Code Dead

Once a month, we are alerted by the intercoms to get into position. We turn off the lights and crouch in the corner of our classrooms, preparing for a possible code red. We whisper and check our Snapchats as a police officer rattles the door handle, checking to see if our room is locked. Yet in reality, we wouldn’t be laughing if it wasn’t just the friendly SRO officer standing behind the door.

Seventeen people were killed and 14 were hospitalized on Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. at the hands of a mass murderer. Any school, including Shawnee Mission East, could face the deranged attack of someone like 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, who walked into Parkland’s doors that day with a legally purchased AR-15

Like East, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had security, a school officer and code reds – but these precautions proved nearly pointless in the wake of 17 lives that were lost.

It is time to do more than hide in a corner.

Code red drills are not the right protection from an active shooter situation. Security filled, bulletproof classrooms with students that are educated on new and improved drills are the right protection. Code reds would become the back up protection plan if the security isn’t enough.

Ever since kindergarten I’ve been practicing code red drills in school “just in case” we were to have an active shooter or some other threat in the building. The teacher locked the door, turned off the lights and everybody crowded to the safest corner of the room as practice in case of a safety threat.

Code red drills are always performed in the perfect scenario: minutes into class when everyone is seated in their classroom. Students and teachers have not been prepared for other scenarios such as an active shooter during lunch, or a passing period.

Huddling away from the sight of windows and doors while a school shooter unloads his or her weapons is just as futile and pitiful as the “duck and cover!” drill was during the Cold War era.

Maybe a room with no windows and a locked door could be beneficial during a school shooting – but what will happen to those who aren’t in this ideal hiding spot?

Updated drills such as the one that Southwestern High School in Shelbyville, Ind. are needed. SMSD needs to take notes from this school, who call themselves “the safest school in America.” The high school is equipped with bulletproof doors, panic buttons, cameras and smoke cannons, but not only that, they have also updated their safety protocol and drills.

At Southwestern High School, each teacher in the building has an emergency fob that he or she press in case of emergency, which sets off a school-wide alarm and notifies the local police. There is also a panic button in each classroom that allows the teacher to notify the local law enforcement their classroom is safe, signal they need medical aid or ask for help if they’ve seen the suspect.

After police are notified, the students are taught to barricade themselves with books and desks in a designated corner of the classroom that is the least visible angle away from the window.

The local law enforcement has access to live cameras in the building so they can see the shooter’s movements and if necessary, they can launch what they call “hot zones.” Hot zones are cannons that shoot smoke to distract and limit the visibility of the intruder in hallways.

According to usatoday.com, the entire system was reported to cost $400,000. There isn’t a price tag for the loss of children’s lives so the $400,000 is well worth it.

East has multiple well-trained SRO officers, cameras that are managed all day and night, and sensors that notify officers when a door has been propped open for a long amount of time.

But is that enough? 

SMSD has the resources to implement a security system just as the one in Shelbyville, Ind. matter of fact, on Feb. 15, SMSD approved $11 million to be spent on updating our technology. For the cost of updated Apple products, our school district could have 27 of 44 schools fully secured.

Administrators need to learn from the Parkland, Fla. tragedy that anyone can be an armed intruder – even someone that attends the school. And that the gun restrictions aren’t changing anytime soon.

The change needs to begin with the voices of us: students, administrators and parents. We can’t prevent these crises from happening, but we can control how we protect ourselves from them.