MIDVALE, UT — Some teachers and students at Hillcrest High School feel like there is a safety issue in classrooms due to the glass panels and lack of drills conducted throughout the year.
One of the two main issues being addressed at the school is the three large glass panels in every classroom that overlook the hallways. ASL teacher Kelly Bowen has taken matters into her own hands and found ways to ensure safety in her classroom during a potential emergency.
“Whenever we do drills in my classroom, if we are practicing an active killer coming, we put the desks up against the windows. We talked about it with our students, and they felt ten times safer from that because the statistic is, if the active killer can’t see you, then they are just going to keep walking.” This is one of the ways that Bowen has taken action to eliminate risk in her classroom.
There is also concern that there is not enough preparation that goes into safety drills in individual classrooms at the school. “We did that of our own accord, not through instruction of anyone else,” stated Bowen.
There are also very few drills conducted throughout the year and many of them are things least likely to happen. Safety drills at Hillcrest only take place during app class which many people tend to skip. After being asked if safety drills should be practiced any other time of the day, Bowen stated, “This is crazy and chaos but lunchtime because that’s when there is the most chaos and those are the times that we need to be most prepared.”
After talking with Sophomore Addison Garr, she believes that the glass panels pose a threat. She explained that during emergency drills, you are taught to hide, and when somebody is able to see inside the entire classroom just by looking through the panels, there is nowhere to hide.
“The drills should not be during app because lots of people skip app when they know there’s a drill,” stated Garr.