On Jan. 24, 2023, the sounds of gunfire and screaming began to play on staff walkie-talkies at Harriet Tubman Village Charter School. They immediately caused a panic.
“All staff and students who heard the screams and shots through their radio believed that the school was under attack. Many students also heard the screams and shots because they were near teachers and class aides and were terrified just like staff,” one staff member later wrote in a complaint.
The sounds turned out to be part of an active-shooter drill performed by administrators at the K-8 school and not an actual active shooter as many had feared. But for teachers, 10 of whom submitted a letter to Harriet Tubman’s board requesting an investigation in the following days, the drill was traumatic, not only for them but for the students they serve.
Staff were still shaken during a meeting the next day.
“Many cried and said that they contacted their family and loved ones and even said their goodbyes. Many students had to seek help from the school counselors,” one staff member wrote of the meeting in a complaint.
“We really felt that we would not survive what felt like a real life shooting,” another wrote.
“Both students and staff feared for their lives for a long period of time,” yet another wrote.
To make matters worse, staff members reported the administration reacted defensively. The school’s head of security blamed the trauma students suffered on staff for having their radios on high volume, according to complaints. Ryan Woodard, the school’s principal and CEO, also claimed the sounds were likely due to staff radios picking up a police department channel. Teachers weren’t convinced and individual complaints rolled in.
A law firm was later brought in to investigate the incident.
For months, staff existed in this uneasy limbo, unsure of what happened and unsatisfied with the administration’s explanations. Some even said they received mental health treatment or resigned as a result of the trauma from the drill. But when the investigation concluded nearly eight months later, they got a more concrete answer.
According to a letter from Andrea Bravo, the school’s human resources manager, “The investigator did find that an HTVCS employee behaved in an inappropriate manner by playing sounds of gunshots and screaming over staff walkie-talkies during the safety drill.”
Bravo assured the teacher that Harriet Tubman’s administration had taken “serious and impactful steps to ensure conduct of this nature does not reoccur.” The school had contracted with a private organization to guide future active-shooter drills and reconfigured its safety team, Bravo wrote.
In a statement, Woodard wrote “Since making these adjustments during the last school year, the school has conducted several drills, all of which have run smoothly and without incident.”
In our age of mass shootings, concerns about school safety are ubiquitous. Staff and students should be prepared for the unimaginable. Though 95 percent of American schools engage in active-shooter drills, how schools go about doing them varies wildly, partly because of a lack of state guidance.
As administrators at Harriet Tubman learned, playing the sounds of screaming and gunfire over walkie-talkies at a school that serves five-year-olds is not the best approach. So, what is?
Hide. Escape Run. Overcome.
After teachers complained about Harriet Tubman’s active-shooter drill, the school’s administration turned to Safe Kids for guidance on active-shooter drills. The company has developed a program it calls H.E.R.O. The name is an acronym that stands for what the company advises potential victims to do in the event of a school shooting: hide, escape, run, overcome.
Adam Coughran is Safe Kids’ founder and president. He doesn’t blame schools for not knowing how best to carry out an active-shooter drill. While administrators’ hearts are usually in the right place, drills are often just another responsibility shoehorned into their purview, he said. That’s especially true at private schools and some charters.
“They’re trying to keep them safe, but they just don’t have the experience, the resources or the knowledge to do something that is industry-leading best practices,” Coughran said.
When asked if he would recommend schools perform the type of drill described by Harriet Tubman’s staff in complaints, Coughran said no.
“There’s a lot of conversation happening right now around how realistic we make it, so folks take it seriously, but not so realistic that it causes trauma and triggers maybe past incidents or past fears,” Coughran said.
Whenever it comes to more realistic drills, which can include everything from nerf guns and silly string to jiggling doorknobs to simulate an assailant trying to access a room, Coughran said they should be voluntary and focused on adults.
“We don’t recommend anything hyper-realistic, especially with little kids … rattling doors, banging on windows, a simulation of gunfire, people screaming, fake blood, all those different types of things are all very trauma inducing,” Coughran said.
What they do recommend when it comes to drills is that schools take it slow, keep it short, make sure students and adults are informed in advance and brainstorm about what they can do better in the future. Drills, to the extent they’re done, should be age appropriate and trauma informed and used to reinforce things kids have already been taught in less stressful situations. Coughran said his company’s curriculum aims to keep things from getting too stressful for kids and allows them to feel empowered.
“You don’t have to scare folks to prepare them. It’s already a scary topic. It’s already something that is top of mind of a lot of folks. Drills, while we need them and a lot of states require them, should be conducted in such a manner where you almost feel better afterwards,” Coughran said.
‘Those Are What’s Going to Protect Students’
In 2021, a trio of organizations concerned with school safety released a report on the subject.
Researchers found that there’s no evidence to suggest that “highly sensorial” drills help increase someone’s readiness in an emergency. They also wrote they should never be conducted in schools serving preschoolers or elementary schools and even advised against performing them in middle and high schools.
There is some evidence to suggest that drills without simulations or sensorial experiences can “increase knowledge and skills of how to respond appropriately without elevating anxiety or perceived safety risk,” the report noted. But in any case, drills should incorporate a team including parents and never be unannounced because of their potential to cause emotional and mental harm. Overzealous or unannounced active-shooter drills have also led to lawsuits against schools.
One organization has gone as far as saying schools should reconsider doing active-shooter drills in the first place.
In a 2020 report from the organization Everytown for Gun Safety, the authors wrote that evidence supporting the effectiveness of active-shooter drills is inconclusive. They did however find marked increases in depression, stress and anxiety and physiological health problems associated with active-shooter drills. In lieu of drills, the organization suggests focusing on proactive measures like threat assessment programs and increased access to mental health resources for students.
Bella Gallus, who recently graduated from The Bishop’s School in La Jolla started a chapter of Students Demand Action, an offshoot of Everytown, at the private school when she was a sophomore. She said she’d like to see active-shooter drills eliminated and focus turned to substantive change on gun safety laws like background checks, safe storage laws and implementing minimum ages to purchase certain firearms.
“Those are what’s going to protect students, not just doing an active-shooter drill,” Gallus said.
But if schools are going to continue to do active-shooter drills, she’d like to see changes to how they do them. Those include student and parent notification prior to drills and the opportunity to opt out and for schools to provide more robust mental health resources, particularly after drills are performed to prevent students from feeling lasting trauma.
Wild West of Drills
How active-shooter drills are done varies wildly across the state. Tracy Schmidt, the safety director for the San Diego County Office of Education said there’s a simple reason why: unlike fire or earthquake drills, active-shooter drills are not required by state law and there aren’t laws delineating how they should be done.
“There’s a level of autonomy within local educational agencies as to if and how they choose to conduct either these drills or potentially exercises,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt doesn’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. She said schools should be able to have flexibility and should listen to the communities they serve when deciding how and if to institute active-shooter drills. But politicians have begun to push for guardrails around them. San Diego Assemblymember Chris Ward in January introduced a bill that would require drills be age-appropriate, parents be notified in advance and for students to receive extra support after a drill takes place.
Schmidt said it’s also important schools understand there’s a whole continuum of strategies to prepare for active-shooter situations ranging from activities with staff, reading stories to students about what to do in an emergency situation to active-shooter drills that include students. The County Office of Education, for example, offers a menu of training options to schools and their law enforcement partners, but those trainings focus exclusively on adults and do not include students.
The 2021 report also laid out schools’ options in the form of a pyramid detailing the most basic to the most advanced strategies. Drills and simulations were at the top.
“The more you begin to extend drills and practices … to students, the more you increase the possibility of increasing anxiety and fear, and potentially eliciting a level of trauma.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story mistakenly identified Andrea Bravo as a human resources manager at San Diego Unified. She is employed by Harriet Tubman Village Charter School. Additionally, teachers sent a letter to Harriet Tubman’s board, not San Diego Unified’s.
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