How Safe Are Belmont Schools?
Strong barriers and procedures only go so far; no school is "100 percent safe."
The staff and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. did everything right last Friday. Just after 9:30 a.m., as a stranger unknown to the school's office staff approached the main entrance carrying a high-powered rifle, the front doors were locked as part of a recently-installed buzzer system at the only public entry. A 9-1-1 call went out while teachers and their aids directing children into safe areas in classrooms and began locking the doors as Principal Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung and Mary Sherlach, Sandy Hook's school psychologist, confronted the gun-touting man. And still 20 first-graders, four teachers and aids along with Hochsprung and Sherlach were gunned down in the second worst school massacre on US soil. So …
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Franklin Tucker
10:58 am on Thursday, December 20, 2012
As for being escorted to a classroom, it happened to me twice but I suspect that was done because I am not a parent of a current student and I do get lost too often to remember. more ›