Experts continue to question whether lockdown drills designed to prepare students for active shooters and other emergencies do more harm than good.
Researcher Jaclyn Schildkraut asks in recent post on The Conversation.
“I believe that kids should be prepared, but also that drills do not have to be scary to be effective,”油wrote Schildkraut, who is an associate professor of criminal justice at the State University of New York Oswego. “Schools can take steps to minimize the anxiety and trauma surrounding lockdown drills.”
More from 91心頭: How to prepare without crossing the line of traumatization
Assessing threats to try to prevent school shootings油may be a more effective safety measure than potentially traumatic drills, .
The U.S. Secret Service in November urging educators to work harder to identify “students of concern” and assess their risk of committing violent acts.油“The threshold for intervention should be low, so that schools can identify students in distress before their behavior escalates to the level of eliciting concerns about safety,” according to the report.
Some schools and districts, such as油油in Ohio, are already putting this method into practice,油District 91心頭istration reported in February.
Develop intervention teams and talk to local school resource officers about what kids are doing in the neighborhood, Alvin Gille, the district’s health, safety and security coordinator, told 91心頭. You get a broader look at a student in crisis so that they don’t become a villain and a perpetrator.
More from 91心頭: How schools are solving a safety dilemma
Meanwhile, Some parents are questioning at what age students should be expected to participate in a lockdown drill, .
In September, Kalamazoo Public Schools suspended drills temporarily at nine schools after several parents reported that their children were being traumatized. The district allowed parents to opt-out when the drills resumed in a modified format, and posted training materials for different grade levels on its website, according to the newspaper.
The district reported that just over 1% of students opted out of a November training, the newspaper wrote.
Many K-12 administrators who feel obligated to hold lockdown drills are also taking a closer look at student stress, 91心頭油wrote in January.
The idea is to teach lockdown procedures like we would reading and math, Cathy Paine, crisis response team lead for the National Association of School Psychologists, told 91心頭. We want to make them thoughtful and routine. We can’t just throw students and staff into a drill and expect them to know what to do.
More from 91心頭: Op-edWhy public schools remain the safest places
