Dare I even breath the word?
Dare I remind you of that stunningly sad Friday morning when our run of the mill routine was suddenly and forever broken. By a madman ... with a gun. Unleashing barrage after barrage of .223 caliber bullets on our most innocent, priceless possession: Children.
And the teachers and staff parents entrusted them with, who died defending their helpless young students in a heroic attempt to uphold that trust.
Newtown. Sandy Hook Elementary School. A tragedy of epic proportions now forever known by either moniker. What 9/11 did for airline security, Newton has done for school security.
Take Amherst's three elementary schools for instance. This morning the schools director of facilities and maintenance Ron Bohonowicz paid a visit to the Joint Capital Planning Committee to defend capital item requests for the upcoming fiscal year.
Ron Bohonowicz, Director of Facilities and Maintenance, right
One such item is $150,000 for new "columbine" locks on all doors in the town's three elementary schools (average cost $300/lock) ) as well as panic bars for the inside of doors. Currently the Middle School and High School have such locks.
In addition to physical upgrades the schools have also instituted new security procedures for parent pick up, lock the main doors and use security cameras to screen visitors, plus have periodic security inspections with APD and AFD.
$150,000 for locks and panic bars is, indeed, expensive. But so are the cost of funerals.
31 comments:
What a waste. One unfortunate disaster and suddenly we need to barricade our children in a school for somethign that has the statistically slimmest of odds of ever occurring in 100 years.
Why not add bullet proof glass too? Yes a guy could sit in the lot and simply shoot through windows. Or attack a playground at recess. Maybe kids size vests are needed too?
Suddenly every school needs to create completely wasteful precautions. Locks never stopped a school disaster before and never will if someone wants to get in. But the lock guys are making a nice killing like the flag companies did after 9/11. Fear is great for those that want to make some money off of suckers.
Please do waste this money. You waste it on everything else, why not.
Too bad you don't put it towards education where it's needed far more than on the doors of a school. Typical ʇsɹǝɥɯ∀ where everything is done ass backwards.
Totally agree these shootings are no better than an act of terrorism by cowards. If we show that we will not cower to them, and better yet fight back. This will send a direct message to these people that attack our children, and you will regret ever walking through the school house doors.
Aw come on Walter, you keep your job by finding things that ain't broke and fixing them.
I mean, it's only 150 grand, right?
166 exterior locks per school?
What am I missing?
Interior. Every classroom, lunch room, office, etc.
Thank you for remembering the 3 month anniversary. There is a Newtown at Fenway night on 3/23. 100% of the proceeds will go to the Everwonder foundation to help build the children's museum that Dawn wanted.
Please dance tomorrow in memory of the Friday dance parties that Dawn had with Sandy Hook staff and students.
Interior. Every classroom, lunch room, office, etc.
You have got to be kidding...
On the most basic level, has anyone ever done a study as to how secure the average interior door would be after 2-3-4 rounds were fired (at close range) into each of its hinges?
Just a hunch here, but I'm thinking that it ain't gonna do so terrorably well...
Or how about someone with a "Hallahan Tool" -- the all-purpose door-opener that fire departments carry -- and which aren't that hard to come by.
OK, the lock holds, but the perp simply rips the door loose from the stuff it was hitched to, and then what????
Within the past 10 years, how many children have been shot -- and how many have been run over by a school bus? Enough said?
Interior. Every classroom, lunch room, office, etc.
You have got to be kidding...
On the most basic level, has anyone ever done a study as to how secure the average interior door would be after 2-3-4 rounds were fired (at close range) into each of its hinges?
Just a hunch here, but I'm thinking that it ain't gonna do so terrorably well...
Or how about someone with a "Hallahan Tool" -- the all-purpose door-opener that fire departments carry -- and which aren't that hard to come by.
OK, the lock holds, but the perp simply rips the door loose from the stuff it was hitched to, and then what????
Within the past 10 years, how many children have been shot -- and how many have been run over by a school bus? Enough said?
Bar your windows people and fortify your property the boogeyman's a coming. Teach our kids how to fight back not hide in a closet. It's been proven if a criminal senses there will be resistance they will pick an easier victim. I personally will not back down to these dirt bags that feel the best way to release their anguish is on our children. There is a time and a place to turn the other cheek and on issues like this you don't turn away. Trying to lock them out is futile. I'm really surprised you even support this Larry. Most of these criminals are intelligent, how long do you think it would take them to figure out that there's really big windows in each classroom? I think it's a good idea to have the exterior doors locked at all times, but $150,000 for a new lock system! Come on we already struggle to keep a sharp pencil in every kids hand.
If the cops were asking for some new piece of body armor you'd all be singing a different tune... it's a small request that could save one teacher's or one student's life. You gotta ask yourself how much that's worth.
Ed, you bring up a point. Anyone ever see the traffic flow in front of Fort River both in the AM and afternoon. Why not use the towns money for either a police agent during needed hours, a crossing guard or even a new traffic light at the entrance and exit of the school.
I can bet you long before anyone ever kills anyone on an Amherst school property, a child will be struck and seriously injured or killed because of the poor traffic pattern and overcrowd street in front of Fort River. Just try driving into that school every day as I do and you'll see what is a real threat.
So what makes more sense, a real threat, or an imaginary threat bast on fear and ignorance. To the ass backwards town of ʇsɹǝɥɯɐ only waste will do.
We already saw an accident involving a bus near the entrance of the school recently. But why put money toward something needed and what will end up being the injury or loss of another child I'm sure sooner than later.
Let's protect the kids from asteroids while we are at it. Or how about a Patriot missile system on the roof in case terrorists decide to attack the school. Or jersey barriers around the schools in case someone wants to drive a truck bomb into the entrance. Laugh, but the odds of any of these things occurring are about par with the possibility of a school shooter in ʇsɹǝɥɯɐ.
Everyone is always concerned with anything BUT our kids education in this town. Might as well add an administrator for this installation, perhaps a 'master of locks' for $100k a year who can give occasional courses on proper lock procedure to teachers. Yeah that sounds like a necessary position.
Wait, I just saved the school $150k. All we need is black paper on the windows of the classrooms:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/lanza-fan-mass-murderers-report-article-1.1288766?localLinksEnabled=false
A sad sad state of affairs in this town. Perhaps they need locks to keep the lunatics who run ʇsɹǝɥɯɐ and the school system in the asylum.
It's understandable, all this so-called security. It makes people feel better. But really, it's like putting a bandaid on a gaping wound. Unless we get over our insistence that the 'right to bear arms' supercedes everything else, and we don't do something NORMAL, like knowing exactly who and what kind of person is buying a gun, we're doomed. What kind of idiotic thinking is it that our kids' lives take second place to the right of gun ownership.
Some useful thoughts on the subject from Daniel Greenfield:
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com
You know, if all the doors are locked and whatnot, it will make it impossible for people like Larry to be wandering around finding stuff that Team Maria doesn't want found.
This is like the women who worry about breast cancer while they smoke 3 packs of cigarettes a day -- and nonchalantly disregard the risk of lung cancer.
Want to prevent children from dying -- teach them how to swim and basic pedestrian safety and you will save a whole lot more lives than you will with this foolishness.
Each and every year, about the same number of children die from being run over by a school bus that were murdered in Newtown. These deaths happen one at a time and aren't helpful to advancing anyone's political agenda so we don't hear much about them, but they are every bit as dead.
In the past few years, Amherst has had one child drown, one child run over by a bus, and absolutely none shot.
Team Maria wants the locks so they can keep the parents out, what absolutely no one is looking at is the historical pattern of elementary school shootings -- worldwide -- which almost always involve the children being shot when they are outside, such as for recess.
So are we going to ban recess and make the kids hide in the cellar? How far is this paranoia going to go?
Nothing can fully prevent a killer but if the new equipment slows him down by a precious 60 seconds...
But the new security system will have an effect beyond aiding in preventing massacres like Newtown. Probably of more concern to everyone are parents who are struggling during custody proceedings and things like that.
How many cops have been shot in Amherst?
Should we take away their body armor?
But the new security system will have an effect beyond aiding in preventing massacres like Newtown. Probably of more concern to everyone are parents who are struggling during custody proceedings and things like that.
And the truth comes out -- they want to keep the evil fathers out of the schools....
doh! When will I learn to keep a secret?
Walter... do you I imagine I am the one who possesses the secret radical feminist agenda playbook?
These locks will not prevent parents from going into the schools and that is not what they are for. I have a child at Fort River and I have no problem ringing the door bell in order to be let into the school I have NEVER been denied access to my child's school. I have also never been denied access to visit the Superintendent.
Walter, school drop-offs at ALL schools are chaotic. I drop my child off and I know there is alot of activity so I drive SLOWLY and CAREFULLY!!! It's just the nature of the beast! I have never seen a school drop-off area that was not chaotic. Drive carefully and tell your kid to be aware of the dangers. Or get out of the car with your child to be sure they are safe, as I do.
" Drive carefully and tell your kid to be aware of the dangers. Or get out of the car with your child to be sure they are safe, as I do."
I'm not worried about you, me or any other parent. I'm worried about the thousand other careless drives on the road in front of the school. The pick up area is a disaster by itself and needs to be addressed but I'm referring to the roads in front of the school.
Turning into the school can be a disaster. In the last six months I saw two accidents and at least a dozen near misses due to poor driving, ignorance, and the idea that people who don't have the right of way somehow do.
Mark my words a child will be struck or involved in a car accident just outside of the property of Fort River due to the lack of concern for traffic flow in the area during mornings and afternoons.
It's too small a road for too much traffic with far too many people driving like they are the only ones on the road. In any other town with such a tight traffic flow a police officer would be assigned to direct during morning and afternoon. It really should be the case here too.
When I worked with a police department in NY years ago, the saying was, they'll put a light there (at a place where an accident is waiting to happen) when a kid gets killed. And in each case of the sudden installment of traffic lights, it was always at places where kids had been killed a few weeks earlier. Not the best way to deal with it.
Perhaps a letter to the department of motor vehicles commissioner requesting an assessment is necessary.
I do not find the road in front of the school any more inherently dangerous than the roads in front of any other school.
" a 'master of locks' for $100k a year"
Yeah we got one of those now, putting in a lot of overtime.
The last one died on the job right in the middle school doing what he did best, surfing the internet.
Are you for real, 3:36? How disrespectful. Shame on you.
"Are you for real, 3:36? How disrespectful. Shame on you."
Shame on me for what? Did you know the guy?
I did, ~very~ well...
and that's EXACTLY what happened.
Relax.
I agree about the school drop offs in the mornings and afternoons, especially on Friday. It's beyond chaotic and seems like an accident waiting to happen. Why are so many kids being held by the hand and walked in? Why aren't they on the bus? This chaotic mess of parents driving their kids to school, when they should be riding the bus seems like a more pressing problem than a random shooter entering the school. Spending all that money on locks seems like a distraction to me.
Crocker Farm is far from "chaotic", even on Friday.
Besides, you don't avoid fixing a problem by citing other problems.
This security hysteria often actually exacerbates the very risks it is intended to abate.
For example, UMass had a building with two doors -- a front door that the public used, and a back door for the staff. "One of the two Democrats" on the UMPD convinced everyone that the existing door needed to be replaced with a super-strong armored steel door so as to prevent an "active shooter" from breaking into the building that way.
She neglected to notice that the door opened INWARD and that in addition to the other problems with doors that open inward, the feared "active shooter" could simply tie one end of a piece of clothesline to the doorknob, the other end to the adjacent railing, and no one inside would ever be able to open this new door.
Hence, instead of the feared situation where the "active shooter" would bust in via the back door and kill some of the employees (with at least a few being able to scramble out the front door & escape, the perp could simply walk in the front door, and kill ALL the employees who would be trapped by this new door that they would be unable to open.
The building is no longer in use which is why I don't mind posting this -- it is an example of the truly asinine approach to safety that we have been taking since Columbine & Virginia Tech. Can anyone imagine what it would be like to be a member of the Islamic faith had we done likewise after 9/11?
This stuff is asinine.
Walter, you may not know this, but about five years ago, a child in Amherst died after being run over by a school bus.
As I understand it, a 4 year old ran after an older sibling who had just boarded a bus and was run over by (I presume) the right rear tires. This is one of many blind spots on a bus, most people don't realize how very little you can see.
And while it happened in Holyoke, it was the child of an Amherst officer who drowned in a pool some years back as well.
Tragically, both children are dead. This HAS happened -- not might, but HAS happened.
Newtown was unique, he had a grievance (real or imagined) with that particular school.
Nope, you don't fix problems by citing other ones, but you can certainly make a list, triage them, and figure out which ones are the most likely to happen, and work thru the list in a logical manner rather than the knee jerk reaction the school administration has to imagined problems.
You should bring that strategy up to the school administration. Tell them that they should spend some time making a list of all the things that could happen, then triage them. I'm sure they're looking for something to do.
"What should we do today?"
"Gee, I don't know. This guy ɟɟɐɹƃ ɹǝʇlɐʍ suggested we make a list of all the problems, then figure out which ones are most likely to happen."
"Wow! Why doesn't this guy ɹǝʇlɐʍ become a school administrator? He is so much smarter than us!"
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