I'm all for arming and conceal carry BUT a solution that would be bipartisan would be choked down easier.
I think that all rooms should have an emergency / fire exit that is locked (no exterior handle). YES this will cost tons of money, but so will the increased teacher pay, security measures (only aimed at security) and other non-fully functional things.
So what does this do...
1)During an actual fire escape theres more than 1 exit, (rather than funneling everyone thorugh a singular hall..)
2)in an active shooter situation it mitigates a large percentage of the "fish in a barrel"
Nice thought, but physically impossible when you look at how schools are constructed. How do the kids on the 2nd and up floors escape? Typical school design is a central hall with exterior walls opposite the hallway door. On floors 2 and up, there is nowhere to go out that wall without building elaborate fire escapes that make the building look ugly. There just isnt enough of a threat to justify that level of retrofit. I would think arming ALL teachers would be easier than that engineering nightmare. (redesigning and rebuilding ALL schools with a 2nd floor from the ground up)
Well, how about an "out of the box" solution: put police stations at schools.
School-based police stations would only be for staffing, no processing of arrestees (those would go to a central location and/or the jail). A 24/7 police presence on school property is likely to be a pretty strong deterrent (how many police stations do you hear about being attacked?). It might also improve police-community relations as kids, parents teachers and school administrators would all be exposed to the police on a daily basis.
This would be expensive as it would involve construction so might be more of a long-term rather than short-term solution.
Trouble is, there are more school buildings than roll call stations in most places. For instance Brownsburg is up to how many school buildings? When I was there in 92 it was 6+. Is it up to 10 now? 10+ substations for a town that size?
Along those lines somebody suggested free lunches to police in the cafeterias. And not necessarily just what the kids are fed. The idea is a constant yet random flow of officers as they go on break making it not such a soft target.
And eliminating the GFZ act goes a long way to solve the problem as well. On MANY fronts. Like the teacher that accidentally left his hunting rifle visible in his car. without that law, it could have been a non-issue.