Importance of Lockdowns

For all schools, drills are necessary to prepare for in case of a natural disaster, such as for an earthquake or fire.

However, with the numerous school

shootings that happen so often, shouldn’t we be having more lockdown drills for those situations?

Lockdown drills are essential for the safety and protection for students at school, especially in today’s society where school shootings are more prevalent than ever before.

Thus, school drills do need to be taken more seriously by students.

Most students agree that school safety must be taken more seriously.

PVHS junior Julja Hokanson said, “Lockdown drills should be taken more seriously by everyone because anybody can have a weapon on them and being prepared is essential to everyone’s safety.”

Junior Valerie Lee added, “Lockdown drills need to be taken more seriously so that we know what to do and how to act in a real situation instead of panicking.”

As everyone is aware of, shootings appear to have become the norm. The increasing number of shootings have shown that it is necessary for lockdowns to be treated seriously and more cautiously.

At PV High School, many students seem to take lockdowns lightheartedly.

To many people, lockdowns are treated as just a break from class. In fact, to students, when a disaster or lockdown drill takes place, students lack concern.

For example, once a lockdown begins, numerous people start snapchatting their friends and even posting on snapchat stories.

Though some of us may not want to admit, what many of us think of drills is that class time is cut, thus given more time to socialize with friends or use electronic devices while on a drill.

Not only does this apply to students, but the lack of concern in drills may also apply to teachers.

In fact, during lockdown drills, there have been teachers who continue to teach their lessons in class.  

PV High security guard Richard Burton said in regards to lockdown drills, “[students] should be very obedient and paying attention. [They should] take it seriously.”

If an emergency situation were to happen, a security guard’s role would be to hustle people into rooms and get students out of hallways and out of sight.”

The PVHS administration is currently training and improving lockdown drills to make to make the campus safer as well as improve lockdown drills if a shooter on campus does become a reality.

While strong efforts are being made to rally support for more security measures, it is still difficult to have a perfect plan for scenarios like this.

Dr. Charles Park said, “I cannot say that right now we have all our procedures in place for every situation.  We need to come up with every potential scenario and have a plan in place for each scenario. Right now our procedure is a lockdown, and we need to reassess that.”

PVE Chief Police Mark Velez said, “I think that the school has a food plan in place for disasters and school shooters. [It’s important] to listen to what the teacher says and the announcements being made.”