There was explosives in the pagers that were detonated by driving up the battery heat somehow in the devices. They also detonated walkie talkies today the same way.
Our school district was one of numerous districts across the nation that was named in a school shooting threat hoax. And in our district, several schools were named. Naturally, that led parents to freak out and a lot of students to stay home on Monday and Tuesday. One of mine stayed home on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I assumed he was sick. First thing he said to me this morning as he pulled himself on to the bus ( he has leg braces ) was, "I didn't want to go to school where there was weapons." Mom added, "Great conversation to have with your nine year old, huh?" He's one of my two favorites, so it hit me in the feels extra hard.
had this conversation with our 7 and 10 year old earlier this school year after they saw news about one of the school shootings (forgot which one, which is a statement itself) on tv And as you know too, working in schools, this affects us personally a bit different. It’s one thing seeing it on tv. When it is a daily danger to yourself and your children, it’s VERY real
I am genuinely curious what you do in these situations. What resources are available to you? Are there things your community or school is doing? Specific to Walt's situation, it feels like your community got caught up in national-level political stunts, and I'm curious how the situation "on the ground" is represented in the news the rest of us are seeing.
from an administrative perspective, in general we plan everything down to a T, and let the local fire/police/EMS depts know of our plans. Response times are VERY quick. We include evacuation/reunification plans to/at a sister location if that one is no longer deemed safe (also in case of fire and such), the logistics of which have already been worked out for the max occupancy of the individual schools. On a macro scale, I always say I’m a father of two at home, but when I’m in the schools I have over 300 children. And as any parent can attest, it would take a very determined individual to get through them. No one knows for certain how one will act in such a scenario, but all of the members of our administration share certain morals and values. I cannot tell them how to act, but I do know that a large number carry (legal) personal defense devices (not guns, as those are illegal within a certain distance of a school sadly), they always make sure scissors and staplers and other heavy/sharp devices are available to throw. First line of defense is us, and if that means just slowing someone down to buy time for evacuation… I mean I’m gonna do what I gotta do.
This incident to me screamed "hoax" before the police released any information. However with social media being the dumpster fire that it is, word spread rapidly and the public panicked. Even when law enforcement and the district said there was no credible threat, that it was a national issue, people still went apeshit, proclaiming mistrust of the police, the school system, etc. Once the court of public opinion has made it's decision, there's no turning back from it, sad to say. As to the police and school districts, I'd say they did an outstanding job, even if it was only to ease the public's collective mind. There were extra cops posted at every school I went to and now a metal detection devices the district had bought for the purpose of public events at the sports stadiums have been implemented in the secondary schools. At the end of the day though, you're only going to be able to "plan" so much.
I hear that, and I respect it. From my professional acumen, those plans are only as good as they are practiced. Also, anything you plan to do, like pick up a stapler and throw it, you have to tell the kids that's your plan, so they are not confused and can theoretically follow your lead. The guidance here is if kids know in advance that's the plan, they know you're not losing your shit and will follow your instructions. If they see an adult do some behavior that's incongruent with their schema (even if they have no idea how someone would act in this situation), they may hesitate to follow instructions. Again, respectfully: it all sounds very feeble. Response time is literally calculated with dead kids per minute, and as we saw in Uvalde, it's not exactly like they win the day when they show up. The idea that you're in your classroom looking for weapons to defend against fucking GUNS is absurd and unthinkable. I don't mean to disparage, it's quite literally an untenable position to be in, and there are no good options available to you. From the active shooter trainings I've been in, and some of the limited research I've read, there are no heroic acts. You just get shot, and the killer moves on to the next victim. The name of the game is distance between you and the shooter, and any obstacles you can put in between. The other thing is the shooter almost always knows precisely the vulnerabilities to exploit. They don't try and force themselves into a barricaded room, they wait until a lunch period when people are moving around, that sort of thing. These are not vulnerabilities we can address, unless we quite literally turn schools into prisons. Which is not to say the barricades and vulnerabilities should be left alone, but prisons are the only place I can think of that have large numbers of potential victims and potential violent actors moving around where the risk of an active shooter is minimized.
Feel like requiring background checks, at a minimum for guns, would be way more meaningful than training 5-year-olds how to evade a lunatic with a rifle. But hey, thats me, as a gun owner.
I still think a mandatory training/certification is needed. A program like that ostensibly would also give insight into an individual's psychology and whether or not maybe they shouldn't have access. But hey, that's me, also an owner of firearms.
It’s sad this happens in your country, period. I can’t imagine knowing my kid is taking an active shooting drill rather than a fire drill at school. That’s objectively chilling. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Usually I scoff at grandstanding sheriffs in USA, but I wonder how much of a butterfly effect this may have with parents:
I support that sheriff 100% and hope to see more follow that lead. It won’t happen any time soon here in the Nanny State of New York, but maybe some day Albany will pull their collective head from ass. Half the problem in this country is there’s no consequences, and people know that from a very early age.
My buddies at Secret Service and FBI have their hands full investigating these threats and advising which ones should be acted upon, vs. disregarded. I'm of a mind that if you call in a bomb threat as a hoax, it's punished just as much as if you'd done it. I feel for these guys who have to do a yeoman's effort of police work because some shitheel thinks this sort of terrorism is somehow political speech.
We got a visit when one of my son's was a Senior in High School about a threat that he was going to shoot up the school. I have no idea why the threat was sent in although it might have been that we went target shooting that weekend. I was not allowed to find out who called in the threat.
the stapler thing was in reference to what I’ve heard from people at the front. Our plan for the kiddos is immediate evacuation, similar to a fire evacuation, and it does get practiced frequently but in a manner appropriate with not freaking out children of that age. beyond that, there are some other things we do, but due to my line of work and mentioning it on here a few times, I’ve gotten some weird reps over the years so I only feel so comfortable discussing so much detail. at the end of the day though, there’s only still not a lot you can do with a determined individual. And in practicality we are not a target as much as middle and high schools. Imo voting is the best way to fix gun violence.
I personally wish they required mandatory training and continuing education hours, like they do for teachers, doctors, lawyers, therapists, etc. Basically anyone who takes on a high level of responsibility including and up to someone else’s lives in their hands, which includes gun owners. Like me.
So to help ease shooting tensions in the USA. a Kentucky sheriff just murdered a judge inside his own chambers.