Naugatuck High School Student Calls For Change In School Policy

Written by Naugatuck High School student Tyler Suarez

Mass shootings are more prevalent today than they have been in decades, and it is becoming an epidemic. This year there has been at least one mass shooting every single day. We as a community have to face the reality that this is what our world is coming to, and the least we can do is try to be prepared starting with our youth.

It is a Connecticut state law that schools are required to practice and enforce three crisis drills a year, but fire drills and code yellow drills (lock the doors and stay in place) count towards those requirements. As a current member of the Naugatuck School system I can honestly tell you that if there was an active shooter in the building I, along with the majority of my classmates, would have no idea where to go or even what to do, and that’s scary! I conducted a survey on this topic with my fellow peers and 68.7% said they also would not know what to do or where to go in the event of an active shooter in the building.

School shootings and lockdown drills have directly affected my life. Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School was my aunt. She was gunned down in the lobby of Sandy Hook on December 14, 2012.

Sadly there has been slim to no change in the safety routines practiced amongst the students since then district wide. After the Sandy Hook shooting I only participated in one genuine active shooter lockdown drill. That was just weeks after the shooting in eighth grade. Now I am currently a junior in high school and haven’t participated in another active shooter lockdown drill. This is a real problem, and we as a community need to do something about it.

Schools should be required to practice and enforce these active shooter lockdown drills where kids are taught what to do in a serious situation and where to go. Although the code yellow “stay in place” drills are a great step in the right direction, that can’t be all we do in protecting our kids.

I feel as if the existing policy should be changed to where one of those three drills is required to be an active shooter lockdown drill, and a lot of my peers feel the same. In the survey I conducted 100% said they feel practicing active shooter drills is necessary and 95.6% said they would feel safer in doing so.

I would like to take this information I have gathered and present it to the Board of Education in hopes of bringing about change in the Naugatuck School District’s policy.

If you’d like to support my proposal you too can take the survey at

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/C37Q9DN