Hi Readers — Today I’m posting on Common dyfrrarfrz
Good about school safety…or what passes for it. Common Good believes in a common sense, non-hysterical approach to policy, and I’m thrilled to be blogging there. Here’s how the piece begins:
Dear Lenore: I took my kids to Sunday school a few weeks ago and the door we usually go in had a sign on it saying that we could no longer enter there. Everyone needs to go in the door on the other side of the building. Never mind that to get there, people now have to walk their children through the entire parking lot, which was already congested. (So much for “safety!â€)
As I was walking my son to his classroom, I saw the woman in charge of Sunday school guarding one of the doors, waving away the people hoping to be let in. I asked her about the new rule and she said, “I implemented it for safety. Before, we had people going in and out of six different doors. It just wasn’t safe.” As we walked away from her, my 7-year-old son whispered, “Why is that not safe, Mommy?”
I couldn’t answer.
For the rest, including a look at how her son’s public school is handling the “new threat,” please click here! – L.
Halt! Security theater at work!
I’m a substitute teacher in my kid’s school corporation, very small less than 400 students K-12. The changes they’ve made was locking extra exterior doors during the day that were unlocked before and all classroom doors during the day. Now instead of walking across the street to school my kids have to walk around the school. But when I sub whatever class I’m in, the doors aren’t locked because I don’t have a key. “It’ll be fine for one day.” the custodians always say when they unlock the doors for me. Fine. I could care less. I don’t think locking all those doors makes it any safer just annoying. I do have to curb my tongue from being the devil’s advocate and spouting off, “But if any gunmen comes in and starts shooting rooms it will be all the poor substitute teachers who’ll get shot!!” I really don’t think this but my overly sarcastic brain wants to get the dig in about how stupid this policy is.
Locking doors against armed gunmen is like holding an umbrella over your head during a nuclear attack.
I chair the health and safety committee at my school. After Sandy Hook, people asked what I planned to do. My response: Nothing. When I took this job, I knew that guns existed, and considered the possibility of a gunman attacking the school. I also considered how unlikely it was. Keeping both in mind, I planned appropriately. After the attack, nothing has changed – it’s still possible, it’s still unlikely, our preparation is still in place.
I honestly don’t understand the point of ‘responding’ to this – are you so unimaginative that you couldn’t see that it was possible before? Why the need for a response? Of course, sometimes an attack somewhere else can show some possibility or gap that you never thought of before, but this attack wasn’t particularly original. Yes, the security system failed – but all systems fail. Anyone who says “it should never fail” is either selling something, an idiot, or simple not thinking straight.
You know, they did the door locking thing when I was in university too. My first two years, I lived in a “bog” style residence (single rooms set up in pairs, with a small bathroom between each “pair” of rooms). Each resident, of course, had a key to the building, and a smaller key to their individual room. My first year, our exterior keys opened all the exterior doors, but my second year, they changed it so that some of the exterior doors were “exit only,” and may have been labelled as such, or maybe we just had to remember, or maybe they were labelled, but then someone ripped down the signs. Anyway, I don’t know how it made things any safer; it was just annoying.
Later on, in my third and fourth year at that university, I lived in an apartment-style residence, where each person had a key to the building, their apartment, and their bedroom within that apartment. Over the course of the two academic years I lived there, people saw me coming and going quite a bit. Now, this particular building had a large “meeting room” on the first floor, right in the front, and it had glass walls, so anyone in that room, would see anyone coming or going. This meeting room also had a separate door, so that people could come in for events without coming into the residence itself. One evening, I was coming back from class, and my hands were full (backpack on my back, clarinet in one hand, recently-completed painting in the other), and there was a group of people in the meeting room, but not really doing anything specific, just mingling. Many of them knew me. I stood in front of the door, obviously asking to be let in, because my hands were full, but I was told that they couldn’t do that, for “security reasons.” So, I went to the regular door, juggled my things around, and let myself in with my key.
Anyway, the really outrageous thing about this was, that SAME EVENING (if I remember correctly), just a few hours after being denied convenient access to my building, by someone who knew me, for “security” reasons, I was sitting in one of the communal TV rooms, watching Gilmore Girls after dinner, and some girls walked into the TV room, who weren’t residents, or even students at the university, but representatives from a day spa in the area, trying to sell a “special deal”–$300 worth of spa treatments for $50. I told them I wasn’t interested, and I was watching TV after a hard day of classes and rehearsals, and how did they even get in? They said that someone had just let them in the meeting-room door. So, a legitimate resident was denied access in the name of “security,” but randoms off the street were allowed in. I think this “security theatre” was a comedy of errors.
I’d argue that our school is *less* safe with new safety measures that only create gridlock and angry parents frustrated by wasted time and resources. Our Crossing Guard has said he’s been cursed at daily because of the gridlock.
And then I see this:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/25/st-louis-pastor-announces-his-own-gun-buyback-program-for-childrens-toy-weapons/#
I’m pleased to say that as far as I know, nothing has changed. Our school has always kept all the doors locked during school hours except for the main entrance. Parents have always been required to sign in and wear a visitor’s badge . I do know that quite a few teachers here in Utah went out and got concealed carry permits as it was in the news, but I have no idea if any of the teachers at our school did and I really don’t care. They could have had them before for all I knew. To my knowledge there haven’t been any changes in the way the school is run and I’m one of those parents on PTA who is at the school helping out in some capacity at least once a week or more. My husband even did some volunteering, teaching a weekly vocational lesson for the last six weeks in second grade and didn’t have to go through getting fingerprinted or anything. I guess people are still pretty trusting here in Utah.
I continue to be amazed by the national blindness of everybody, including school principals, teachers and administrators regarding the fact that 90 percent of school shooters were driven by psychiatric drugs whose side effects are: aggression, irritability, violence and suicidal behavior.
http://www.antidepressant-dangers-non-medical-alternative.eftisland.com/html/violence_and_dangers_caused_by.html
AND…
For years teachers have pushed parents to drug their kids — then we have school shootings — which we never had when I was in school.
And then we have all the stories about Lance Armstrong using performance enhancing drugs? Huh? Excuse me, but haven’t public schools been allowing students on mind-altering psych drugs to participate in sports for many years?
And now all these so-called safety precautions that don’t address a main cause of the danger…
My kids school had a policy of keeping the external doors locked already, but now they require accompaniment at all times for visitors (so for example I wouldn’t be able to go down the hall to the library for the Scholastic book sale by myself, someone from the office would have to walk me there), and parents picking up their children at the end of the day are no longer allowed to wait for their child inside the school. Nor can we wait in our cars because kids have to be handed off to their parents directly – now every parent has to stand outside in sub-zero weather until our child is brought out to us.
Fortunately, my kids bus so I rarely pick them up from school…but I used to drop by every once in a while a few minutes before the bell to take my kids out for a treat, and now it’s just too much trouble.
A gunman, on the other hand, would not bother buzzing the door, signing in, or waiting to be escorted.
I had 15-minute phone conversation with my son’s elementary school principal about the lockdown drill that’s going to happen on Friday. I was surprised at how much she agreed with me about school safety and how implementing more measures won’t help anything, but she said that other parents AND the teachers want the drill.
Here’s the thing: All classroom doors open to the outside instead of a hallway, so I don’t really have a problem with a lockdown drill, per se. There was an incident earlier this year where an armed bank robber cut across the property of another school in the district while fleeing the police. A nearby town had a mountain lion stroll across the playground a few weeks ago, so I do see a time and place for teachers to lock the doors. My problem is with the cower-in-place portion of the drill–and I had the principal explain exactly how this is going to go down and what the teachers will be telling the students about why we need such a practice. She said there would be no mention of guns or shooters–only that under the desk is a safe place for them to be. (Hmmm…)
Pulling my kid out of school for a 3-minute drill seemed like a bit of overkill, especially since getting under the desk is pretty much what you do for an earthquake drill–and CA is known to have earthquakes occasionally.
*sigh* I didn’t want this, but it does seem like they’re reacting fairly well overall. The principal did say that we won’t be getting a buzzer system, armed guards, etc. But there are plans to have the school have a single point of entry, except during drop-off and pick up time, but that this is mainly so that they have an idea who is on campus should an emergency like a fire or an earthquake happen. So she says.
She also mentioned that the school district has some sort of an agreement with the city about open space, which may dictate what can or cannot be closed off to the public, at least after hours. Wow, who knew old legislation ever worked in one’s favor?
@Kate–How old are your kids? Is this a preschool, a junior primary school that only goes to grade three or so, or a standard K-6 or K-8 elementary school? For anything above kindergarten, I think kids having to be handed off to their parents, is absolutely ridiculous. Does this mean that kids aren’t allowed to walk or bike to and from school alone? What about those who take the bus? Do their parents have to pick them up from the bus station? What about kids who are walked to and from school by an older sibling, or a teenage babysitter? Is that allowed? What about latchkey kids, or those who prefer to stay at school after school, so they can shoot hoops or play on the playground? What about kids who are involved in after-school activities? Do they also have to be handed off to their parents after that, or are the rules somewhat relaxed outside of school hours? The whole system sounds crazy, and really not a good way to foster independence in young people, unless, of course, they’re VERY young.
Since Newtown, my daughter’s elementary school has brought about a few changes that give the appearance of safety to only the very naive.
– Even the most familiar person now must present ID upon entering.
– No walk-in dropoffs of little kids. The children must be met outside by a teacher. (End-of-day pickups, however, are still a free for all; see first point, above.)
– The Ivy League-educated principal, who a year ago insisted she ‘couldn’t do anything’ to stop people from parking in the fire lane (to which I replied, ‘Get a cop out there for ten minutes writing tickets and people will get the message’), now has a woman posted by the front door shooing away parents who park illegally.
Do I feel the school is safer because of these measures? No. I feel pandered to.
Hmm, if there is only one open door and all others are locked, doesn`t that mean that most of the escapes routes are locked, too? To me it seems, the school officials didn`t create more safety but build the perfect trap in case of an emergency. This would absolutely be forbidden here, every publick building has to have several emergency exits which have to be held open.
Shortly after the shooting, our church had its annual meeting. There is a school associated with the church, and someone official from the school spoke to the issue. I wasn’t paying much attention, since I personally have no relationship to nor interest in the school, but my ears perked up when the official announced that they would be making some changes, because “our primary responsibility is the safety of the students.” “NO, LADY!” I wanted to shout. “Your primary responsibility is to teach the kids! Sure, safety is important, but if anything other than education takes over as your primary mission, the students will be better off if you just close the school.
Lenore, I admire you greatly for having the stomach to fight the insanity that is taking over society. Sometimes I just want to give up.
My wife recently noted to me that the “security measures” put in place by our son’s elementary school after Newtown, sign-ins, badge wearing, and staff at the front door are now gone. Most of these rules were in place before, and equally as ineffective and unfollowed, but worked better until they moved the main office from the front door down the hallway, and around a corner. Have things changed? Not really, although I was surprised the “theatre” ended as quickly as it did.
I certainly couldn’t answer her son’s question either.
I thought (until this morning) that my school was doing an excellent job of doing nothing. I hadn’t seen or heard of any new security measures. However, when I arrived at school this morning, I saw a sign on the main doors that said all visitors must report to the reception desk. I know that this is nothing new, and I’m lucky that we don’t have it any worse. But I was dissapointed to find that even my school couldn’t hold out against the pressure to make things safer.
Katrin — I can’t speak to all schools but at ours – the doors are locked from the outside but open from the inside. So students use the nearest door to leave the building in an emergency, but all people entering the school (other than students at arrival — they have a couple of options) come in through the main doors.
Our school’s security measures are unchanged by Newtown but were already at a badge wearing, show your idea, buzzed in level….
I had a friend who said “We learned that locked doors don’t do anything”, my response was “We already knew that!” She was horrified.
My daughter’s high school is now requiring students to submit a form to get approval for their PROM DATES, if those dates are not attending said school. These people are then subject to a background check. I had to call the principal to get approval for my nephew to be able to escort my girl–otherwise he would not have met the criteria (because he did not finish high school). For the life of me, I cannot see how this is supposed to make anyone safer!
My school addressed REAL safety issues that might have resulted in kids really hurt, potentially weekly.
Our school is an alternative style school for k-12. Kids are mostly homeschooled, and come and take as few as one class a week, or as many as 5 a day. Elementary is mainly two days.
The issue we had is first, this public option is located in a church, which does not have the designed drop off area that most public schools have. So we have people parking and dropping off kids, other pulling behind parked cars and dropping kids, and some parents parking and going in with kids to help out with classes. Mainly, a lot of kids running between cars.
So with some cones, they designed a drop off/pick up lane. Fewer kids are going between cars, and when they do, they usually have their parents with them.
My sons’ preschool recently had an open house (for prospective new families), and I overheard parents asking about the school’s security. *Sigh* We are a small co-op preschool that rents out space in a church building. The church isn’t swimming in money, and neither is our school. Since Sandy Hook, the teacher did start locking all of the doors except one, so that placates parents, at least. But true security measures? It’s just not going to happen, nor should it, IMO. It would be a complete waste of our resources. I wish people would understand that.
My kids’ elementary now has all the interior doors locked – hallways/wings are now locked. Teachers have keys around their necks and are constantly fumbling around to find the right key to get to PE or lunch or art. When I go to volunteer in the library (because I have been fingerprinted and cleared!!) I have to be let in through two locked doors by one of the secretaries. Not sure how her regular job is getting done b/c she now spends most of her day unlocking doors.
My kids have complained some but mostly are upset because they can no longer take their birthday treats to their former teachers or specials teachers. I’m sure the teachers are bummed too because I make some damn fine treats!
My child’s daycare is located on the edge of downtown in a second-tier city (this is not NYC, Chicago, Philly or a major city with crime as a real problem). As parents, we must code-in at drop-off and pick-up with a code specific to the child. It is both for security and for attendance (apparently we are supposed to use a different door code if we come in the middle of the day for a meeting or event but not to pick-up our child). Fine. We are new to the center so we don’t know many of the parents, certainly not the ones with children outside our own child’s classroom. No new security measures were put in place post-Newtown, but an email went out to all parents reminding us not to hold the door for other parents (citing security and attendance).
Regardless, said security measures were rendered useless when one of the center’s “grandmothers” (senior who volunteers in the classroom) was mugged outside the front door at 8:15 am during drop-off. Somehow I wonder if we all had better recognition of each other –parents, teachers, volunteers– that we would do much better in looking out for one another. But no one has organized a meet-and-greet post-Newtown.
@Kate – your school’s system sounds incredibly dangerous. How do kids get out in the event of a fire or something? Having visions of the teacher standing in the hallway fiddling with the keys, classes of kids behind her choking in the building-up smoke….
Remain very grateful we have none of this nonsense. If you’re on school business, usually you go to the office so people know you’re around, particularly after the earthquake, but otherwise no one cares.
My daughter is in her last year of day care (5th grade yea). This year she has decided to aid the day care staff by telling them whose parent is pulling up based on their car. She is really good at this job. They can now open the door (locked after Sandy Hook) and greet the parent. They will miss her next year.
My (high) school added a new security guard, a former cop who also happens to be an alum. He reviewed our safety measures, and the only change he seemed to make was installing one of those buzzer-lock things on the (glass) front door. Myself and several of my classmates pointed out that Sandy Hook had a lock on the front door-the gunman shot through the glass. Also, our new security guard is not armed. If there was an intruder, he’d just become Target Number One.
Our new guard is a friendly person and he brightens everyone’s day, but I feel that he is an unnecessary addition to our school.
I think I made this comment on another post but it’s relevant here. For the last 1.5 school years we have had a single point of entry system during the school day after a wrought iron fence was put up everywhere chain link fencing was not already in place.
Post-Newtown all classroom doors interior and exterior to the school are locked with shades drawn. Also, when we show up for performances at the school the principal and an administrative aide are at a table attempting to sign everyone in to the school and give them a “guest” badge. Like that’s going to prevent something like Newtown from happening. We are a small school…most people recognizze parents and grandparents. I have to tell you I am far more worried about feuding divorcees who can’t even hold a rationale conversation about their student, then anyone coming in to shoot up a school.
This is another place where free range issues meet helicopter parent issues. I know a handful of parents of women in their 20s who still hover like helicopters. One of the things I’ve noticed pertains to their daughters and that idea of living in “the city”. I silently roll my eyes when I hear things like “I don’t want her living in the city” or “I tell her she shouldnt be out after dark”. I think parents have always worried about their young adult children but this phenomenon where the children actually listen to their parents paranoia and make life decisions based on it (for instance live in the suburbs instead of the city where your job is located and what is the cultural and social hub) is new. If my parents had said you should live in the city it’s too dangerous you can bet I leased an apartment the next month in the city.
And now I realize I posted this under the wrong article. I’m feeling kind of foolish. 🙂
Uh, I’ll bet you did.
My sister said the same thing–“We never had school shootings when I was in school!” I then reminded her of the classic Boomtown Rats song, I Don’t Like Mondays and the school shooting which inspired the song.
The difference is merely in the exposure. Back in 1979, I’d’ve heard about it from Walter Cronkite, our half-hour a day exposure to world news we had when I was a kid. I wouldn’t have heard about it every day for hours on end for three months.
I wrote a column about my school board’s wonderful response to Newtown — to change nothing.
http://www.timescolonist.com/life/parenting/family-411-school-lockdown-not-the-solution-1.36302
Peter,
Take a look at the wikipedia entry for “list of school shootings in the United state:”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States
Notice it says:
“Prior to 1989, there were only a handful of incidents in which two or more victims were killed by firearms at a school…”
The difference between what went on a long time ago and what has been happening over the past 15-20 years is significant.
@Steve –
With absolutely no indication of CAUSATION. CORRELATION maybe. However, they are limiting themselves to the number of incidents in which two or more victims were killed in school, not the number of incidents of gun violence in school. So is this because killers are better arming themselves for mass killing? Is this because our safety theater actually makes it more difficult for students to get to safety? Is this because kids today are so used to following others and not thinking for themselves that they can’t figure out how to get out of a room without someone telling them even when shots are being fired?
Or, as I suspect, is this just a result of the large amount of press that these situations now get, making it a desirable way to end it all and go down in infamy if that is the route you are going in life?
@JJ–My mom used to believe that I “shouldn’t be out after dark” (or, at least not alone), because it “wasn’t safe,” so she’d either highly discourage it, or attempt to ban it altogether, when I was home on university breaks. However, if I’d followed her rule to the letter, then that would have meant that I couldn’t take any classes that let out after about 4:30 p.m., for the bulk of the academic year, since I’m from Canada, and winter can last for up to five or six months here. It would have also meant that I couldn’t run errands during the late afternoon, or meet friends somewhere in the evening–in other words, it would have meant missing out on a good deal of the university experience. When I came home on breaks, I wouldn’t be allowed to, say, walk to the video store after dinner if it was winter, and therefore dark at that time, whereas that would have been perfectly fine in the summer, when it was light out.
The even crazier thing, though, was that my mom never enforced this rule consistently even when I was younger. In high school, it was considered “safe” in her eyes for me to go to band practice at school in the evening (dark or not), but it was “unsafe” for me to go alone to my friend Patrick’s house in the evening, when he lived maybe two blocks from the school. Likewise, when I was in university, and I pointed out that never being out alone after dark would have meant not taking night classes, or even choir (started at 4, finished anywhere between 5:30 and 7), she insisted that she “didn’t mean it like that.” So, I guess it was fine for me to be out alone after dark if it was for an academic reason, but otherwise, it was dangerous.
Donna,
It’s a fact that many psych meds, especially antidepressants, can CAUSE: irritability, aggression, anxiety, bizarre, out-of-character behavior, suicidal thinking, and violence.
Now, say you have a student who is angry about something. Anything. AND he or she is taking a daily dose of a substance that causes those feelings and behaviors. You have good reason to believe the increase in school shootings are being caused by the medications that so many kids are taking.
The general public seems to think it makes perfect sense when a person high on illegal drugs does something bizarre and violent, but they are totally BLIND to the fact that many LEGAL prescription psych meds (and even some non-psych meds like Interferon) are also cause for concern.
Steve,
I don’t doubt that some psych meds CAN cause negative symptoms in SOME patients. And psych meds contribute to some suicides and spontaneous acts of violence (contribute to and not cause) which is why they should not be prescribed lightly and should be closely monitored as I would recommend for every prescription drug on the market. Blaming psych meds for this spate of mass shootings is simplistic and lacks basis.
Your comparison to illegal drugs is apt. There are no cases of mass shootings being committed under the influence of an illegal substance. Not a single one has shown evidence of crack, cocaine, meth, heroin, or even legal drugs not prescribed to them. Do some people under the influence of those things show sudden, impulsive violence? Absolutely. Well-thought out plans of mass destruction? Nope. Not sure what basis you have to show that this one single type of drug alone is capable of producing systematic well-thought out, often planned for months mass destruction when no other drug in existence – even those that are known to result in irritability, aggression, anxiety, bizarre, out-of-character behavior, suicidal thinking and violence – does.
Further, you can’t separate out the drug from the person. This is not a situation of a perfectly normal person getting hooked on meth. The person who was prescribed these drugs has some diagnosed mental problem prior to ever encountering the drug. Since millions take these drugs without even thinking about shooting up schools, even if they experience the negative consequences that you describe, it seems that there is something within the individual that causes the problem and not the drugs.
Donna,
You make some good points. However, if you read the book:
Medication Madness – by Peter Breggin M.D.
You will learn more than most people know, including most doctors and psychiatrists, as well as attorneys and judges. Too many people have a knowledge gap about psych medication side effects held in place by vested interests, false claims by drug companies, and false assumptions.
This book will change how you see future and past scenarios and events that you probably never imagined had anything to do with medications.
Steve,
Sorry but I am very skeptical of claims to be in the “know” and insistence that “most [other] doctors and psychiatrists” just know nothing about it.
Donna,
Skeptical and open?
or
Skeptical and closed.
Breggin testimony before Congressional committee:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBJfZtB_3cc
At our church council meeting recently, the idea of locking all doors except one came up. Fortunately, our minister nixed the idea saying he would never lock the doors, which would mean locking people out – our doors will always be open. A suggestion was then made to remove the “gun-free zone” signs from the doors instead. And I desperately wanted to suggest arming the ushers who could “get ’em at the door.” Thank goodness this country is tolerant of allowing its citizens to arm and protect ourselves. If we weren’t able to, I can’t imagine what this country would be like. Chicago?
P.S. I forgot the best part… One of the ushers (which is why I wanted to pipe up about arming them) was ranting about how when he ushers, little children come out of the sanctuary (those would be mine, I’m sure) and go through fellowship hall to the restroom during the service, unattended. “Anyone could come into the church and snatch them.”
Really??! I just shake my head.
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