Expert gives defensive tips for kids, teachers
In the wake of yet another deadly school shooting, I called a former cop-turned-school security expert and asked him how to best to protect my 5-year-old when he starts kindergarten in the fall.
Now, I’m a big supporter of tougher gun control laws but that’s not going to happen any time soon. Even after Friday’s school shooting in Texas that killed 10 people, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has blamed many things for the deadly rampage, including abortion and too many school entrances and exits, but guns weren’t among them.
I spoke yesterday with Scott Hare of Armoured One, a private company of former law enforcement officials who want to make schools safer. It was started after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, where a gunman killed 20 6- and 7-year-olds and six staff members.
Hare spoke to me yesterday as he stood near the memorial for the victims killed last week at Sante Fe High School. He went there voluntarily, to assess security at the school.
Hare trains teachers to instruct students to “run, hide and fight.” If a shooter enters the school, kids should run. If they can’t get out of the classroom, barricade the door shut with everything but people. Lastly, Hare said, fight back.
Even, Hare said, kindergarten students.
“If a teacher is able to get a hold of the weapon, you’re looking at a bunch of kids piling on,” Hare told me. “As strange as it sounds — why would you have kids jump on an attacker in a classroom with a bunch of little children — you can’t push 30 little children off the top of somebody.”
Envisioning my little boy jumping on an attacker made me sick to my stomach.
While older students can help and understand a lot more, 5- and 6-year-olds do what teachers tell them to do.
“So if that’s jumping out a window on a first floor and running across a field to the nearest house and don’t come back,” Hare said, “then that’s what they do.” What about parents? “Find out what the school is doing. Do they have plans in place?
Get on the school board,” Hare said. “Be an active participant in your community. That’s unfortunately what our society has gotten away from.”
My son is excited for kindergarten. When I leave him there that first day and the days that follow, I’ll be praying a shooting doesn’t happen here, too.
Because more and more of us feel like Santa Fe High School shooting survivor Paige Curry, who said: “It’s been happening everywhere. I’ve always kind of felt that eventually it was going to happen here, too.”