Shooting occurs. Change safety procedures. Revert back to old ways. Repeat.
Every time a school shooting occurs, schools around the country are forced to look at their current safety procedures and ask the question: “Is it enough?” Most schools replace the safety procedures they have with newer, better methods. Unfortunately, as time passes, these new safety procedures seem to go by the wayside. If schools want to effectively improve their safety procedures, they cannot relax their rules after a few weeks or even months.
In light of the Newtown shooting, JC decided to update its own safety procedures along with the rest of Harford County. We would like to applaud JC for this change. Not only does it show that the administration is thinking about its students’ safety, but that it is aware that there is room for improvement.
Sure, it’s a nuisance to have to be let back into the room by our fellow classmates every time we need to go the bathroom. But if that’s what it takes to save a life, then it’s more than necessary. Teachers now have to wear a badge identifying themselves at all times and lockdown procedures now match those of the rest of Harford County schools. There’s nothign wrong with that
The problem lies within the enforcement.
Principal Madelyn Ball said that there will be periodical lockdown drills throughout the year and no one, teachers or students, will be aware whether or not it’s a drill or an actual lockdown. That’s great, if it’s actually done.
No lockdown drills were performed after the Perry Hall shooting. After the bomb threat, we didn’t practice a lockdown drill again until the procedure was changed because of the Newtown shooting. The past two years were filled with fire drills and tornado drills, but not lockdown drills.
The day of the bomb threat, students who came into school late, not by five minutes but by a few hours, were asked to have their bags searched. Since then, students who come in later in the day are not asked to have their bags searched. They are sent to the attendance office, normally without so much as a glance. Safety requires 24-hour attention. As a school community, there needs to be a uniform protocol for something as simple as checking out late students.
The problem isn’t that JC doesn’t have an appropriate response to tragedies, but it’s that JC doesn’t keep up with its changes. We want to see these new safety procedures hold up. There’s nothing more important than that in the wake of a tragedy like Newtown. But in order to do that, the administration needs to enforce the policy changes they have made.
Have administration members periodically go down the halls and check that all classrooms doors are locked. Address the faculty at all faculty meetings about the importance of wearing their badges. Hold random lockdown drills without any notice. Punish students who don’t cooperate during the drills. Maintain the restrictions so that safety will follow.