U.S. schools look to guards, technology a year after Sandy Hook

[onehandle]

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - A year after a gunman massacred 26 first-graders and adults in a Connecticut elementary school, educational officials across the United States continue to face the longstanding question of how to best protect their students. Principals and administrators across the country in many cases are choosing between technologies such as electronically controlled doors and the addition of security staff.

For one district, the Richmond School District outside Milwaukee, that has meant spending $24,000 to protect its one building with buzzer-entry doors and better lighting but choosing to skip bullet-proof glass. "Our goal was to delay or deter intruders until the police could respond. Bullet-proof glass didn't fit that criteria for us," Superintendent Jeff Weiss said in an interview.

The school opted for stronger door frames and made improvements to lighting in its parking lot. The school also placed metal security screens over windows and doors so if the glass is broken, an intruder is still kept out. The district joined hundreds in the United States that in the last year have wrestled with how to prevent a shooting.

The solution has been a mix: more and better-trained guards, and billions of dollars of security technology. Schools are aiming to stop gun scares and killings, such as the shooting deaths of three students at an Ohio high school in February 2012, the wounding of two students at a California high school in January 2013 and a potential mass shooting at a Georgia elementary school in August that was averted when a school bookkeeper talked the gunman into laying down his AK-47 assault rifle.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/11/us-usa-shooting-connecticut-safety-idUSBRE9BA0FP20131211

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Our kids will now be schooled in prisons, thanks to the phallic hobby of basement dwelling, paranoid old men.



A Bushmaster rifle belonging to Sandy Hook Elementary school gunman Adam Lanza in Newtown, Connecticut is seen after its recovery at the school in this police evidence photo released by the state's attorney's office November 25, 2013.

[hack89]

1. There are basic changes you can make without making the school prison-like

just make it hard for someone to get in plus creating safe areas for the students. Something as simple as being able to lock classroom doors from the inside could be a life saver.

[Blue_Tires]

2. I think classroom door locks would create more problems than they solve...

I know the security contractors are happy, but it's sad to me watching school systems spending $$$$ they can't afford for safeguards that will do little or nothing to stop determined mass shooters...