[sunrico90]

What can we do to make our schools a safer place:

1. Reinforced classroom doors without windows in door.
2. Emergency locking bars that can only be locked from the inside on all classroom doors.
3. School camera systems that can be monitored by police externally.
4. Emergency rope ladders on all second floor classrooms with windows.
5. Remove push bars and handles on main school doors that could be locked with a lock and chain so only school officials can lock and unlock main doors.
6. Emergency phones in all classrooms.
7. Minimum safety requirements so classrooms can be locked down in an emergency safely.

[121804]

If someone wants to inflict pain & suffereing, they are going to figure out a way, no matter what security measures are in force. We had an teachers inservice were a cop showed us how he hid 17 weapons on his body. What is to say a student can't use what is already in the school? Think of chem lab in high school. Scary thought, huh? Little Brian goes home on the internet & figure out how to make a mixture that can cause an explosion in the classroom. Tie a bucnh of shoelaces together & that can cause some pain around someone's neck. These are all things we heard at an inservice on safety about 7 years ago in Ohio.

Emergency rope ladders...too much liabilty for the district. A pissed parent is bound to sue the pants off the district if Suzy or Johnny scrapes a knee trying to escape.
The push bars...again...liability...Suzy or Johnny gets trampled b/c no one could get out the doors.

I wish there was a good & affordable way to achieve safety in US schools. But, the fact of the matter is this is a new world where kids have access to whatever they want whenever they want. Their parents checked out a long time ago when sitting down to check homework was too wearing after a 12 hr work day.

Priorities in the US are messed up. More attention is given to Paris Hilton going to jail for 2 weeks than the 3 MIA US Army soldiers. When I was teaching 6th grade, my students heros were...literally...Britney Spears and those guys who do those dangerous tricks on MTV.

Too many citizens could care less about public education b/c it means it would raise their taxes. And unfortunately, too many politicans screw up the education budget to even justify the need for an increase. It's a messed up system. And the classes that do engage students who fit certain behavioral profiles, such as art, music, PE, shop, home ec, and many extracurriculars, have been taken off due to cost. So, those students who do not thrive in basic studies & have behavioral/mental/emotional characteristics that warrant concern have absolutely no positive outlet in school. And, as a teacher, the law binds you to what you can & cannot say to the student & parent. It also binds the school as to what they can do for the student.

What happened at VA Tech is going to happen again. It's just a matter of when & where. It's too easy to void out making the change b/c of the effort than to make the change.

I love teaching. It is, by far, the most fulfilling profession. Maybe one day the US will take it seriously.