For more than a decade after the 1999 school shooting at Columbine High School in suburban Denver, Frank DeAngelis held a simple promise: He鈥檇 stay on as principal until every student class enrolled in the district during the attack reached the graduation stage.

Despite the community upheaval and media frenzy that followed the notorious massacre, DeAngelis kept his word, remaining as principal until his retirement in 2014. But new research suggests that many families take an opposite approach after a shooting tears apart a school community.

Instead, they flee.

After districts suffer school shootings, student enrollment plummets over the long term as wealthy families move away, . The shift carries significant implications for schools and the communities they serve as districts become more socioeconomically segregated. The enrollment declines persisted even as districts shelled out millions of dollars on physical security and student supports like counselors and as educators assured families that the schools remained safe places to learn.

School shootings have a profound impact on the national political discourse and on the by gun violence at schools since Columbine. Previous studies have found that school shootings are detrimental to students鈥� mental health and academic performance. The negative effects of school shootings are particularly acute in less affluent schools that serve large numbers of students of color and those from low-income households, where such tragedies are also more prevalent.

Gun violence at schools remains statistically rare and campuses have actually over the last several decades. Yet they drive policy debates around campus security, student mental health and gun control.

As better-off families flee, their departures could have a detrimental effect on the lower-income community members who are left behind, said report co-author Lang (Kate) Yang, assistant professor of public policy and public administration at The George Washington University. In the short term, students who experienced the tragedies are 鈥済oing to lose some peer support,鈥� as their classmates move away which could contribute to 鈥渢he psychological stress the shootings have already caused,鈥� she said. Since student test scores are strongly tied to family income, districts鈥� loss of well-off students could also hurt their performance on standardized tests, the report noted.

The enrollment dips could also be felt over time as the areas鈥� median household income declines and the communities鈥� socioeconomic profiles are altered. The findings highlight a need for policymakers and administrators to focus on improving the perceptions of campus safety and quality 鈥渢o avoid the pitfalls of yet another round of middle-class flight away from these schools.鈥�

鈥淚t鈥檚 a stigma that needs to be countered,鈥� Yang told 蜜桃影视. Even though districts increase spending on physical security and mental health care, she said those efforts aren鈥檛 enough to dispel the bad rap, 鈥渨hich suggests that either the resources are not enough or they鈥檙e not used correctly. Maybe there is not an effort, or a coordinated effort, to show people that the school is still safe,鈥� despite the isolated shooting.

To conduct the study, researchers analyzed a database of 210 school shootings between 1999 and 2018, and compared them against district enrollment and Census data. In total, campuses that experienced shootings saw a 5 percent enrollment drop compared to those that weren鈥檛 victimized. Enrollment at nearby private schools also dipped, suggesting that shootings 鈥渞educe the desirability of the community and carry negative implications beyond the public schools where shootings occur.鈥�

To understand the demographics of students moving elsewhere, researchers analyzed enrollment changes between students who were eligible for free and reduced-price lunch and those who were not. The enrollment declines were driven 鈥渁lmost entirely鈥� by students who did not qualify for subsidized school meals, a common proxy for student poverty.

Researchers also analyzed educational spending in the wake of school shootings, finding that spending on security and student supports doesn鈥檛 crowd out instructional resources primarily due to an influx of federal money. That could also suggest that taxpayers nationwide may have a vested interest in prevention efforts, the report says.

On average, campus shootings are associated with a $129, or a 19 percent, increase in per-pupil federal funding. While per-pupil spending on student supports like counselors increased by $22 following shootings, such tragedies led to a $107 per-pupil spike in capital spending driven by construction costs to repair buildings and upgrade security. After shootings, districts increased spending by $248 per pupil, indicating that school systems took on debt to pay for the response measures.

Anecdotal evidence previously suggested that families fled their communities after school shootings, including an , where a 17-year-old is accused of killing 10 people at a high school there in 2018. Earlier that year, the mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida, to new homes on the West Coast, away from the politics, trauma and fear that lingered after the attack that left 17 high school students and faculty members dead.

After the 1999 Columbine shooting, DeAngelis said his school became 鈥減robably one of the safest high schools in the world,鈥� as officials ramped up security. Yet, some students chose to enroll in other nearby schools or left the district entirely. Part of the problem, he said, is that the school was thrust under the media microscope, which likely contributed to some families leaving.

Yet for some families that departed after the shooting, he said the decision may have been a mistake.

鈥淎ll of a sudden, they return the following year because they didn鈥檛 have the support at the other schools that they went to,鈥� including a network of peers who went through similar experiences, he said.

But the researchers found the decline in students wasn鈥檛 immediate but developed over time and wasn鈥檛 limited to those who were enrolled at the time of the tragedy.

For report co-author Maithreyi Gopalan, an assistant education professor at Pennsylvania State University, the results indicate that long-term efforts to combat the effects of campus shootings is paramount, especially as enrollment is depleted over several years.

Such shootings require more response than addressing the immediate effects and providing 鈥渃ounselors for one or two years and then it鈥檚 gone because the funding dries up,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e want to think about having a sustained impact鈥� through policy so mitigation efforts aren鈥檛 short lived.