Because of the recent school killings in Newtown, Conn., there is a lot of discussion about school safety and what building occupants can do to help prevent a tragedy like this from occurring in our own communities.
As an architect of educational facilities, I wanted to know what the experts thought about prevention and how it might impact design for our school districts’ clients.
Realistically, the discussion and training for prevention includes a lot more than just good design elements. It involves a plan implemented by staff, students, administration and security officers that increases the odds of survival. Every move made, starting the second an intruder alarm goes off, should be designed to protect lives and neutralize the intruder.
Just like the practiced drills for fire alarms, staff and students are being trained to be proactive and react with purpose and precision. I was privileged to be a part of a mock intruder practice recently with real people but fake guns.
There were three scenarios, the first being a “run and hide” scenario, which represents what most of us would do in this type of situation. I never made it to the classroom to hide. The “intruder” – a highway patrolman with an empty paint ball gun – killed me immediately, right out in the hallway. I learned later this was a great place to “die,” because afterward I could observe how school security officers and local policemen were being trained to respond by clearing the classrooms, locating the intruder and neutralizing him.
The second scenario was locking your classroom door but still running and hiding. I got shot hiding under a science lab table. The reason I got shot was because we all assumed the door would remain locked. It did not and the intruder entered the classroom, systematically looking for someone to kill. Once he visually spotted me under the table, my ticket was up.
The third scenario was the one where almost all of us survived. With some good, sound training earlier that day, we planned a response which assumed there would be a door lock failure. Our strategy took steps to insure that the intruder would have a difficult time entering the classroom and would hopefully get discouraged and move on. Once the door was secured, barricaded with heavy objects, and visual access to the room was blocked, we would turn our attention to looking for a way to get out safely. Not having a way out, we were left with the last resort: to grab the heaviest book we could find or the sharpest object in the room and prepare to put up a fight.
There were several valuable lessons I learned that day. I am pretty sure that unless building occupants train for this, like we train for fire drills, fatalities will be greater. The other thing I learned was that even in the most poorly designed school, the policies and procedures of the school district will truly mean the difference between life and death.
Don’t misunderstand me. As designers of educational spaces, we must make our schools defensible by controlling access to both building and site, providing visual access to approaching visitors, and quality doors with appropriate hardware. But at the end of it all, there is not a single design that will provide 100 percent protection. It involves a holistic approach, including an audit of your current facilities and an implementation policy and procedures with full staff commitment so these events will minimize loss of life, and better yet, discourage a potential intruder from ever carrying out an evil plan.
Lisa Drew-Alton is a project manager with Springfield-based Sapp Design Associates Architects. She can be reached at drew-alton@sdaarchitects.com.
