Fauquier County Public Schools have mandatory fire drills every month. Students can do the drills in their sleep by now; get up, line up single file, and proceed to the nearest exit, both quickly and quietly. These drills are taken very seriously and are almost never missed, yet there has not been a fire related death in North American schools in over 25 years. On the other hand, there have been well over 100 casualties as the result of school shootings in the last 10 years. These were the findings of John Giduck, an anti-terrorism consultant, founder of Archangel Group, and the author of Terror at Beslan: a Russian Tragedy and Lessons for American Schools and Shooter Down: the Dramatic Untold Story of the Police Response to the Virginia Tech Massacre. While FHS is diligent about its monthly fire drills, we have not had a lock down drill in years.    

Based on these statistics, it is clear that something isn’t right. America spends countless dollars and hours, preparing for and talking about fire safety, when the risk has been significantly lowered thanks to brick walls, fire retardant doors, fire extinguishers located throughout the school, and an extensive sprinkler system. We rarely have active shooter drills better known as lock down drills, yet we are thousands of times more likely to be killed or injured by an act of school violence then a school fire. Why is this?

“I feel like there is a lack of preparation and a lack of acceptance,” said an eight- year S.W.A.T. (Special Weapons and Tactics) team member in a nearby district, who has dealt with two acts of school violence in the last seven years, but who wishes to remain anonymous. “People think that this can never happen; they have a false sense of security.”

False sense of security is right. When people hear about school shootings, they don’t think of it as something that can actually happen even though there have been two school shootings in recent years in Virginia: NOVA Community College in 2009 and before that Virginia Tech in 2007. The blinders people wear cause them to not take these drills seriously.  I have been in classrooms where teachers don’t even stop class during drills, instead simply closing and locking the door so as not to disrupt class. This is deplorable seeing as students are supposed to be silent and huddled away from the door with the turned off, not powering through a lesson so as to be on time for the SOLs.

Despite the lack of preparation among students, Fauquier County S.E.R.T. (Sherriff Emergency Response Team) is supposed to come into schools for training at least once a month and there is a crisis management plan in place that all teachers are aware of.

Here is where the true issue lies. A part time S.W.A.T. team, like Fauquier County’s, has many responsibilities-responding to school violence is not just one of them. Do they actually practice resonding to school violence once a month? Even if they do, is this once–a-month training something you would want to trust your life with? Do professional athletes practice game plans just once a month right before the championship game? Of course they don’t. They practice and prepare hours a day- every day. We may not have the time or resources for that level of preparedness, but we need to do more than what we currently are doing to be ready in the event an act of school violence happens here.

“Administrators need to develop a when-then mindset instead of an if-then mindset. Meaning when something happens, then I will do this- as opposed to if this something happens, then I might do this I teach this everyday in my classes,” the S.W.A.T. team member said. “When schools use an if-then mindset, they allow a percentage of doubt to enter their thought. This causes their standards of training and preparedness to relax. Having a when-then mindset allows people to prepare for the actuality of something occurring without doubt. This increases the realism of training, as well as helping to better prepare us for these events that occur quite often.”