“All we need, really, is a change from a near frigid to a tropical attitude of mind.”

These words from journalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas clearly reflect her geographic location — she was a fierce environmentalist in Florida — but they can be applied broadly to issues around the globe, no matter the actual temperature.

Her name became widely known this February, when a young man opened fire at a high school bearing her name in Parkland, Florida. The mass shooting left 17 dead and many injured — physically and mentally.

The incident spurred another round of talk about school safety, with gun control advocates and students calling for tighter restrictions, while politicians and school officials looked to further secure buildings.

In short, it continued the same cycle that has followed other school shootings. The solutions raised to handle such situations also followed a predictable path.

The result of adding bulletproof glass, metal detectors and security cameras, and finding money for more police officers to roam the halls has been — plainly — ineffective. If it made a difference, these efforts would produce a noticeable difference. Instead, school violence continues to repeat.

Hasn’t history told us that if you do the same thing over and over, you’ll get the same result over and over?

Instead of focusing on barriers and, frankly, making schools more like prisons, we should look deeper at what is causing our students to make violent choices, such as shooting up a building.

Simply put, we need to take care of our children. We’re just not doing that; we’re leaving them feeling alone and adrift.

Do you know who has the ability to connect with them, to help them through struggles they might be facing? School nurses.

“I think that the general public has the perception that the school nurse just sits in her office and hands out Band-Aids all day. I think it’s seen as an easy job,” said Kelley Strout, an assistant professor of nursing at the University of Maine with a focus on community health. “In my experience … school nurses have some of the greatest responsibilities of all nurses in health care. They are dealing with absolutely an increase of complexity in child health needs.”

So what if we worked to effect change on a personal level and made sure health care professionals in our schools had the support — and staffing — they need to provide what our children need? What effect might that have?

Next week, The Times Record will attempt to answer that question.

We will run a series of articles focused on the health of our students, asking what our school nurses are seeing in their jobs, and the effects mental health and substance abuse in our learning centers.

Let’s warm our attitude in helping our students, not grow colder in the face of violence.

That’s what they need.