AN ESSAY ON SCHOOL DESIGN AND HOW IT CAN IMPROVE STUDENT SAFETY

Parents of school children, I have this question for you to consider in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.  In case your child's school got a terrorist attack, would your child’s school design help the children survive or trap them, putting them more at risk?In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, this essay will contemplate  the topic of  school architecture.  


BACKGROUND YOU MAY HAVE NOT HAVE HEARD IN SCHOOL HISTORY CLASSES
 
In 1915, a private school in Peabody Massachusetts caught fire killing no fewer than twenty young women students.  

In 1958, Our Lady of the Angels, a large, somewhat-overcrowded multistory Catholic private school in Chicago, caught fire at the height of the school day.  92 children and 3 nuns died in the inferno. 

Today, I really cannot remember any school fires in America.  This is because after these disasters, superintendents of schools and city planning commissions implemented ideas to make schools safer.  Governments put these in place by law. 

In March 1937, a large, fairly-new consolidated school in New London, Texas experienced the most horrific school disaster in American history.   To be fair to the school board, we will note that the community was rolling in oil revenue wealth and built what was for the time a well-designed school for their children.   However, something went wrong in the heating plant.   The school used natural gas as its heat fuel in the days when companies did not add the smell to the fuel.   Natural gas got loose and filled the crawl space, then filled some of the school.    Someone in a shop classroom ignited a spark; the resulting blast reduced the whole school in one second to a pile of kindling.  The scale of the misery broke down documentation of this disaster, so the best estimate is 300 children and teachers dead.  Because of that accident, the government requires natural gas companies to add a smell to natural gas.   

In May 1927, the most infamous terrorist attack on a school occurred at a consolidated school in Bath Township Michigan.   A disgruntled citizen unbalanced by unmanageable tax debt, managed to booby-trap the school with dynamite.   After the explosion, when crowds gathered at the disaster, the man set off a shrapnel device in his automobile.  It killed and maimed even more people, including himself and some of his enemies. 44 children and adults died in that outrage. 

In 1999, two heavy-armed students attacked Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado, killing 13 students and adults.  They were amateurs compared with the vindictive scope of the terrorist in Bath, Michigan.  So were the young men who shot up the University of Texas, the Virginia Technical University, and the Sandy Hook School.


WHAT NOT TO DO 

After the Columbine Massacre, after another large massacre at Virginia Technical University, and on 14 December after the Sandy Hook Elementary Massacre, some people were hardened enough to recommend for the public record that school leaders place more armed people in schools. 

The simple people of America must first understand that they will get, in the long view, little if any security from clutching their guns tight and praying to their wooden idols.

Armed schools are, I suppose, a fine idea if one likes educating children in an atmosphere of distrust and prison.  We should, however, first understand weapons do not constitute the first and best solution to weapons. 

After the massacre, I contemplated my grade school – the Grandview School in Provo, opened for business back in the late 1940s.  On Founder's Days, our principals told us students that Grandview was the first post modern one level school built in Utah.  The sunny comfortable classrooms had walls of glass and a private door leading outside.   This school architecture idea never quite caught on, probably because private doors could let people in as well as out.  However, if teachers carefully managed, the doors, they  provided more advantages than problems.

In the ideal world, schools should be small and one story.  In the real world, we would install the best technologies and the best ideas into schools no matter what the cost.  The best ideas and technologies face compromises with what is currently available and how much citizens are willing to spend on them. 


CALLING PARENTS TO ACTION

Parents should study their children’s school plan to decide if the building will protect children during an attack — or trap them. 

Many schools make a point of announcing that they have an emergency procedure in place whereby leaders will send text messages announcing attacks or emergencies.  That plan has definite problems, starting with the fact that only people who read text messages will find it useful. Many teachers insist that students turn off their devices during lectures.  Many teachers don’t monitor their devices while teaching.   This is how it should be in the classroom. 

We must build some safety solutions into school architecture.  School leaders can use systems of dropping movable walls, a system of electronic doors that close and lock by signal to isolate dangerous intruders with evil intentions.  Furthermore, the time has probably arrived that schools should use security systems that involve large lobbies with double-door entrances on both sides
 
where the students pass through metal detectors

and students wear magnetized coded badges to activate, open, and close locked security doors.






IN CONCLUSION

For the foreseeable future, this is The Way of the 21st Century.   Eventually retina scanning and other identity devices yet invented will make security less intrusive.  

We will admit that no plan is foolproof, for the fools are ingenious.  However, some school districts do not have a plan or a clue.  The key to remember is this:   security features do children no good unless we invest in them and build them into school architecture.