A recent news item out of Minnesota caught our eye: "Bulletproof Whiteboards Unveiled at Rocori Schools."
Bulletproof what? Where?
That would be whiteboards, at the small central Minnesota Rocori School District, which will spend upward of $25,000 for the protective devices produced by a company better known for its military armor products.
"The timing was right," Rocori school board Chairwoman Nadine Schnettler tells us. "The company is making these in response to the Newtown shooting, and has been making similar products for our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan."
The $300, 18-by-20-inch whiteboards, produced by Maryland-based Hardwire LLC, "will be an additional layer of protection" for students and teachers, she says.
It's not just the conversation about guns and school safety that's changed since Adam Lanza gunned down 20 students and six adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in December. It's also the plethora of products, including training programs that in some instances advocate fighting back, that are being marketed to school districts that are typically cash-strapped but desperate to prove they're doing something to provide better security.
Bulletproof whiteboards and clipboards. Bulletproof wall panels. Bulletproof backpack inserts. Bullet "resistant" window film. Specialized locks. Training that turns the emergency lockdown, "shelter in place" response on its head.
While proponents of the school safety items and training say their products provide more than just a psychological fix, critics say they need a lot more persuading.
"After every high-profile school shooting, we have an explosion of gadgets, gurus and charlatans," says school safety consultant Kenneth Trump, who is openly disdainful of the bulletproof items, but more so of training programs that advocate confrontation. "Corporations see dollar signs," he says, "and believe that schools have huge budgets to buy new products and services."
But school budgets are far tighter now than in recent memory, he says, with precious little to spend for whiteboards or training.
"Federal and state school safety grants have been hacked at, if not eliminated," Trump says. "The pool of dollars that many vendors envision doesn't really exist."
His unvarnished take: "The vendors may be opportunistic, but the people on the purchasing end aren't thinking it through, either."
A post-Newtown measure that will be considered by the U.S. Senate would authorize $40 million in grants that must be matched by local school systems for improving security with measures including lights, locks and surveillance equipment, as well as for security training for teachers and administrators.
The U.S. Education Department is also developing an emergency guide for schools, and the Department of Homeland Security is writing a similar one on securing school buildings. The Education Department's Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools grant program has been a victim of budget cuts, unfunded since 2011.
The Minnesota Sale
When Hardwire LLC, traditionally a manufacturer of armor and shields for the military and law enforcement, wanted some attention for its new bulletproof school products, it's not surprising it zeroed in on Rocori.
A decade ago at Rocori High School in Cold Spring, Minn., 15-year-old John Jason McLaughlin used a .22-caliber handgun to kill two fellow students.
And Hardwire already had a working relationship with a local company, Cold Spring Granite, which provides material that the armor company uses in its products for bridge and building infrastructure protection.
The town's police chief made the whiteboard pitch to the school board, says Schnettler. And members were pressed to act quickly, she says, to take advantage of a special offer: The granite company would donate 75 whiteboards to the district's public and parochial schools if the board agreed to match the purchase.
"It wasn't a unanimous vote," Schnettler says, "primarily because Hardwire had a bit of a sense of urgency. They wanted Rocori to be the first district to have these, and if we didn't take the offer, they were going to move on."
Enlarge image i