As debate rages in schools across the nation about how to best protect students during a schools shooting, the superintendent of a Pennsylvania school district has come up with a unique way to push back by equipping his classrooms with buckets of rocks. In testimony before the state House Education committee, David Helsel, superintendent of the Blue Mountain School District in rural Schuylkill County explained his controversial plan.

“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,” Helsel told state lawmakers.

Why 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,” he explained. The idea is that if there is an armed intruder “who attempts to gain entrance to any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full of students armed with rocks,” he said. “And they will be stoned.”

This plan is hardly new. All the classrooms under Helsel’s purview have had buckets of stones in the closets for two years but the plan has garnered more attention now amid debate about whether school teachers should be armed. Helsel said he came up with the plan after he realized that the existing protocol merely had students hide and wait for the worst to pass. “Protocol has been that students lie down, under desks and basically become passive targets on our classrooms,” Helsel said. “We decided to empower our students with tools of self-defense if needed.”

Helsel insists he doesn’t want any of his students to play the hero unless there’s no choice. “We’ve learned many things from these tragedies over the years,” Helsel said. “One of them is that evacuating makes students the safest.”