Welcome to our first Friday link roundup.

Each Friday I thought we’d cheers to the end of another week and look back with some links to big or interesting education stories that caught my eye. I hope you guys will chime in through the comments sections with things I may have overlooked or stories that piqued your interest.

This week it appeared education news was dominated by the issue of school safety so I thought I would start there and focus pretty heavily on the issue.

– Here in the Roanoke Valley, Roanoke City School students headed back to class this week and officials announced Monday they intend to bring back a national schools security expert, who has worked with the school system before, to reassess safety measures. Roanoke County Public Schools also contemplated how to pay for increase safety measures.

– Gov. Bob McDonnell also announced the members of his safety task force, including several local folks. They meet for the first time on Monday in Richmond.

– Students in nearby Nelson County were sent home Wednesday morning after the  the county’s high school received a bomb threat.

– Pulaski schools were locked down Tuesday after a miscommunication.

– In Henrico County, a handgun was found on school property at Highland Springs High School. Two students were taken into custody.

– In a small Alabama town there was a thwarted terror plot at a high school in Russell County. I included this one because it gained national attention and really caught my eye. I saw the story on the Today show and was shocked to see small Russell County, which I briefly covered, making national headlines for something so grim. Salon also has a good recap of what’s transpired.

– Late this week there was another school shooting in California where a student was injured after being shot by another student.

In other news . . .

– Former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee made some headlines this week (what else is new?). You may recall after leaving D.C. she formed the nonprofit Students First, which made some headlines this week for grading education in all 50 states. Here’s a good roundup of other Rhee news from Education Writers Association’s public editor Emily Richmond.

– Remember that movie with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis on a mission to change a failing school? According to the Hechinger Report, “the real-life version” continued to play out this week. Desert Trails Elementary School in California has become the first school in the country to take a struggling school and convert it to a charter using the parent trigger law.

– In New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has an idea to offer grants for an extended school day. Hmm, extended school? That sounds familiar, where have I heard that this week?

– And finally I really liked Washington Post education guru Jay Mathews on “Tell Me More.” He was talking about what he’s learned in 30 years of education reporting. He was asked what people get wrong about education. He said people don’t understand the potential of low income students. Listen to the whole thing, but this quote was great:

“If you give them more time to learn and more encouragement to learn, they can do amazing things.”

So, what have I left out?