#Hidden safe room in memorial how to
#Hidden safe room in memorial plus

When Miah Cerrillo found out that her parents were still planning to send her four siblings back to school, she agonized about their safety. But families and survivors feel like it’s not enough, especially when the district couldn’t promise that the officers posted wouldn’t be the same ones who failed to enter the school for over an hour on the day of the shooting. Officials added hundreds of new security cameras, posted more law enforcement officers on campuses and constructed hard-to-climb fences around school perimeters. The Uvalde Independent School District did improve school security over the summer. According to data compiled by the K12 School Shooting Database and Everytown for Gun Safety, since the shooting in Uvalde, there have been 132 documented incidents of gunfire on school grounds, killing 38 people and injuring 108 others. The political debate has been set up as a false dichotomy between meaningful gun reform or improving school security, whereas experts say both are necessary.Īs that debate plays out in Congress, gun violence continues to bring terror to the halls of America’s schools. Democrats say Republicans are over-reliant on school safety measures when they should be focused on meaningful gun reform. Republicans argue Democrats are reluctant to support school safety measures.

#Hidden safe room in memorial how to

Now, lawmakers at both the federal and state levels are grappling with how to make America’s schools safer in a country that sees more active shooter incidents every year, and how to do so without further traumatizing students.īut the contention continues. In response, the Biden administration issued a FAQ document for local school districts, reminding them that they could also spend that money on metal detectors, student threat assessments and active shooter drills - all parts of school security.

But last month, Senate Republicans accused the Biden administration of “dragging their feet” in funding school security measures, pointing in part to that September guidance. In September, the Department of Education told local education officials that they encourage spending that money on “nurturing learning environments,” not just hardening schools. The bill passed with broad bipartisan support, but lawmakers bitterly disagree about how that money should be spent.

#Hidden safe room in memorial plus

That conversation has intensified in the year since the shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, when the shooter entered the building through an unlocked door.Ī month after the shooting, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which included $1 billion in grants for school safety plus a wide suite of gun reforms, including enhanced background checks, narrowing the “boyfriend loophole” by prohibiting someone convicted of domestic violence from purchasing or possessing a gun for at least five years, and expanding the ways law enforcement and prosecutors can target gun trafficking. As lawmakers go back and forth over how to respond to the epidemic of mass shootings, one question often pops up: How do you make schools safe without hardening them to the point that it exacerbates mental health issues among students and makes schools inhospitable to learning? The girls don’t know it yet, but in a way, they’re responsible for this invention.Īs Miah, Kendall and Elena gushed over the white board safe room on TikTok, a broader debate about whether and how to implement such measures - part of a spate of school security proposals that includes everything from increasing the number of school resource officers and installing more locks on doors to incentivizing teachers to carry firearms - is echoing through the halls of power in Austin and in Washington. She has decorated the ballistic shields with pale pink and lavender pom-poms. The whiteboards move along tracks as she pulls, expanding into an L-shaped bullet-proof safe room.

She pulls back with all her body weight, and the hinge in the corner pops out toward her. Multiple viral videos show an elementary school teacher in Alabama reaching for a handle nestled in the corner of the room, where two white boards touch. Sure enough, type “white board safe room” into TikTok and it pops up right away. They say having one in their classroom would be the only way they would even consider going back to school. They get even more animated as they explain the invention, speaking over one another excitedly. Miah and Elena demonstrate, putting their wrists together and creating a 90-degree angle with fingers outstretched, illustrating how the white walls create a little room that could be wedged into the corner of a classroom. Kendall nods from where she sits cross-legged on Miah’s bed. “Like you can pull it out if there’s something happening, you can go in,” Elena explains, speaking faster now.