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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ents-to-throw-at-them/?utm_term=.9e1b34a68774
This school district’s plan to stop shooters: Arming students with a bucket of rocks
by Eli Rosenberg March 23 at 9:01 PM Email the author
One school district is equipping its classrooms with buckets of smooth rocks for students to use as weapons of last resort against a shooter. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)
One schools superintendent has a novel way to keep his students safe from school shooters: arming them with rocks.
David Helsel, superintendent of a school district in northeast Pennsylvania, explained his plan to a legislative education committee last week, drawing a flurry of local media coverage.
“Every classroom has been equipped with a five-gallon bucket of river stone,” Helsel explained about his Blue Mountain School District in Schuylkill County, northeast of Harrisburg, in a video broadcast by ABC affiliate 16 WNEP. “If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance into any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full of students armed with rocks, and they will be stoned.”
Helsel’s comments come amid a new chapter in the public debate about mass shootings after a man killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Fla. Despite polls showing that large numbers of Americans support stricter gun-control measures, Congress has not produced any significant legislation, and schools and other officials have looked to other solutions. President Trump floated an NRA-backed idea of arming teachers.
[ VIDEO: How Trump’s talking points on guns sound just like the NRA’s ]
Helsel told local news reporters that students in his district routinely drilled on shooter simulations and were given active-shooting training through a program known as ALICE, short for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate.
[ The extraordinary number of kids who have endured school shootings since Columbine ]
According to ABC, ALICE protocol involves evacuating students and barricading classroom doors for those who can’t safely leave. In at least one school district, in Redmond, Wash., ALICE training also involved guidance for children to distract an intruder.
Helsel described the bucket of rocks, which will be kept in classroom closets, as a “last ditch” option to use as an alternative to students hiding passively under desks.
“At one time, I just had the idea of river stone,” Helsel said. “They’re the right size for hands, you can throw them very hard, and they will create or cause pain, which can distract.”
His schools have been using the idea, called “go buckets,” for the past two years, according to BuzzFeed.
Another district had floated the idea of using golf balls, Helsel said, according Fox News, but that idea did not seem effective to him.
“Obviously a rock against a gun isn’t a fair fight, but it’s better than nothing,” he said. “I’m not sure why some people feel that it’s more appropriate to be a stationary target under a desk in a classroom rather than be empowered to defend yourself and provide a response to deter the entry of an armed intruder into their classroom.”
Some students and parents interviewed by the outlet were supportive of the idea.
“At this point, we have to get creative. We have to protect our kids first and foremost,” parent Dori Bornstein told 16 WNEP. “Throwing rocks, it’s an option.”
Kenneth S. Trump, president of the National School Safety and Security Services, a K-12 security consulting firm, told the Associated Press that the idea was illogical and could possibly cost lives.
Susan Spicka, executive director of Education Voters of Pennsylvania, told BuzzFeed that she was at the hearing and a lawmaker responded to Helsel’s bucket of rocks plan by saying, “Can I come out and watch?” The comment elicited laughter.
“School districts in Pennsylvania are so underfunded, then they joke about kids having to defend themselves,” she said.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters are expected to converge in Washington on Saturday to call for stricter gun regulations.
“We’ve been trying to be proactive, just in case,” Helsel told ABC. “We wanted to provide some type of last response to an intruder … rather than crawling under a desk and getting shot.”
Helsel did not immediately return a request for comment.
Read more:
http://wnep.com/2018/03/22/superint...rmed-with-rocks-in-case-of-a-school-shooting/
Superintendent Says Students Are Armed with Rocks In Case of a School Shooting
Posted 10:44 pm, March 22, 2018, by Peggy Lee, Updated at 11:12AM, March 23, 2018
SCHUYLKILL COUNTY, Pa. -- There’s a rocky controversy when it comes to school safety in Schuylkill County.
The superintendent of the Blue Mountain School District is in the spotlight after telling lawmakers in Harrisburg his students protect themselves against potential school shooters with rocks.
“Every classroom has been equipped with a five-gallon bucket of river stone. If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance into any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full students armed with rocks and they will be stoned,” said Dr. David Helsel.
That was Dr. Helsel testifying to the House Education Committee last week in Harrisburg.
The superintendent of the Blue Mountain School District was explaining his unconventional form of protecting the students in their schools in the event of an active shooter situation: give them rocks.
“At one time I just had the idea of river stone, they`re the right size for hands, you can throw them very hard and they will create or cause pain, which can distract,” said Helsel.
Helsel says teachers, staff and students were given active shooter training through a program known as ALICE which stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate and they routinely hold evacuation drills for active shooter simulations.
But if a teacher decides to lockdown a classroom, there are rocks in a five-gallon bucket kept in every classroom closet that students could throw if shooters get inside.
Still, Helsel says the rocks are seen as a last resort.
“We have devices installed in our doors that help to secure them, to make it very difficult to break through,” said Helsel. “We also have, we train kids and talk about barricading the doors.”
A teenager who is a senior a Blue Mountain High School and says he and other students like that plan.
“It matters because it will help protect the schools, anything helps, rocks are better than books and pencils.”
Parents do as well.
“At this point, we have to get creative, we have to protect our kids first and foremost, throwing rocks, it's an option,” said Dori Bornstein.
But not everyone thinks this is a practical line of defense.
“I think that's rather comical,” said one college student in Schuylkill Haven.
“It's absurd, arm the teachers,” said a parent in Schuylkill Haven.
Helsel says the district has no plans to arm teachers, however, Blue Mountain does have a maintenance employee who is trained and certified to work as school security and is armed.
And the district plans to have more support staff get the same training to act a security.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...s-last-defense-against-shooters-idUSKBN1GZ2DC
Buckets of rocks are Pennsylvania schools' last defense against shooters
David DeKok
3 Min Read
HARRISBURG, Pa. (Reuters) - A rural Pennsylvania school district has equipped all 200 of its classrooms with buckets of rocks that students and teachers could use as a “last line of defense” in the event of a school shooting, the district’s superintendent said on Friday.
The buckets are just one of the measures that Blue Mountain School District in Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania, has put in place this academic year, along with security cameras, secured building entrances and fortified classroom doors, Superintendent David Helsel said in a telephone interview.
“We didn’t want our students to be helpless victims,” Helsel said. “River stones were my idea. I thought they would be more effective than throwing books or book bags or staplers.”
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Last month’s massacre of 17 students and educators at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, sparked fresh debate in the United States over how to prevent school shootings.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans are expected to join rallies in Washington and around the country on Saturday calling for tighter gun laws in “March for Our Lives” protests organized by the young survivors of the Parkland shooting.
Helsel said the idea of equipping classrooms with rocks grew out of his reading of the active-shooter defense program known as ALICE, which stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate.
He first spoke about the rock buckets in testimony at the Pennsylvania state house in Harrisburg last week.
Helsel said his school board approved the rock buckets before they were put in the classrooms at the district’s five schools last fall. Parents in Orwigsburg, about 92 miles (148 km) northwest of Philadelphia, have been mostly supportive, he added.
“It is so unbelievably tragic that our society has come to a point where schools have to arm themselves with buckets of rocks to defend the against active shooters,” said Robert Conroy, director of organizing with gun-control group CeaseFirePA. “We should be talking about real reform of gun laws.”
