Nov. 13, 2016 – Jackson, WI – About 50 people turned out for a forum Saturday at Kettle Moraine Lutheran High School regarding school safety and gun-free schools.
Representative Jesse Kremer (R-Kewaskum) plans to reintroduce a bill next session to allow private schools to permit firearms in their schools.
Local blogger Owen Robinson covered the forum. A portion of his article is below.
Some people advocated using the Department of Homeland Security’s “Run, Hide, Fight” protocol in schools. Instead of just hiding, staff and kids would be taught to still hunker down in their rooms, but to spread out and arm themselves with whatever is available like books, chairs, whatever, to throw at the killer if they enter the room. Also discussed was ALICE, another active shooter response methodology. There was broad agreement that the simple lock down was not sufficient. Some folks cited the fact that in some cases, all the lock down did was provide a convenient place for the killer to find a lot of people to kill at once.
Also interesting was how school responses have changed over the years and some of the challenges that schools face. For example, in the past, the students and staff were instructed on where to go in an active shooter event just like a fire drill and were issued cryptic, coded messages over the P.A. to tell them what to do. This makes sense if the killer is from outside of the school, but no sense at all if the killer is one of the students who would know the response. That methodology serves to tell student killer exactly where to go find everyone in one place after the attack starts and the killer knows the “code” used over the P.A. The updated methodology is to instruct staff on what to do, but not tell students unless it happens. Also, instructions on the P.A. are to be clear and precise like, “the shooter is in the cafeteria.”
Read the rest of the article at bootsandsabers.com
Photo courtesy Owen Robinson.
Side note – Owen Robinson is a local blogger who publishes Around the Bend every Saturday.
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