One day after a fatal stabbing in a Bronx school left one student dead, another in critical condition, and a third facing murder and manslaughter charges, students were back in the building.

Schools chancellor Carmen Fariña said grief counselors were available at the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation for both students and teachers grappling with Wednesday's incident, but only a handful of students came in.

"Look, there's nobody here. How can you call it a classroom when there's no more students, when there's only a few," student Dwhy Hoyt said. "So basically we just played cards or whatever, just to try to get it off our minds."

Even though Hoyt returned to school, that didn't mean he felt safe. In fact, he blamed school officials and teachers for not intervening in the dispute that lead to the stabbing, which police officials said had been brewing for two weeks. Hoyt's mother, Uneek Valentin, also felt school officials allowed the situation to spiral out of control.

"When that pencil got thrown, why wasn't it addressed then? Why did it escalate into a fight, escalate into a stabbing and then a murder?" asked Valentin.

This was the first time since 1992 that a student had been killed inside a New York City school and it's reigniting debates over metal detectors, which were not in place at Urban Assembly. But police managed to install them at the school just hours after the stabbing, arguing that they would have found the 3-inch switchblade that was used. But the issue is complicated.

"When you look at all the scans done every day, they uncover only a tiny amount of contraband, like weapons," said WNYC's education reporter Yasmeen Khan, who has reported on metal detectors in school. "Sometimes that contraband is not even found by metal detectors. It's found from searches on school grounds."

On top of that, reporting by WNYC and ProPublica found that there is no way of evaluating the effectiveness of metal detectors. There is also concern over the psychological effect the scanners have on the students — especially since black and Latino students are more often subjected to this sort of surveillance.

In the meantime, the city is continuing to grapple with ensuring school safety while respecting the rights of students and building a safe space for them to learn.