Pennsylvania school district gives teachers baseball bats to fight attackers

Show Caption Hide Caption Penn. school district arms teachers with baseball bats In the wake of the deadly Parkland Florida school shootings, schools across the country are taking measures to prevent mass shootings. Susana Victoria Perez (@susana_vp) has more.

A Pennsylvania school district incorporated a low-tech method of protecting teachers and students from attackers.

Millcreek Township School District in northwest Pennsylvania handed each of its teachers a 16-inch baseball bat Monday as a means to protect them and others, reports Erie Times-News. In March, Blue Mountain School District in Schuylkill County dished details of its safety plan, which includes equipping each classroom with a five-gallon bucket of rocks to "stone" a school shooter.

In the case of Millcreek, the bats are more "symbolic" but are free to be used to "fight," district Superintendent William Hall told the Times-News and Erie News Now.

"It is the last resort," Hall told Erie News Now. "But, it is an option and something we want people to be aware of."

Read more: Pennsylvania school district: Intruders 'will be stoned' by students armed with rocks

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The teachers received their bats after a training on how to respond to school shootings, Erie News Now reported. The district ordered about 600 bats at a cost of about $1,800. They'll be put in areas throughout the school, notes the Times-News.

"It’s to make people comfortable with the idea that they can attack and not simply go into hard lockdown and just hide, as we’d been told in our training up to this point,” said Jon Cacchione, president of the teachers union Millcreek Education Association, to the Times-News.

The deadly school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla., drove Millcreek to institute other safety measures aside from the bats. These include concrete barriers, constructing secured entrances at several schools and hiring a consulting firm to re-evaluated security measures.

Follow Sean Rossman on Twitter: @SeanRossman