The Blue Mountain school district in Pennsylvania has provided all of its schools with 5-gallon buckets full of rocks to be used as a “last resort” against a potential school shooter. Students and teachers have been practicing in unarmed drills (i.e. drills without the rocks).
The school district reportedly expects the buckets of rocks to also serve as a deterrent, making a potential shooter “think twice” before selecting Blue Mountain schools.
A rural school district in Pennsylvania is arming teachers and students with buckets of rocks as a last resort should an armed intruder burst in, the superintendent said Friday.Every classroom in the district about 90 miles (145 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia has a 5-gallon bucket of river stones, said Blue Mountain School District Superintendent David Helsel.”We always strive to find new ways to keep our students safe,” Helsel told The Associated Press in a telephone interview, adding that the rocks are one small part of the district’s overall security plan.. . . . Staff and students in the Blue Mountain district have been trained in a program called “ALICE” which stands for alert, lockdown, inform, counter and evacuate. Helsel said the rocks are part of the “counter” portion of training, fighting back if the intruder makes his way into the classroom.The buckets are kept in classroom closets.. . . . Kenneth Trump, president of the Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services, a K-12 security consulting firm, calls the idea illogical and irrational and said it could possibly cost lives.He said the efforts fill an emotional security need, but don’t actually enhance security.One high school senior said he supports the plan, adding that throwing rocks is better than throwing books or pencils.
Watch:
You may recall that businesses began training employees working in gun-free zones to throw chairs, purses, pens, staplers, etc. to disorient, even momentarily, an active shooter or terrorist. The training included “swarming” the assailant immediately to subdue him.
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