Lockdown Drills: Keeping schools well prepared for threats.
As the deafening sounds of the sheriff’s sirens drowned out the children’s laughter, all eyes focused on the police cars dashing by. Suddenly the loud speaker came on and the frantic voice of the announcer called, “Boys and girls the sheriff has issued a lockdown, please go back to class!” After getting over the initial shock of the announcer not following the lockdown procedures, teachers’ attention quickly turned to the group of students still playing in the school yard. As teachers exited classrooms in search of their homeroom students, they were met by students attempting to follow the procedures. While Washington debates in the actions to be taken to keep students safe at schools,
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“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” (Ross, p. 507-509). Principals need to start thinking back to the tragic school shootings, especially in Connecticut to prevent from happening again. If they would of taken the proper amount of practice in preventive strategies they outcome may have been different. When something is planned or strategized with enough time the outcome is better than just by practicing the skill once a year. Teachers need the practice to gather the students as quickly as possible in order to prevent having another tragic outcome like Connecticut teachers did. Staff needs to take action now. There might be other ways to prevent this shooting from happening, but until legislators don’t have a clear point to address districts need to use what they have in order to prevent and for now all they can use is the common sense of teachers and how to implement it properly with enough time put into …show more content…
In the first place, the person making the announcement was not following the procedures due to the fact that she announced that the Sheriff had issued the lockdown instead of reading the appropriate script in the emergency preparedness handbook that the district provides to all school personnel. It was clear that the groups of students still playing in the yard did not know the severity of their actions. In addition, students need someone on the PA system (loudspeaker) that with a calm, cool voice directs them to the right place and in the right state of mind not one that will direct them in a panic mode. Violence is targeting schools in our society, well trained and prepared teachers will help minimize the number of students getting hurt. As mentioned above the practice of drills with different scenarios will help staff find the best strategy to gather students back to their assigned classroom and students will be more conscious about the procedures to follow during a real lockdown and they will also be more responsible when making decisions at that moment. For these reasons districts should make lockdown drills mandatory instead of just recommending to have them. Furthermore, the districts need to make sure teachers are practicing at least two code red scenarios and two yellow scenarios. By implementing these rules in school parents
Based on Reason-Rupe Poll conducted in Dec. 2013, among 1,011 interviewees, who are being asked about which provided measures might have averted the Sandy Hook shooting, top three options are better mental health (27%), better parenting (22%), and employing armed school officials on site (20%). Because prospective culprit who would commit school shooting cannot be easily recognized, better mental treatment and parenting for possible wrongdoers seem to be unfeasible in an effort to avoid such crime. The poll reflects that putting armed guards in schools is acceptable and functional, as compared to the other factors, in dealing with gun violence in schools. Moreover, the Daily Caller, a news agency, quotes from Robert Curran Sr., chief information officer for IT, “They’ll [armed guards] be able to respond immediately to armed threats and be a deterrent to anyone planning an attack, [...]” (Campbell) In other words, Curran believes that the presence of armed guards in schools serves as a firewall to lower the risk of gun violence. Curran is surely right about the advantage of patrol officers on campus, because the critical time that armed security staff can save is critical to the lives of those endangered children and adults in a shooting
The history of school shootings has shown an increase in mass school shooting. The very first known school shooting in the United States occurred on July 26, 1764 in present-day Greencastle, Pennsylvania. As part of the Pontiac's Rebellion, four Lenape Native Americans entered the school house and started shooting, killing the schoolmaster Enoch Brown and about nine students. Only two students survived the massacre (“History”). Since the 1700s the United States society has changed in many ways. Schools have become more than just one room school houses and each grade has its own teacher. Furthermore, the problem of school shootings has not decreased but rather increased over the years. On the one hand, reports from the Centers for Disease Control showed that in general school violence decreased from 1992 to 200...
It is a sad time in American history when one can easily recount recent school shootings in their own area. This ease stems from a sharp increase in the number of firearms brought into elementary and middle schools across the country, with an intense focus on the issue beginning after the shooting of 20 children from Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. Most school shooters are male, white, and often upper middle class. They are also more, often than not, under some type of mental stress that is causing them to create this type of violence in our communities. In fact, many school shooters are never suspected of doing any harm to their peers and teachers until it is much too late.
School shootings are still happening and we have to put a stop to it. We need to have these teachers prepared and ready to fight. Students to deserve to have their lives out to rest knowing something could have been done that’s why we need to have these teachers armed. This is a cold world if someone enters a school with a weapon teachers need to have their weapon ready too for the sack of their children. A school is a fun place to learn but to also keep safe. This is why teachers should be armed.
School shootings have gotten to the point where parents are afraid to send their own children to school. School should be a place where parents, children and faculty feel safe, wouldn’t you want to be safe somewhere that you attend every single day? After many school shootings throughout the nation, schools have changed the ways of not only the government and schools districts but of concerned citizens as well. The one real question that we have to ask is how many more of these and how many more deaths need to happen for real action to take place? This was answered after the Sandy Hook shooting. Government officials, school administrations and even the president himself are trying their hardest to prevent these from occurring. Schools throughout the nation have changed their procedures, security and have caused domino effects on many things.
Although most security measures passively make schools safer, it is not nearly enough to prevent an individual who intends on creating mass violence from completing his or her task. State representatives, national organizations, school staff, and parents need to come together to figure out the most reliable ways to prevent an active shooter situation from occurring in their schools. One solution that has been active is many schools have partnered with local law enforcement agencies to provide a police officers to patrol school grounds....
On the morning of October 3, four people were shot within a span of approximately 2 hours in Aspen Hill, and other nearby areas in Montgomery County. Another was killed that evening in the District of Columbia, just over the border of Silver Spring. In each shooting, the victims were killed by a single bullet fired from some distance. The pattern was not detected until after the shootings occurred on October 3. Fear quickly spread throughout the community as news of the shootings circulated. Many parents went to pick up their children at school early, not allowing them to take a school bus or walk home alone. Montgomery County and District of Columbia schools declared a lockdown, wit...
The frequency of school shootings has gotten out of hand. How many more stories like Valerie’s will it take for the American public to realize what prevalent an issue school violence is? How many more children will have to be murdered until their peers can go to school without a significant fear of not making it home that day?
Schools have been creating new rules and procedures to help secure school campuses which is helping the parents of children attending public school feel reassured about their child's safety. The recent school shooting in Parkland Florida caused a lot of new safety precautions around the school, there are, “ fewer entrances, with law enforcement posted at each point; identification badges that students and teachers are required to wear at all times; and clear, plastic backpacks the only bookbags allowed on campus.” These new rules that the school were coming up with were something that was necessary. The school officials had to take charge and show the parents of students that the children were going to be safe and well taken care of. The principal of the school in Parkland Florida, Ty Thompson, compared the new safety system, “entering in a sporting event, or even Disney World.” If this safety precaution is used at other places why is school any different, the precautions are designed to help ensure the safety of the attendees as well as the people who work there. Most parents might say that these new rules are helping the kids feel more safe being at school, and that the rules are giving them reinsurance on their child's
Texas has passed a new piece of legislation that has now given the students, teachers and other officials to carry a loaded gun onto and around their college campus. The case for this gun carry legislation was that if the students, teachers and other officials were able to have these gun than maybe the issue of school shootings would almost evaporate in some areas. This no doubt sounds like one of the better arguments for guns on campus, seeing as how much of an epidemic we have with school shootings. However, congress seemed to have disregarded an issue on how this could also harm the campus more than it could help. Giving way to empowered threats, reckless engagements, and innocent losses is only some of the ways that this could be a negative thing.
When is it necessary to start taking more action in the prevention of school violence? In less than ten years, in the United States, there have been more than twenty-five school shootings resulting in at least one death per shooting. This number is outrageous and certainly warrants more school violence prevention. It is unacceptable that the schools in the United States are not safe enough to allow children to attend without the possibility of getting seriously injured, or even killed. Most people realize that there is a slight chance of school violence everyday, but not everyone realizes how great a possibility it is for a school to be...
The United States of America is number one in the world for many reasons. The U.S. has more top ten universities than any other country (Bridgestock), the most medals in the Olympics since it began, the most powerful military (Johnson), the five largest corporations, and fourteen of the most valuable brands in the world (Wile), but the U.S. is also number one in one of the most unacceptable categories. The U.S. has the most school massacres in the world. School massacres are clear and present dangers to every campus across the nation. The worst school massacre in the U.S. did not involve shooting, it was a bombing that killed over forty people. While, school killings only make up less than one percent of all homicides and suicides among adolescents
The schools had also brought in school officers to have on school grounding during school hours. They feel that they need these type of secured to have their children protected. Parents feel a little say knowing that there is a police in school patrolling. In several school they have started to do searches to make sure no one is bring anything dangerous that could harm a person. This is super important to makes sure no weapons are on school grounds. Schools have also put on their policy that if any weapon is found on the person’s possession there could be serious
In the United States there have been 142 school shootings since 2013. In Australia there has never been a school shooting. “A school shooting is a form of mass shooting involving a gun attack on an educational institution, such as a school or university”(Wikipedia). According to the United States Secret Service, a school shooting is where the school is purposely planned and selected as the location for the attack. A school shooting may occur between any individual, student, instructor, administrator and staff employed institution (Sinnamon, 2016). There is no one profile to describe a shooter but almost all attackers are students at the school. School shootings occur when anyone enters a campus and begins firing weapons such as a rifle, shotgun
In recent years, tragedies have been visited upon schools across the country. From Kentucky to Oregon to Colorado, the notion of schools as safe havens has been shattered by the sound of gunfire. These acts are not limited to any geographic regions or family backgrounds, nor do they have a single catalyst. Those who have committed such heinous acts have done so for different reasons, at different times, in different schools. But these acts of school violence have at least one thing in common- they have spurred all of us to take a look at what can be done to better protect children and teachers at school. Protecting our children is not simply a matter of public policy. It is a matter of strengthening basic values, of teaching children right from wrong, of instilling in them respect for others. We each have a responsibility to work to end youth violence and to keep schools safe for children and for those who teach them. Youth violence in many schools has reached universal proportions. It is not only happening in our high schools, it has also made its way into our elementary and middle schools. Everyone seems to have a different perspective on why there is such a problem with school safety. Some say it is the parents’ fault, some say it is the media, and others blame the schools. Yet, the question still remains. What can be done to make schools safer for the children and staff? One thing we need to do is learn to listen to our children and observe their behavior. According ...