mike sciurko

This is what kids in America practice now. Lock the door, get out of sight, and know what to do if someone walks in with a gun. It didn't used to be this way. After Columbine in 1999, schools started making plans for an armed attacker. A private company came up with ALICE training, which teaches kids and teachers to lock down, run or fight back. Then Sandy Hook happened in 2012. Twenty first graders and six adults were killed, and schools started running these drills a lot more often. Now nearly every public school does them. Federal data shows about 96% of public schools ran lockdown drills with students in 2021-22. At least 40 states require school drills by law. Some schools went way past locking a door. They used fake blood, blanks and adults playing masked shooters. Some didn't tell the kids it was a drill. In 2019, at an elementary school in Indiana, sheriff's deputies had teachers kneel against a wall and shot them in the back with plastic pellets. They told them, "This is what happens if you just cower and do nothing." Teachers were left with welts and scars. So what does this do to kids? Georgia Tech researchers looked at social media posts from the communities around 114 schools in 33 states, from 90 days before a drill to 90 days after. After the drills, talk about stress and anxiety went up 42%, depression went up 39%, and physical health complaints went up 23%. It lasted at least three months, and it showed up in kids as young as five, in their parents and in their teachers. The American Academy of Pediatrics says to keep kids out of high-intensity drills completely and never trick them into thinking an attack is real. The two biggest teachers unions say drills shouldn't act out a shooting at all. We're teaching five-year-olds to hide from gunmen because we won't do anything about the guns. On Tuesday you can vote for people who will.