She thinks about it because she doesn’t know how she’d escape.
Back in middle school, she had it figured out, but not now.
“Our building was only one floor, so if there was a shooter in the school, I was going to jump out the window and run as far as I could,” explained a local high school sophomore. “But now that I’m in high school and the building is three stories tall, jumping out wouldn’t exactly work out too well for me.
“So, now I don’t know what I’d do if a shooter came in our school.”
See, school shootings are on this young person’s mind right now because two students and two teachers were slain by a 14-year-old assailant last week in Georgia, and because online threats locked down and closed the Buckeye Local School District earlier this past week and led to rumors about others.
“It happens. We know it happens and that’s why it’s one of those thoughts that comes to my mind when I’m in bed trying to sleep at night. It freaks me out, honestly, because me and my friends have heard about the threats here in the valley. That’s not supposed to happen here. Not here. That’s what scares me.
“We’re told to hide from sight from the door of the classroom, but I want to get out of the building because my parents have always told me to run toward the road to Neffs if anything happened,” the sophomore explained to me. “So, I just have to figure out how to get out alive.”
How. To. Get. Out. Alive. Her words. Not mine.
That’s because our children map their escape routes out of their school buildings because we can’t – or won’t – figure this out.
And that’s disgusting.
