Parenting & Family Quote by Mike Fitzpatrick

Safety is doing heavy political work here: it sounds like a commonsense baseline, but it’s also a demand for certainty in a space where certainty is impossible. Fitzpatrick frames the school day as a transfer of custody - “six or eight hours” that quantify trust like a contract. Parents hand over what matters most; the state, via teachers, must return it intact. That arithmetic is persuasive because it feels concrete, and because it quietly implies that if anything goes wrong, someone failed a simple obligation.

The phrase “without question” is the tell. It’s less about protecting children than about foreclosing debate over how safety is defined, who gets blamed, and what trade-offs schools must make. “Paramount” elevates safety above every other competing mission - learning, independence, social development, even privacy. In practice, that hierarchy tends to justify surveillance, stricter discipline, hardened campuses, and a culture where educators are judged not only as instructors but as risk managers.

Fitzpatrick’s choice to bundle “teachers, faculty and volunteers” widens the circle of responsibility and, subtly, the circle of suspicion. It signals that threats can come from anywhere in the institution, and that everyone inside must be aligned under a single priority. The context is a political climate where school safety is routinely mobilized after tragedies or scandals, and where reassurances are also preemptive defenses. The intent is reassurance; the subtext is accountability pressure: if safety is “paramount,” anything less becomes negligence rather than misfortune.