Students wait for buses
to take them to be reunited with their parents after they were evacuated
from Arapahoe High School after a shooting on the campus in Centennial,
Colo., on Friday, Dec. 13, 2013. (AP Photo/The Denver Post, Karl
Gehring)
CARMEL, Ind.—”Lockdown, lockdown, lockdown. This is a drill.”
With those seven words, calmly announced over the intercom system, an
eerie silence overtook a bustling elementary school of 650 students in
suburban Indianapolis. Lights were turned off and blinds shut. In some
classrooms, doors were barricaded with small desks and chairs.
From start to finish, the “intruder drill” at the Forest Dale
Elementary School in Carmel took about 10 minutes—an exercise now as
routine at the school as a fire drill. What might sound terrifying to
some parents has become the norm in many schools nationwide after a rash
of school shootings.
More than two-thirds of school districts surveyed by the U.S. Government Accountability Office conduct “active shooter” exercises.
Some schools make their drills very realistic, simulating the sounds
of gunshots and using smoke and fake blood. In one case, armed police
officers with weapons drawn burst into a Florida middle school,
terrifying staff and students alike.
Staff and teachers are usually given warning that drills will happen.
GAO investigators said one district noted “the difficulty of striking
a balance between providing knowledge and inciting fear, particularly
at schools with younger children.”
Between 2000 and 2013, there were 25 shootings at U.S. elementary and
secondary schools, resulting in 57 deaths, according to the FBI.
These numbers include the shooting at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook
Elementary School in 2012 when an intruder gunned down 20 first-graders
and six educators.
Students at Forest Dale began participating in twice-a-semester intruder drills even before Sandy Hook.
“We do fire drills, but we don’t expect there to be a fire. When you
get on an airplane, they talk to you about all sorts of safety
procedures, but not because they expect the plane to crash, but because
you just need to know, just in case,” said D.J. Schoeff, a school
resource officer in Carmel and a regional director with the National
Association of School Resource Officers.
But Forest Dale’s drills don’t have the effects and props that have drawn criticism elsewhere.
Playing the role of intruders, Forest Dale Principal Deanna Pitman
and Police Officer Greg Dewald walked the halls, jiggled the doorknobs
of darkened classrooms, checking for unlocked doors. A staff assistant
in an office watching a monitor used the intercom to broadcast the
location and description of the intruders, so staff and students could
choose how to respond.
“Mrs. Pitman is wearing a green blouse today and Officer Dewald is
wearing khaki pants with his policeman’s jacket,” the assistant said.
“Consider what you would do if they were in the fifth-grade pod.”
Fifth-graders scattered from a hallway, leaving notebooks and pencils
strewn across the carpeted floor as they fled inside a classroom. At
the other end of the school, youngsters streamed outside in lines of two
with their teachers to designated safe locations.
Students had no advance warning of the drill. Teachers were told there would be a drill, but they didn’t know what kind or when.
Inside the school, all went mostly according to plan. No children
were stranded in hallways. Doors were locked. Only the head of one
little child could be seen peeking out from under a desk. The child
quickly popped back under the desk as Pitman walked by a classroom
window.
Outside school, one class went to the wrong safe spot — a “lessons learned” moment for future drills, Pitman said.
“We had a little bit of concern from parents when we first started
the drills,” Pitman said after the students were back to class. “I think
it was more of the unknown, and not necessarily anxiety over lockdown
and intruder drills. Once they know what the teachers are saying to the
kids, we don’t really get a lot of pushback.”
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