We have fire drills in schools, why not "Columbine Drills"..?????

Question

Our schools have to wise up. There are always going to be angry, mentally ill kids in our schools. Our students need to be prepared on how to respond to these emergencies!! These makeshift things (thank God) like holding a table against a door, just is not enough! There should be alarms set off as soon as the first shot is fired (hopefully before) doors should be shut and bolted, etc. There are ways to do this. We just have to be more creative!!

Answer 1

This is one of the best suggestions I have read on here. Creative. Reasonable. Practical. I totally agree with you. I have nothing to add. You pretty much said it all! Thanks!

Answer 2

The schools in my area do "lock down" drills. And the teachers and staff go through at least one afternoon every year of learning the drills and preparing for such a situation. Then teachers are given a handbook that outline all emergency protocol. That would include several situation-- tornadoes, extreme weather, lock down, fire etc. Where I live tornadoes are rather common. So it is probably the most important protocol we have. More than once we had to use the protocol, though it was only a precaution. The tornadoes did not touch the school but they were close by. If a category 4 or 5 tornado hits then even the strongest buildings don't stand much of a chance. Like the tornado that hit Joplin MO. Most of those people survived due to be ready for such an event.

Answer 3

I was just wondering the same thing myself today. How often do fries happen in schools that actually injure students or take lives? I cant remember the last time we had a lockdown drill, and even whenever we did, they were not taken seriously. I think i was in elementary school the last time we had one. I agree that we should have other emergency drills, although like someone brought out, it is possible that the dangerous person would be a student and therefore know what other students would do. Extreme safety precautions should be taken at all costs

Answer 4

The High school that I went to did these. We had a lock down drill, we all had to sit against the wall away from the doors and windows and the teacher kept a look out for suspicious activity. Then about 3 months later we had a lock down. Someone driving by the school saw someone putting a shot gun in the ditch in front of the school. But when it came to doing this we all knew what to do. We were calm also because we knew that the situation had been thought about so we knew the school had a plan. It helped us out allot. The gun being put in the ditch turned out to be someone hiding their friends gun from his truck that he forgot was out there so he would not get in trouble. So at least there was actually not a real threat to us but the school and authorities handled it very well. They brought in dogs to search the school for other weapons as well and found nothing.

Answer 5

The problem is most of the time the shooter is a student at that school so when you have drills on where to go in an emergency that person knows where everyone will be. Children need to be taught to think for themselves in that sort of situation. Everyone has certain basic instincts to live, maybe we need to have classes on certain things you can use in emergency situations. However there shouldn't be complete panic either. There needs to be a balance between having a plan and being able to know how to get to safety on your own.

Answer 6

Well its called a "Lockdown" drill and it does have a purpose
I remember lockdown drills when i was in 9th grade like 5 years ago...
And in the drills every teacher would lock there door to the classroom so no one could get in....
Yeah its not effective if the shooter is a student but atleast he cannot go classroom to classroom shooting people...
Then agian i dont think a lot of schools have locks on the doors but my schools did!!!

Answer 7

In response to poster above:

Lockdown drills have no point if the student shooter is already inside. In fact all they do is trap all the potential victims. I know California has code red drills where you run to the potential safe spots such as the local library, middle school, other high school etc.

Answer 8

There wouldnt be these "sick freaks of nature" if people would just ACCEPT PEOPLE FOR WHO THEY ARE. And reach out to a fellow student who is in need, instead of sweeping the problem under the carpet and hoping it will go away.

If someone would have reached out to Cho MORE than oncem then maybe this would not have happened.

If you ask me, we need to get rid of all the bullys in this world. But something tells me, there will NEVER be total accpetance of others. There will always be ignorant people.

Answer 9

as a high school student i found myself asking this same question the other day. i think it should be neccessary that schools make a drill like this mandatory, we all can't assume that we are going to know what to do if faced with this sort of situation. i completely agree with you.

Answer 10

One thing that hasn't helped is the push to have ALL kids in regular schools, regardless of their disability.

And now if they had these drills, they could be called VT drills.

Answer 11

The reason is simple....
The attacker would, obviously, be a student and therefore be part of the drill. And by being part of the drill he/she would know how to work around that.