40 billion dollars in aid to Ukraine, 7 times their annual military budget, and we can’t keep kids safe in our schools? And I am sick of it!
Let’s dedicate money to CRT, discussing a child’s gender, or talk about sex with a first grader, but let’s not spend any money or time on what is a growing problem in our US schools, shootings.
What is it going to take for parents, teachers, and our administrators to wake up to the fact that this is a REAL problem? What if a student brought a handgun to school and hid it in his locker to show off to his friends, then when he was caught, but the idea of suspending him or calling the sheriff would have such a negative impact on his life that the school did nothing, would you be upset to know if that happened at your child’s school here? It did here. And the concern for his “future mental well-being” and the concern for his “sad, parentless life at home” outweighed your child’s safety and nothing was done about it. No call to the police. No suspension. Why? Because we have white privilege and he does not. So we should be concerned about his mental well being, not the fact that he could have shot your child.
Before we started buzzing visitors into our schools, I proposed to our superintendent the idea of a mantrap or sally-ports (search them). This is a very easy and cost-effective way to secure our schools. My proposal fell on deaf ears. I believe it did prompt the idea of fitting all of the buildings with cameras and the ability to buzz someone in, which they did, but we need more.
How Do Mantraps Work?
In its simplest form, a mantrap consists of two locking doors and a passageway. They commonly include a security guard who can monitor the mantrap and enforce the security protocols. A mantrap also needs to allow free passage in the event of a fire or evacuation — this caveat requires the mantrap system to be integrated with the building’s fire alarm system so that the locking doors release when the alarm is activated. Conversely, both doors of the mantrap should lock in the event of a security breach, hopefully trapping the intruder, or preventing easy escape from the inner building.
Mantraps and sally-ports can have metal detectors that trigger an alarm and secure the inner doors INSTANTLY and “trap” the person between the two sets of doors. The glass is bulletproof, so the only harm they could do would be to themselves. This seems like a no-brainer idea to me, no matter the cost. So, you may be asking yourself why I am so concerned since my daughter just graduated on Saturday? My wife is a teacher and two of my daughters are educators. And no child should have to go to school and be concerned about their safety. A school is a place of learning and where kids can be kids. They don’t care about gender discussions, someone’s sexual orientation, skin color, or political background. All they are concerned about is choosing between coco puffs or french toast for lunch. We have lost our way. Over 275 people a day die from a fentanyl overdose, that’s equivalent to a jetliner crashing every day, but no one is concerned. Imagine if a plane crashed every day and how horrified we would be as a society. Why? Because it scares everyone and impacts their daily lives. Well, the loss of those 275 people impacts their family’s daily lives. A loss of a loved one, a parent, a child. It all has a ripple effect. But instead of being concerned about securing our kid’s schools, or figuring out the drug problem in our youth, let’s send 40 billion dollars to a foreign country because it sounds cool to say “I support Ukraine.” Try to explain that reasoning to a parent that just lost a child in Texas yesterday.
Mantrap – Sally-port – whatever it takes. We need to secure our school buildings, no matter the cost. If one covid life it too many, then how many little kids being shot to death do we have to endure?
FYI – I already have a line of communication open with a company in Michigan that can provide this solution for our schools. We just need administrators to be on board with this. And I would even guess that if there is money to mask a child from the US government, there is money to protect them too.
