I knew that schools were doing active shooter drills but never really thought about how early it would start.  My 5 year old daughter explained that they had one at school the other day.  Apparently the entire class hides in the bathroom and there is some secret compartment where a teacher can access a weapon.  My daughter couldn't explain much more details than that (what was the weapon?  how was it locked up? etc.), and she wasn't scared at all, which is a good thing.  She thought it would be funny to see her teacher beat up a bad guy and I had to explain that bad guys were nothing to laugh about.  

Reminds me of the 50s / 60s when kids were taught to duck and cover during nuclear explosions which is also kind of crazy in retrospect.  Just the sad reality we live in.  Part of me is glad that schools are actively planning for it but obviously sad that this is the new norm, but thus is life.

Thoughts?  Any parents talk to their kids about this too?  Any non-parents kind of shocked by this, or already aware it starts this early?  As FYI, my daughter did not have this drill as a Pre-K student last year (same school).  In this instance it started at the K age.

 

I work at a school and I am part of the safety team (help with fire drills and soft/hard lock downs). We actually have a soft lock down drill to practice today. Every time we plan for these or have a drill I think to myself what a crazy world we live in. Basically all the kids and teachers go to a specific area in the classroom where they can not be seen from an intruder looking through the window of the locked classroom door. We have a security guard at the front desk that is not armed so I cant see them doing much if an armed psycho walks in. I don't know what state allows teachers to have guns in a secret compartment but NYS is not one of them.

I subbed in an elementary school from 2012-2014 (I think; around those years anyways). We had those drills then for a K-8 school. No weapons for the teachers, but the door had to be locked, lights off, the class moved to a non-visible location, and we all sat there until it was over. The kids seemed fine with it. It was a small private school so I always figured that we were implementing things way later than the public schools.

Definitely not looking forward to this aspect of my daughter being in kindergarten this year.

I am extremely skeptical that drilling for this kind of thing serves any useful purpose other than to give kids anxiety.

There isn't much anyone can do once an armed psycho walks in unless another armed psycho was just there, expecting them.

 

It helps.  In these situations seconds mean everything.  You are waiting for law enforcement to respond and knowing how to hide and lock down all areas of the school will limit the body count.  Hate to put it in those terms but its the truth.  Run, hide, fight is the best way to combat these intruders.

Some schools focus on the "fight" aspect too.  They teach kids to grab heavy objects and throw them at the intruder.  For older kids they can bum rush the intruder.  Here we focus mainly on running and hiding.  A few of the last school shootings I read about actually ended with a student rushing the attacker.  They were older students though, highschool or college I think.  Heroes for sure as they stopped the bloodshed but lost their own lives in the process.  What a sick fucking world we live in.

 

Country*

The world is all fucked up right now, sure, but frequent school shootings are mostly a US-centric problem at the moment. Not to say that there weren't any in any other country ever, hell we've had at least 2 infamous ones here in Quebec (Polytechnique and Dawson College), but nothing of such scale that drills are required in schools.

Honestly? Move to Canada or England or something.

I would be interested to know if drilling for this has any actually measured positive impact that balances the very real anxiety this is putting onto kids.

Despite the headlines, this risk of having an active shooter at any given school is pretty low to where if the "run and hide" is the key element (since elementary aged kids fighting back is collosally stupid) they should really just characterize these to the kids as an "alternate tornado drill" or something similar rather than worry the kids that age in the least about the possibility of shooters at their school.

I would definitely be interested in seeing evidence of the efficacy of these drills because it really strikes me as a feel-good reactionary response from people that just want to seem like they are "doing something".

There is evidence as they do create more "safe time" for the kids.  Even if it is just seconds more that will decrease body counts.  The data is out there.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/evangerstmann/2019/09/07/why-sc...
There is real trauma that comes from these drills that balances against a very small risk.


Unfortunately, no combinations of search terms I have tried turn up any "evidence" or studies that actually state the drills have a measurable useful impact, and all combinations of search terms turn up MANY discussions of the related trauma and anxiety that these drills dump onto kids.


I AM genuinely interested in seeing the evidence, if there is any, that these drills are actually useful.  


EDIT:

This one has an interesting quote "people who have been trained in options-based approaches consistently perform worse than people with no training whatsoever"

So "lockdowns" DO work.  But "run / hide / fight" training evidently leads to worse outcomes and needless anxiety from the related drills.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/02/16/active...


 

Hasn't been a fatal school fire since 1958 in the US, yet we drill those 3 times a year as well.

Effective, ineffective, whatever. These drills are part of school culture now and have been for many years.

Three times a year..... wow thats low.  We have at least ten a year here in NYC.  

 

Do the math in each school shooting from Sandy Hook on.  The shooters weren't active for very long yet the body counts get quite high.  You can calculate a body cound per minute or second rate.  Kids were easy targets and doors werent locked in most cases.  Now with all doors locked and kids out of plain sight a shooter is going to have to work to find targets and shoot through door locks.  It will add siginificant amounts of time.  This will decrease body counts. 

 

Massachusetts law states 3 as the legal minimum.  Again, with the last death nationwide occuring in 1958, I don't necessarily see a greater need, but buildings and districts will vary.
 

https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v14i14.pdf

https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-too...

Between 2013 and 2017 there were an average of 3320 structural fires at school each year.
Two thirds of those fires are between 8AM and 4PM.

I would argue that fire drills are pretty useful, and I've never heard of them inducing the kinds of trauma/anxiety that appear to be associated with active shooter drills.



Only a few school shootings have ever even involved elementary schools, to where training kindergartners seems ridiculous, given the potential negatives.




 

Please provide an authoritative source that clearly demonstrates the efficacy of more elaborate (and evidently traumatic to some students) run/hide/fight training for students versus basic lockdown drills.

 

I can't.  Im just thinking through a hypothetical school shooting situation logically.  If you can add even thirty seconds of time where kids are out of sight and safe, how can you argue that would not save lives?  What if you could add minutes to tens of minutes of "safe time" before the police arrived?  Logically this would save lives.  What data do you need?

Wait.... maybe I am missreading you as I am refering to a basic lockdown drill where kids and teachers also hide out of sight.  we do not train our kids to "fight".

 

Yep. I had to do these from elementary through high school. Basically turn the lights off, get out of the line of sight from the door window, and keep quiet. They would have staff go around and knock on the doors to make sure you wouldn't answer it. We also had fire and tornado drills frequently.

True hero here:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/08/us...

I haven't traced it all the way through to a primary source, but read the story I provided and find the quote I mentioned.

The point is that simple lockdowns can probably be trained in a non-traumatizing way, reliably AND they work.

Run/hide/fight training supposedly has worse outcomes than no training at all and results in plenty of stories about the kind of anxiety it causes in kids.
Seems like a lose-lose, to me.



Effective training (i.e. lockdowns) does not need to be characterized to kids as active shooter training or "bad guy" drills.

That is my primary objection, as it appears to put a lot of undue stress on kids for a scenario that is extremely unlikely (only a handful of gun incidents at elementary schools since 1999 and only a couple of that handful had students ever being at direct risk).



Maybe at the high school level there is a case to be made for something other than a lockdown drill. 
(though it doesn't seem easy to find evidence that the training matters)
But kids in elementary school have absolutely nothing to contribute to a potentially dangerous scenario beyond playing a game of hide and seek in their classroom with the lights out.

I don't have hard data on the subject, please provide if you have, but aren't most school shooting perpetrated by students from said schools? In this case, even with all the bad guy drills, that shooter-student would still have intel to work from and establish a plan that would factor the added security in.

Whereas a 7 yr old mass shooter is so unlikely that having school shooter drills in kindergarden, and elemetary schools at large, really does feel like needless trauma imposed on the kids.

This is really the "duck and cover" generation just passing the torch along lol

 

Then we agree.  We just do what is called a lockdown drill (we have soft and hard variations but they are bascially the same) and we don't teach the kids to fight.  There is no need to add stress or alert the kids in anyway of there being a bad guy.  But I will say kids ask a lot of questions and I always like to be honset with them when they do so the idea of a shooter coming in is discussed with the kids often.  Just no way around it.  I was here when Sandy happened and we had a whole week of discussions with our kids as well as extra social workers on hand to help traumatized students.

 

It's all about making the kids hard to shoot.  In other words the opposite of "an easy target".  The shooter is gonna try to get in the classroom and its locked.  Ok so now he/she looks in the window and sees no one.  They have to then think about shooting out the door to go in.  It's all about adding precious seconds.

 

Are these really active shooter drills though?  I've been through a real active shooter drill in a Govt workplace where they shoot blanks with assault rifles and there are simulated casulaties of your co-workers (laying down with blood) to really evoke a flight or fight response.  That could be trauma inducing to certain individuals.

My child thought this was funny as they just hid in a bathroom.  I dont know when the terminology of activer shooter is introduced but she just thought they were hiding from a bad guy.  A few minutes in a bathroom isn't trauma inducing by any means.  Especially if your teacher is fun and worth a damn, kids just feed off the emotion of the leader in that case. 

 

Duck and cover!