School Lock Downs

[TimboKhan]

Why not conduct "active shooter" drills where all involved (except, hopefully, the active shooter) get to experience trying out the plan and, while no lives are at stake, improving what does not work?

I agree that this might be a little much for the kids to swallow. Kids are scared of fire, but it is something easily escaped from. Gunmen, on the other hand, not so much. When I was in elementary school in the late 70's we still did nuclear bomb drills, and to be honest with you, they scared the hell out of me. I suspect that active shooter drills would do much the same, without a whole lot of benefit.

 

[jmr40]

About every 2-3 years our local police dept. uses one of the local schools to conduct a drill such as described. By rotating schools they get a chance to be inside each school and learn their way around all of them. They used the school where I teach about 5 years ago. The drill was on a Saturday and all students, teachers and parents were allowed to volunteer. My 12 year old son was "wounded" in the initial assault and got an ambulance ride to the local hospital who also participated in the drill. I was taken hostage along with about 20 other people. All of the hostages were teachers so we could learn more from the experience. The lead "bad guy" was a SWAT training officer from another county who gave us all an education as we played a cat and mouse game with our local SWAT team as they tried to rescue us.

It was an eye openiong experience. All school shootings are different and keeping the kids locked down at least until danger is imminent is probably the best choice. Locked doors will not stop a determined attacker but this will spread the kids out over the whole school and slow down an attacker until help arrives.

 

[Citroen]

jmr40 - thank you. You hit upon what I had in mind. No one says you have to have kids scared to death in order to learn how to react. I went through the nuclear drills too and we thought it was lots of fun. But then I grew up with air raid warnings and blackout exercises.

If any of our readers/contributors have kids in a school system it might be prudent to inquire about what preventive measures are in place. Does the police department have a layout for each school in their response area? Does the school have a plan other than just "lock down"? Does anybody know who will coordinate a response?

Seems reasonable to me to have something other than "hope" on the side of the children. They are, after all, entrusted to our care.

John
Charlotte, NC

 

[ilbob]

If there is an active shooter coming towards my room, I am going to tell the kids to RUN LIKE HELL AND DON'T STOP. Hopefully that room will have a back/side door or windows on the other side (my classrooms usually don't).

pretty hard to do if you don't have windows that open, or don't open enough, or are not at ground level.

i agree getting the hell out is maybe the best idea if there really is a shooter on the premises, but by the time you figure that out it may well be too late.

BTW teach - is "towards" a proper word?

 

[Mannlicher]

despite all the 'experts' voicing their opinions here, the school has to go with the percentages, and that means locking down the school.

 

[Erik]

Most lockdowns are initiated when a crime occurrs in the local community but outside of the school.

In theory and practice, lockdowns keep the two swarms, parents and kids, from contributing to the problems at hand while decreasing the ikelihood that they come to harm.

During on-campus active shooter situations the logic holds true, unless of course, the shooter is at your immediate location.

I think everyone is struggling with the best solution for most poeple, most of the time given that circumstance. Arguably nobody more so than your first responders.

I'm glad I'm not a policy writer for such things.

 

[jmr40]

Citroen, all schools are required to have a disaster plan in place. It deals with everything from tornadoes to intruders with guns. I cannot say how good other schools plans are, but I am part of out disaster team and have specific roles to carry out. The police and fire dept. have detailed plans of our schools and plans of their own. You will not get specific info from school administrators because details of the plan must not be known to the public. If anyone were able to know specifics of how we plan to evacuate in case of an attack it could jeapordize everything. There are certain aspects of our plan that I am not allowed to discuss with other teachers.

The truth is that there is no way to guarantee something like Columbine will not happen somewhere else unless we make our schools look like maximum security prisons. Right now the public does not want that.

 

[JKimball]

I asked my cousin, who is a teacher, about this once and she told me that one of the local police departments had done some tests at one of the local schools to get an idea whether it was better to lockdown or run for the hills as fast as you can. She said that in the active shooter simulation there were fewer casualties when the students were told to get out of the school as fast as they could than there were when they did a lockdown. If you are interested in pursuing that further, I could see if she remembers what police department that was and you could contact them. I don't know how interested they would be in sharing details with you though.

 

[ilbob]

She said that in the active shooter simulation there were fewer casualties when the students were told to get out of the school as fast as they could than there were when they did a lockdown.

I would expect that. much easier to shoot students who are all locked up in a room and can't escape. No doubt this information was suppressed from the general public though, for their own good.

You will not get specific info from school administrators because details of the plan must not be known to the public. If anyone were able to know specifics of how we plan to evacuate in case of an attack it could jeapordize everything.

mere citizens should never have information about what their government institutions have planned for them. For their own good, of course.