Back to School Issues: Kindergarten Lock Down: is Your Child Safe at School ?

One day this spring I spent the afternoon in charge of a Kindergarten class. We had a lovely time. That is right up until the lock down. The kids were antsy to get out of school on a Friday afternoon. They were already out in the hall lined up with their backpacks and coats on when the announcement came on the Intercom to return to the classroom. I told them the delay was due to the heavy rain. That was probably a fib I knew, because I doubted a school would have a lockdown practice at the end of the day when kids were already in line for the bus. I wanted the students to stay calm.

We didn't get any further news so I told the kids to sit on the rug at the front of the room. Before they left they had already put their chairs up on their desks and just in case we were in some crisis situation I didn't want all the noise of taking the chairs down again. A teacher from across the hall then came over to whisper to me that the front lot was full of cops and cop cars. She had pulled down the blinds so the kids wouldn't see all the commotion out front.

Then another teacher came down the hall and told us it was a lock down, to turn out the lights and keep the students quiet. This made me wonder if there was an intruder in the building. Once the lights were out and the kids were on the floor in the dark it was far too easy to imagine what it must have been like in the Virginia Tech classrooms as the gunman tried to access the locked classrooms.

A lockdown now, after Columbine and Virginia Tech is a very eerie experience. Wondering if an armed intruder could be about to try to gain entry to the classroom makes a teacher think they should have SWAT team training.

We spent about 30 minutes in the dark. I told the students to relax on the rug and they plopped their backpacks down and used them as pillows. I made a mental note in my mind where I had seen the closest exit and I was in high alert mode to jump into action if needed.

As I watched the children rest I wondered if any of them had any idea we could be in the midst of a crisis? They didn't seem to. They were calm and just a little fidgety. Once I heard it was a lock down I said a brief prayer that everyone in the building would be safe. Then I had the thought that at least this school had a lot of visible security. There was a burly security guard at the front entrance of the school that morning. The lockdown, we learned later, was due to rumors of weapons on the school buses.

In many schools there are doors open in various areas where visitors enter and roam the building until they find their way to the main office or wherever they are heading. Too many schools are wide open to intruders.

Each parent should visit the school unexpectedly at least once during the school year to survey the security situation at the school. How many doors are open? Ideally all doors will be locked and you will have to buzz to gain entrance to the school. Ideally there will be an adult stationed at the front door to greet visitors.

Also, students who attend schools are too often heavily armed. Spend a day in an American school, urban or suburban and you will likely get a bird's eye view of the gun problem in America. Kids are coming up to teachers and announcing that "A student wants to bring a gun in and hurt people." Kids are having guns drop out of their clothing at unexpected moments during the school day. Kids are being arrested all the time for having guns in school. It rarely makes the news as the schools try to keep any incident involving a weapon hush hush.

Since America has had so many school shootings it seems logical that it should be federal law that every school utilize metal detectors at the entrance. And yet nothing has been done to prevent weapons from entering schools. Every day kids sit in classrooms that are full of knives and guns. Every day children are at risk because school districts, towns, and the federal government have not been proactive enough to ensure the schools are weapon free zones.

When I was a newbie teacher in an inner city school I once asked if anyone had scissors to cut open the tough rubber band on a stack of newspapers. More than a few kids whipped some scary looking knives out of their pockets to help with that task.

Weapons are endemic in American schools. Urban or suburban, the kids are too often well armed. Parents need to be more proactive in ensuring schools are free of guns.

So, is your child prepared to handle a lock down? Are they safe at school? Is their school free of weapons?