Schools use active shooter drills to prepare for armed attacks

CARMEL, Ind. — “Lockdown, lockdown, lockdown. This is a drill.”

With those seven words, calmly announced over the intercom system, an eerie silence overtook a bustling elementary school of 650 students in suburban Indianapolis. Lights were turned off and blinds shut. In some classrooms, doors were barricaded with small desks and chairs.

From start to finish, the “intruder drill” at the Forest Dale Elementary School in Carmel took about 10 minutes — an exercise now as routine at the school as a fire drill. What might sound terrifying to some parents has become the norm in many schools nationwide after a rash of school shootings.

More than two-thirds of school districts surveyed by the U.S. Government Accountability Office conduct “active shooter” exercises.

Some make their drills very realistic, simulating the sounds of gunshots and using smoke and fake blood. In one case, armed police officers with weapons drawn burst into a Florida middle school, terrifying staff and students alike.

Staff and teachers are usually given warning that drills will happen.

Actors leave the scene of a active shooter drill at the Voorheesville High School March 24, 2016 in Voorheesville, N.Y. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union) Actors leave the scene of a active shooter drill at the Voorheesville High School March 24, 2016 in Voorheesville, N.Y. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union) Photo: SKIP DICKSTEIN, ALBANY TIMES UNION Buy photo Photo: SKIP DICKSTEIN, ALBANY TIMES UNION Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Schools use active shooter drills to prepare for armed attacks 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

GAO investigators said one district noted “the difficulty of striking a balance between providing knowledge and inciting fear, particularly at schools with younger children.”

Between 2000 and 2013, there were 25 shootings at U.S. elementary and secondary schools, resulting in 57 deaths, according to the FBI. These numbers include the shooting at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 when an intruder gunned down 20 first-graders and six educators.

Students at Forest Dale began participating in twice-a-semester intruder drills even before Sandy Hook.

“We do fire drills, but we don’t expect there to be a fire. When you get on an airplane, they talk to you about all sorts of safety procedures, but not because they expect the plane to crash, but because you just need to know, just in case,” said D.J. Schoeff, a school resource officer in Carmel and a regional director with the National Association of School Resource Officers.

But Forest Dale’s drills don’t have the effects and props that have drawn criticism elsewhere.

Playing the role of intruders, Forest Dale Principal Deanna Pitman and Police Officer Greg Dewald walked the halls, jiggled the doorknobs of darkened classrooms, checking for unlocked doors. A staff assistant in an office watching a monitor used the intercom to broadcast the location and description of the intruders, so staff and students could choose how to respond.

Fifth-graders scattered from a hallway, leaving notebooks and pencils strewn across the carpeted floor as they fled inside a classroom. At the other end of the school, youngsters streamed outside in lines of two with their teachers to designated safe locations.

A school psychologist, Dr. Melissa Reeves, says schools need to be prepared and conduct age-appropriate exercises like the Forest Dale drill. It’s the more realistic simulation drills with props that worry Reeves.

“We do not light a fire in the hallway to practice fire drills, so why do we feel the need to bring in a fake gun, people screaming and people with makeup that looks like blood?,” said Reeves, a psychologist at a pre-K through 12 school in Charlotte, N.C., and the president-elect of the National Association of School Psychologists.