House Bill 340, signed by Governor Markell in 2014, demands public schools do at least two intruder/lockdown drills a school year. But Newark Charter School hasn’t had one this school year or last school year according to sources. Most schools that have these type of drills tell parents ahead of time. My own son’s school has. I’m not sure why Newark Charter thinks they don’t have to conduct these drills.
In the wake of the shooting in Florida last week that caused a former student to go on a rampage and slaughter 17 innocent lives, it is more imperative than ever that our schools are prepared for these type of scenarios. Delaware’s law concerning these drills is part of the Omnibus School Safety Act. Schools are required to report these drills to the Delaware Department of Homeland Security. Do we now need a section of their website with a checklist of each school that complied with the law? Sounds like it. What are the ramifications for not reporting or conducting these drills? Like most in Delaware, probably a phone call. Sorry, NCS doesn’t get a pass on this no matter how “great” their test scores are!
The Season Of Myths 
What is the source of your information? How do you know they don’t do this? Clearly your children don’t attend the school, so how can we have faith that what you publish is accurate?
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Concerned parents told me. I won’t reveal their names on condition of anonymity.
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My kid goes to NCS and described the intruder drill in great detail and that they’ve done it a few times. I don’t know who your source is, but you probably should question how accurate they are.
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Is this in the upper or lower school? They do have two locations.
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Upper School has had at least one drill this year. No NCHS does not notify parents in advance. Experience has proven that if children know they are participating in a drill then those children are less likely to take the drill seriously. BTW – from my own experience, I can enter any number of CSD schools and immediately gain access to the student body without having to pass through a locked main office. Christiana High School is a great example of how our traditional schools are unprepared for intruders. While you do need to be buzzed in, the door monitor who sits in the office in the center of the building doesn’t bother to ask why you are there. Just buzzes you through. Once through those doors, an intruder has complete freedom to move throughout the school b/c the school office is not located anywhere near the entries. What’s just if not always right and what’s right is not always just. Just sayin’ we should be looking at school security with a microscope and not a magnifying glass.
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Elementary and Middle schools (both on same campus). My kid recounted the drills of hiding in the bathroom in kindergarten and their drills in middle school.
As a parent, I’d appreciate if you’d edit your original post up high (and the headline if possible), because many people just read the headline and first few sentences. If they aren’t reading these comments, they’ll never know the truth and assume NCS isn’t doing this stuff.
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My children attend the Junior/Senior High School and they both said they had lockdown and intruder drills.
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I have three children at NCS – one at the primary school, one at the middle school, and one in the high school. All three had lockdown/intruder drills. Please check your ‘facts’.
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This came out months ago. Thanks!
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In the wake of Parkland and other school shootings, school security has become a bigger concern. The schools are not secure because historically they were not targets until access to violent materials (movies, games, media) infiltrated every corner of our world. Add in the liberalization and acceptance of divergent behaviors, both in schools and out, and we now have a recipe where normal socialization has been turned on its head.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialization
Instead of guiding children into norms of society, we (and are schools) are guiding them into a place where there are no norms. Worse, we are establishing precedents where efforts to establish norms are countered by claims of bullying and Social justice manipulation. Students are being required to accept and EMBRACE such things as gender reassignment of a student ‘feels’ they are the wrong gender. Students are then in a situation where they must ‘pretend’ that the student is a different gender. How does this possibly help young people, who already have so many questions, establish any foundation or baseline for normal behavior. Tolerance most assuredly can be taught without demanding acceptance of divergent or aberrant behavior. Children (and apparently adults) need to know there ARE lines that should not be crossed. Failure to enforce these lines have created confusion and resentment.
Schools have become targets because perpetrators have evolved in the absence of clear unacceptable behavior. Schools have become targets because inappropriate behavior has been tolerated and schools have had their disciplinary tools taken away. Schools are a place for children and therefore soft targets. We do not have the resources to make our schools as secure as a prison nor should we need to.
Drills for intruders are small consolation for what the ‘adults in the room’ should be doing which is establishing clear rules of behavior and clear disciplinary actions for violations. No more excuses for the child’s home life or demographic. Bad behavior is bad behavior regardless of background. The more our schools are beholden to relativism and social justice rather than pragmatism and logic, the more occurrences of divergent behavior will intrude and warp the purpose of our schools.
On the scale of priorities which is supposed to be higher on the list?
Education = Students knowledge
OR
Security from intruders = fear, loss of education time, acceptance of divergent behaviors, cost to taxpayers to protect soft targets.
Our traditional schools, Delaware legislators and social justice defenders have clearly made their choice. Is that reasonable? Is it succeeding? Perhaps if they made alternate choices, security from intruders would not be as necessary. Perhaps if we had LAWS demanding schools provide academic and behavioral standards based on rational norms, our security issues would not rise to the level we have now.
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Absent social justice, there would be no universal education system.
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#1) False, in the U.S. education, has always been recognized as beneficial.
#2) Apples and Oranges with respect to addressing socialization and acceptance of aberrant behavior.
Social justice attempts to minimize differences by claiming that rewarding norms and productivity are discriminatory or elitist.
Merit is considered elitist.
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#1 Knave, tell that to the black people or really any people not lily white. Yes, education is beneficial…as long as you are allowed to participate in it. Many of the social problems we have today can be traced back to denying varying peoples access to that “beneficial” education. In fact, public education as we have it today is the greatest social entitlement program ever authorized and implemented in this country.
#2 Social justice aims to end the gap between one people and another. White and non-whites. Gay or Straight. Men or women (or do women really deserve to make less than their male counterparts?) Able or disabled. Religious or not. Mentally ill and mentally competent. Medically fragile and healthy. And yes, those of the nonbinary gender and those whose insides match their outsides.
Did you know that thirty years ago women had to cover themselves if they wanted to breast feed in public? Did you know that the constitution says nothing about abortion? Or that in 1981, no did not mean no when a women was raped? Or, that our legislature is poised to vote on legislation that will decrease the sentence for person found guilty of rape by instrument vs rape by body part? That we actually have legislators who think that it’s less traumatizing to be raped by a broom handle and therefore the perpetrator should receive a shorter sentence?
The problem we have stems for a place called the Attorney General’s office. These folks have not come forward to the public to say they don’t approve of the new penal code in process nor do they choose to prosecute felony juvenile crimes on a consistent manner. Social Justice is not about normalizing abhorrent behavior. Abhorrent behavior continues because we fail to use the process of deterrence. Where is that process located? The juvenile justice system. Your beef is with them.
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