sures that worked then. The ed­u­ca­tion and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty au­thor­i­ties must get things right to avert the crises that will be in­evitable if in­dis­ci­pline and vi­o­lence con­tin­ue to fes­ter in T&T’s schools.