rickyrick said:
We secure what we want to secure, seems as though we don’t want to secure schools.
They could be reconstructed so it would be easier to secure. We just choose not to, we choose to upgrade city hall, we pay for catered luncheons for staff. We pay for unnecessary wars, but we won’t invest in our children.
I agree. I think I may have commented previously (albeit maybe not on this forum site) that what we need isn't gun control, it's stupid control. And the stupid applies to the school boards who decide what to do (or NOT do) regarding school security.
Example (please bear with me):
In 2005, the high school serving my town and two adjacent towns was gearing up for a
major renovation/alteration/addition project. "Major" meaning around $40 million of 2005 dollars. In mid-2005, as the project was about ready to be let out for bids, I was engaged to perform a review of the final construction documents as a check for building and fire safety code compliance. I did that, I found and reported a number of issues, and the issues were addressed and corrected. Fine.
Keep in mind that a project of that scale and scope doesn't get designed on a week, or even a month. In fact, I know from having been on a previous building committee that the project had been cooking for almost ten years. Since design on the final project began sometime in 2002 or 2003, it was just a few years after Columbine (April, 1999), so the school board was paying a lot of lip service to "school security" so they couldn't have a repeat of Columbine.
Consequently, knowing that security was supposed to be a top priority, I was astonished to find that all the classrooms in the new wings had glass sidelights adjacent to the corridor doors. It wasn't a code violation, so I couldn't cite it as such. But I was concerned. I called the Deputy Chief of Police and discussed it with him; he agreed that was pretty dumb. So I took my concern to the school board, and they took it to the architect. The architect's response (remember, the architect had been charged with designing for maximum security) was: "We like it."
The new wings were built with the glass sidelights. Obviously, that's a weak link. What good does it do to lock down classrooms against a shooter when there's a sheet of glass next to the door? One or two shots, the glass goes away, and the shooter can reach through the [former] sidelight and open the door to the classroom.
On other school projects at around the same time, I dealt with schools who were very concerned about having the best locks on the classroom doors so the teachers could lock the doors if there was a problem. I asked if they had any "floating" teachers (teachers who don't teach in their classroom, but who "float" from one room to another to teach a specialized subject). Answer: Yes. I asked if the floaters are given the keys to every room they teach in. Answer: crickets + deer in headlights look. Then I asked if any of their teachers ever got sick. Answer: Yes. Do the substitutes get a key to the classroom they're teaching in? Answer: No, the custodian opens the room in the morning and locks at after the end of the day. Question: How does a substitute lock down the classroom if he/she doesn't have the key? Answer: Crickets + deer in headlights look.
THAT's why we need stupidity control. The people who are in charge of making the key decisions affecting school safety and security frankly don't know diddly about the subject, and they're too absorbed in gearing up for cool stuff like Common Core to spend any time educating themselves about what's really involved in making a school safe.
In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting, the town adjacent to my town proudly announced that they were instituting new measures to make the grammar school safe. I knew the building inspector in that town then (he has since retired), so I called him up and asked him what they were doing to make the school secure. The system they were so proudly announcing was
exactly the same system that had just been installed at Sandy Hook -- and which failed completely at Sandy Hook.
As the saying goes, "Ignorance can be educated, but stupid is forever." If we want to get serious about school security, we need to work on stupid control.