The young get political
Students board buses to Florida’s capital to meet with lawmakers.
DES MOINES – Melissa Mahon felt the same sick pang in the pit of her stomach last week that many of America’s parents felt.
They sent their kids to school — dropped them off or watched as they climbed onto a school bus or backed out of the driveway — with an extra twinge of dread about what the day might hold for them.
The massacre of at least 17 students and adults at a school in Parkland, Fla., shook the nation yet again.
Mahon, who lives in Keosauqua, a town of fewer than 1,000 in southeast Iowa, is the mother of three children: in preschool, kindergarten and first grade. Her thoughts were heavy Thursday morning at the bus stop.
No fewer than four school evacuations this week in Iowa fed the collective paranoia.
Mahon and a gaggle of friends and fellow moms began commiserating at the bus stop and continued over Facebook Messenger.
“So this school shooting has me so freaked out,” Breanne McEntee wrote. “I think we need to start talking again about buying/requiring every classroom have ‘The Sleeve.’ … Maybe we can do a fundraiser or something? Ideas?” McEntee referred to a device manufactured by Fighting Chance Solutions in Muscatine, Iowa.
About a year ago, another mom, Nasseem Hesler, Keosauqua’s mayor, noticed an ad for a similar device on her Facebook feed, probably because the Facebook software picked up on her time spent in the group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. Hesler mentioned it to friends and school officials.
The gadgets fit over the arm mechanism of a classroom door to secure it from the inside. The theory is that even a student would be able to quickly barricade the door if a shooter lurked down the hallway.
Anxiety that had built up after last year’s mass shootings at a country music concert in Las Vegas and a Baptist church in Texas rallied these selfdescribed “mama bears” into action.
“We’re tired of it,” Mahon said. “It’s like, OK, nobody’s going to do anything about this: our government, our state government, our national government.
“We’re the moms, and these are our kids. What can we do?”
Instead of waiting until the next school board meeting, they acted. They began to refine McEntee’s idea to help secure every classroom in the small district — about 50 rooms total.
They added the Parent Teacher Organization president to the Messenger thread. They reached out to school administrators.
Principal Chuck Banks was familiar with the devices. Though nothing is a sure preventative, Barnes said he considers them a valid deterrent to improve the chances that students might be defended or given enough time to escape.
Banks has worked in the district since 2000, and this is his ninth year as principal. He has lived through the transition into the modern era of school lockdowns and only one accessible entrance where strangers must buzz in.
He helped guide his teachers through the training to be certified in ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate) that helps students systematically flee a scene.
Banks helped the moms estimate that about $100 per classroom would cover devices to secure the doors, as well as fill a bucket with other emergency supplies (50 rooms x $100 = $5,000).
The moms began by donating money themselves to cover their own children’s classrooms.
They reached out to fellow parents and business owners and hit their $5,000 goal in a single day.
Mahon is a nurse and anesthetist. She and her husband moved from Orlando in 2012 to raise their family in what they deemed a safer community.
She worked at a hospital in Florida where one of her doctors was gunned down by a patient who ambushed him in the parking garage.
Mahon recognizes that mass shoot- ings are not confined to certain regions or neighborhoods.
“It just doesn’t matter anymore if it’s city or it’s rural or urban,” she said. “It’s happening everywhere. And it’s going to infiltrate every school. It’s just completely scary.”
Mahon can’t imagine how a modern teacher copes with the responsibility of students who must not only be educated but defended to the death.
“I tell people all the time I’ve got 386 kids,” Banks said. “I’ve two daughters but 386 kids in that building.”
The fact that some of his students’ parents were “willing to do anything they can to help protect those kids” overwhelmed him with gratitude.
“It kind of makes you sad at the same time that we have to have that discussion,” Banks said. “But it does give you a little bit more relief knowing that we’re just doing one more thing to possibly help those kids.”
There has been “no credible threat” to his district during his tenure, Banks said. But it’s easy to understand why Mahon is more worried that her kids should be prepared to respond to an active shooter, rather than a fire.
“How do you drill for something like that,” she wondered, “and explain that to them when you want them to retain their innocence?”
These Keosauqua parents, a mix of liberals and conservatives, have been riled by a tragedy 1,400 miles away, but they felt empowered by their successful one-day fundraiser.
But what next?
Some Iowans on Thursday picketed Brownells in Grinnell, a firearms-maker whose CEO is president of the National Rifle Association.
“We all feel helpless,” Hesler said, “and we all feel like we’re just praying every day when you send your kid to school that nothing bad with happen.”
“It’s happening everywhere. And it’s going to infiltrate every school.” Melissa Mahon Mother of three