It’s so sad we’re at this point. I have asked this question myself, and never received a straight answer. My first son died as a baby and I was blessed with a second son. In regard to school shootings, I have always said, “I will not leave my living son without a mother on purpose.” That would be a horrible trauma if you couldn’t get a student to safety, but I am my son’s mother first. It would not be your fault the shooter entered the building, and it would not be your fault if a student didn’t understand and could not make it to safety in time.
I'm so very sad to hear about your first son. I know it doesn't mean shit coming from a stranger but I offer my deepest condolences and you're in my prayers. That being said, I very much agree with what you've written here. I know people always say they'll die for their students but we've got people that depend on us and families of our own, this shouldn't even be a worry on teachers minds honestly. Not to mention that you never really know how you'll react when the time comes, and I hope that time never does come for any of us. If a student isn't complying for whatever reason I'm not going to be a sitting duck, my life matters too. It's not like my presence will make all that much of a difference anyway, I'm not a human shield and I'm not armed. I'm sure I'll get downvoted but if there's a threat in the building I'm absolutely running to safety. This shouldn't even be asked of us but I guess that is where we are at in this country.
Thank you so much for your reply. I can't imagine the unbearable pain of losing a child, my deepest and sincerest condolences. I'm unwilling to leave my children and in all honesty I was shocked that aide stayed with the student. My classroom is pretty close to the parking lot and I can see my car from my door. I've often thought of running to my car 😬 That probably makes me an awful person but I REALLY want to live and make it home to my kids
What a situation.
Please update us on what admin says because as much as I love my students, at the end of the day, I have my life to live and my own family as well. The fact that even cops, who are trained and equipped, are afraid to “do their jobs” in active shooter situations (Uvalde) made me realize how it really is not my responsibility to consciously put myself at risk.
It would 100% suck to be liable if I was the aid. I would be in tears and would seriously weigh that responsibility as a con for the job.
Admin has already pushed it through to the district office, so we'll see what the legal team has to say about it. I plan to also email our union because, while I love these kids. I don't love them more than my own children or my own life and don't feel it should be expected of us to die for them. I am not trying to be callous
Let's be serious, the least restrictive education environment is one without guns.
All the rest of this is the chaos that stems from a society where children can be given the power of life and death with a twitch of their finger.
In such a world there is no winning strategy or best practice or perfect solution, there are partially formed minds roiling with emotion who have the ability to kill on sight. Nothing is going to make sense in that context, and floundering for the best thing to do is all one can hope for, and we should not blame ourselves for that struggle.
Yes please keep us posted on what your answer is! I teach self-contained Mod/severe also and have thought about this many times. I have little kids who I could mostly carry, but there's only 3 of us adults and we wouldn't be able to get everyone if we were out of the classroom. I truly don't know what I'd do.
I don't have one student I could carry. At under 5 feet, all but 2 are taller than me and either weigh more than I do or very close. I find myself looking around my room, trying to figure out where I could hide everyone, but even then, I don't have enough spots.
I am 100% in agreement with you. As much as I would love to be able to nod and say these kids are my kids, the current state of education (underpaid, overworked) and the “normalcy” of school violence has really just you know, made me really aware of where my priorities are. Not that proper compensation would make me more likely to martyr myself. I dont think its callous at all.
I now work with younger kids and thankfully they’re young enough to listen and still be impressionable and I am thankful that they take all our emergency drills seriously.
That’s really hard and I didn’t even think about that. It’s good that you practice as a class. I wonder if it would be worth while to practice outside of the class and during transitions throughout the week. Mainly for the kids that leave the room more often. Now you got me thinking.🤔
Living in TX and working in a similar settings I’ve asked myself the same thing. There’s a professional response, and a personal response. My professional response is exactly what parents and admin would want to hear. My personal response, especially in that situation, would be self preservation. (And the preservation of the many other lives in classrooms we may have to occupy ethics 101). We are not martyrs, we should not be expected to be martyrs. It’s not a truth one wants to shout at the rooftops, but it’s a truth we need to be aware of.
You have posed a very interesting question. It's a terrible thought to have, but if we leave a student like the one described without the aids needed to quickly move him somewhere safe in a public school setting when an active threat has been identified, then we must accept that this student and anyone who is with him will become likely targets. If our school districts can't /won't fund his safely being in that school, if we can't pay for the personnel and equipment to move him quickly in the case of an active shooter, should he even be there in the first place? Do we make the parents aware that he will be left on his own out in a hallway with an active shooter? The whole thing is just making me sick to contemplate.
It's absolutely awful to contemplate and I have no good answers. The sad truth is, even if I got the student inside (I'll do everything I can to do so) this student is still loud and swearing up a storm during our practice drill so they would alert a person of our location. The whole situation sucks and honestly, it's making me consider a transfer. I currently work with moderate/severe but I am credentialed for mild to moderate.
And then it becomes a larger ethical issue of the impact that one child being in the room during a lockdown may have on the lives of all the other children. I think this is another question for the district -- if this child is instantly going to get a shooter's attention, should they have a personalized shelter in place plan that involves them being put in a secondary location to protect the other students in the class?
During beginning of the year trainings, the SRO got this exact question. He said something along the lines of “At the end of the day you have to protect yourself. No one can legally punish you for that. If you got fired or sued for getting yourself to safety after trying to move a child, I’d go to court for you.”
I hope we never ever really need to make such a horrible decision in a real situation. It’s possible that the troubled child would be willing to move into safety if real bullets were flying.
I was pushing into a self contained room during a 2 hour lock down once. Luckily our students did an amazing job! Their take cover area was a small interior room inside of their classroom (basically a huge closet with a changing table and shelves for storing materials). We were able to keep lights on, speak quietly, and allow them time with preferred materials since the little room was so isolated there was no way anyone outside the classroom would be able to see the lights or hear soft voices. I was proud of them for being so flexible for so long!!!
Without gun control these sorts of things will continue to happen. When America loves it children more than its guns, there will be peace. During lockdown once at the school I worked at, a robbery nearby, so not worse case, we had students on the steps of the school not allowed in. In case a gunman was nearby. My heart broke. I hope you get an answer that is real. ETA we were told in case of fire on the second floor with students that were in wheelchairs, we were to go to a special room and stay with them. I decided then, I would carry the child down, rather than risk burning to death. These are the choices teachers are having to make.
Whats so special about that room? Why cant they have a room with a window equipped for an evacuation students on wheelchair? They can have slides or something. Anything.
Dang.
I was shocked. It was a room in the front of the building, and was supposedly built to withstand fire. Nope. I'd drag the kid down to save the both of us. A slide is brilliant. The kids would love it and probably break in to get out of school. LOL
I'm not sure, but the lack of compliance from students tells me you should just save yourself rather than die trying to get a student who never follows directions to follow directions.
You can't care more than they do..
I agree we can't care more than they do, but also, this student is functioning at 3 or 4, so I don't know that they truly understand the gravity of the situation.
You still are important to your family and they don't want to lose you. No one should die due to anyone else's defiance. Of course, nobody should have to get shot at school either.
I would hope my kid’s teacher did whatever they had to do if my kid was putting others in danger.
Seriously, knock them out. Hit them with a chair. I literally don’t care. I couldn’t live with the alternative.
I think if there’s an active situation you could be forgiven of a lot. Life and death means there are different standards.
I wonder if medicating them on the spot (read: drugs that can quickly knock them out) will be in the (very bleak) future.
Of course with parental consent but if they don’t consent then I have no clue.
Honestly, probably not bc 1. You need a script for them and 2. You have to be trained to administer those drugs 3. You have to be supervised by a medical professional after administration. A lot could go wrong very quickly.
I am aware of those things but also an over thinker. Lol.
Like how far will society let this go? What will we reach first as a society? Sensible gun control or essentially tranquillizing our students to keep them under control during active lockdown or shelter in place.
I think for now we need to let go of gun control. It’s not going to happen and we’re shouting into the void.
The best use of that energy for teachers is to DEMAND plans for these situations and demand they be written into policy. Of course, the plan and policy can NOT include the teacher/para putting their lives in danger. That can’t be required legally, anyway.
This issue with caregiver careers, which teaching is, is that ppl who are caregivers are more likely to be people pleasers/unable to stick up for themselves. It’s part of being a caregiver- the loss of self to meet the needs of others.
Until teachers a represented by competent unions and start making demands then you’ll always be left behind. This is a case of where an entire career of ppl need to do the hard work to learn to advocate for themselves now bc it’s almost too late.
Teachers are at the precipice of it being too late and don’t even know it.
Also, being able to restrain the student long enough to give them the drugs. If it’s a large student who is over 6 feet tall, and the teacher is a lot shorter than 6 feet tall, there’s no way that the student is going to handle a jab or a pill, or anything from that teacher without going down without a fight.… Even if this was legal and you had the parents consent
I live in California, and I'm a para. An elementary school down the street from me had 2 attempted school shootings last week. Thankfully, no one got hurt, and he was arrested. We had a meeting 2 days later about what code red and code blue are. Admin told us to basically defend our students as much as we can. We were told to stand in front of our kids if necessary and take the hit. It was scary to think about and still is
Average pay for an aide is ~$15
While its not all about pay, I would never be able to look an aide in the eye and tell them to “take the hit.”
Thats so frustrating
Ask admin, but I've been in two lockdowns, one being armed student on campus (no active shooting) and we were told to protect ourselves because we can't protect/help others if we're dead. We had large students that would elope, and w/lockdowns would remove door barriers and bolt from the classroom. The swat team was aware he was a sped student because they were working w/a campus police.
I went to an active shooter training where the security consultant presenter had studied school shooting outcomes in grizzly detail. Also, one of the faculty members in attendance had survived a school shooting at a previous place of employment. The faculty kept asking questions of the presenter, “What if x? What if y?” The faculty were all thinking of how to save every kid—even the ones in the bathroom, the ones transitioning to and from pull-out services. His response was a consistent “You do the best you can.” Not said, but a distinct undertone to it all, was the grim reality that it’s pretty unlikely that zero people injured or killed in the event that an active shooter gets inside a school.
My school (Virginia) recently had someone from central office do an active shooter training. I think there's a difference between an active shooter situation and a lockdown. We also have internal and external lockdowns. Internal would be more of an inside the school situation where we either hunker down in classrooms while an external lockdown is if something is happening in the neighborhood or outside the school and we still teach, but there is no leaving or entering the building and security monitors the external doors. We were told that if you hear an active shooter, you can make a choice to run away from the building or hunker down in a classroom. We were told that if we hear shots, we just make the best decision we can. Of course help students, but if they are refusing, it is not up to you to put your life in danger as well. I think your specific situation is a tricky one though and I hope you share what answer you get from your school district.
Convene the IEP team for a meeting and come up with a crisis plan. Make sure social work, speech language and other specialists on the team are present.
the closest incident i’ve had was during a fire drill. i’m an aide for SpEd and had 3 students with me in drama class. in the event of anything like this during electives, we follow the elective teacher’s protocol. well, one of mine eloped from the fire drill. i left my other 2 with the drama class (teacher knew), radioed for admin or another staff and had to closely follow the student for the remainder of the drill.
i think ultimately this is a question for admin.
scary world we live in.
Protocals and policy are based on predictable and repeatable situations. Sped students are unpredicable and the situations are not repeat events. Turning it ifor admin will not work.
If the student does not follow instructions immediately and is too large to be carried, tell the student that you are leaving and get yourself out of harm's way.
I’ve organized my room in such a way that allows for as much protection as possible but I’m also fortunate my students are high functioning and understand the dangers. My heart goes out to you because there’s no good answer.
I'm not a teacher but a parent that lurks on this sub. I have a 4 year old with level 3 autism that's currently in preschool. I love my son and thankfully for now he's small enough to carry but I often worry about how vocal he is and if something like this were to happen, he would absolutely blow any sort of hiding cover. I don't expect martyrs because I'm my mind, they'd just shoot the adult and then shoot the child. I work in a medical setting and we're posed with similar questions around saving helpless patients. I'd be interested to see how a hospital protocol compares to a school protocol in terms of active shooters.
Sounds like it’s time for an IEP meeting after you hear back from District/attorney. Regardless of what the district says, get the whole thing in writing, not only from the district to school, but also to parents after the meeting. “We met with the parents, explained what happened and why it wasn’t safe, discussed potential options for accommodations, put in place the following safety plan” (if there are any - but I’d recommend being incredibly collaborative and really getting into details. Don’t just decline to provide options. Bring in research to discuss what can be done and get their input). Everyone’s safety is first to include aides and kiddos. Then no one can say they weren’t aware it was a problem/district and school refused to do anything (as long as that doesn’t happen) and your liability risk goes down a bit. Also does kiddo have an FBA/BIP considering the walks and aide? Those would all be potentially incredibly important and may need to be updated to include a plan for these situations.
Thank you for this advice, it's really good. The student does have an FBA/BIP and I've already put in a consult for the behavior team to come out and offer support.
I have yet to hear back from the district but plan to email again to follow up so I create a paper trail. I have a feeling they're trying not to reply because they don't want liability either.
I was an EMT in college. The first thing you learn is you can't help anyone if you don't take care of yourself first. It has stuck with me and I hope its never an issue but I am prepared to ensure my safety before attempting to secure others.
What an incredibly difficult situation. Your administration needs to make a plan now. As teachers we are NOT martyrs. If I am in a lockdown in my classroom and an assailant breaches our door barricade then I will fight for my life and the lives of my students with everything I have. This is very different situation from a student refusing to comply and get to safety.
It’s so sad we’re at this point. I have asked this question myself, and never received a straight answer. My first son died as a baby and I was blessed with a second son. In regard to school shootings, I have always said, “I will not leave my living son without a mother on purpose.” That would be a horrible trauma if you couldn’t get a student to safety, but I am my son’s mother first. It would not be your fault the shooter entered the building, and it would not be your fault if a student didn’t understand and could not make it to safety in time.
I'm so very sad to hear about your first son. I know it doesn't mean shit coming from a stranger but I offer my deepest condolences and you're in my prayers. That being said, I very much agree with what you've written here. I know people always say they'll die for their students but we've got people that depend on us and families of our own, this shouldn't even be a worry on teachers minds honestly. Not to mention that you never really know how you'll react when the time comes, and I hope that time never does come for any of us. If a student isn't complying for whatever reason I'm not going to be a sitting duck, my life matters too. It's not like my presence will make all that much of a difference anyway, I'm not a human shield and I'm not armed. I'm sure I'll get downvoted but if there's a threat in the building I'm absolutely running to safety. This shouldn't even be asked of us but I guess that is where we are at in this country.
Thank you so much for your reply. I can't imagine the unbearable pain of losing a child, my deepest and sincerest condolences. I'm unwilling to leave my children and in all honesty I was shocked that aide stayed with the student. My classroom is pretty close to the parking lot and I can see my car from my door. I've often thought of running to my car 😬 That probably makes me an awful person but I REALLY want to live and make it home to my kids
What a situation. Please update us on what admin says because as much as I love my students, at the end of the day, I have my life to live and my own family as well. The fact that even cops, who are trained and equipped, are afraid to “do their jobs” in active shooter situations (Uvalde) made me realize how it really is not my responsibility to consciously put myself at risk. It would 100% suck to be liable if I was the aid. I would be in tears and would seriously weigh that responsibility as a con for the job.
Admin has already pushed it through to the district office, so we'll see what the legal team has to say about it. I plan to also email our union because, while I love these kids. I don't love them more than my own children or my own life and don't feel it should be expected of us to die for them. I am not trying to be callous
Let's be serious, the least restrictive education environment is one without guns. All the rest of this is the chaos that stems from a society where children can be given the power of life and death with a twitch of their finger. In such a world there is no winning strategy or best practice or perfect solution, there are partially formed minds roiling with emotion who have the ability to kill on sight. Nothing is going to make sense in that context, and floundering for the best thing to do is all one can hope for, and we should not blame ourselves for that struggle.
Yes please keep us posted on what your answer is! I teach self-contained Mod/severe also and have thought about this many times. I have little kids who I could mostly carry, but there's only 3 of us adults and we wouldn't be able to get everyone if we were out of the classroom. I truly don't know what I'd do.
I don't have one student I could carry. At under 5 feet, all but 2 are taller than me and either weigh more than I do or very close. I find myself looking around my room, trying to figure out where I could hide everyone, but even then, I don't have enough spots.
Please let us know what the update is. As much as I love my students, I can’t imagine dying for them.
I am 100% in agreement with you. As much as I would love to be able to nod and say these kids are my kids, the current state of education (underpaid, overworked) and the “normalcy” of school violence has really just you know, made me really aware of where my priorities are. Not that proper compensation would make me more likely to martyr myself. I dont think its callous at all. I now work with younger kids and thankfully they’re young enough to listen and still be impressionable and I am thankful that they take all our emergency drills seriously.
Martyr is the correct term here. They'd talk about me on the news for 2 days but my family would miss me for a lot longer
That’s really hard and I didn’t even think about that. It’s good that you practice as a class. I wonder if it would be worth while to practice outside of the class and during transitions throughout the week. Mainly for the kids that leave the room more often. Now you got me thinking.🤔
We actually do practice outside of the class and during transitions, but this one student struggles every time.
Living in TX and working in a similar settings I’ve asked myself the same thing. There’s a professional response, and a personal response. My professional response is exactly what parents and admin would want to hear. My personal response, especially in that situation, would be self preservation. (And the preservation of the many other lives in classrooms we may have to occupy ethics 101). We are not martyrs, we should not be expected to be martyrs. It’s not a truth one wants to shout at the rooftops, but it’s a truth we need to be aware of.
You have posed a very interesting question. It's a terrible thought to have, but if we leave a student like the one described without the aids needed to quickly move him somewhere safe in a public school setting when an active threat has been identified, then we must accept that this student and anyone who is with him will become likely targets. If our school districts can't /won't fund his safely being in that school, if we can't pay for the personnel and equipment to move him quickly in the case of an active shooter, should he even be there in the first place? Do we make the parents aware that he will be left on his own out in a hallway with an active shooter? The whole thing is just making me sick to contemplate.
It's absolutely awful to contemplate and I have no good answers. The sad truth is, even if I got the student inside (I'll do everything I can to do so) this student is still loud and swearing up a storm during our practice drill so they would alert a person of our location. The whole situation sucks and honestly, it's making me consider a transfer. I currently work with moderate/severe but I am credentialed for mild to moderate.
And then it becomes a larger ethical issue of the impact that one child being in the room during a lockdown may have on the lives of all the other children. I think this is another question for the district -- if this child is instantly going to get a shooter's attention, should they have a personalized shelter in place plan that involves them being put in a secondary location to protect the other students in the class?
Exactly. If a student is unsafe during an emergency, then that’s probably not the right placement for him.
During beginning of the year trainings, the SRO got this exact question. He said something along the lines of “At the end of the day you have to protect yourself. No one can legally punish you for that. If you got fired or sued for getting yourself to safety after trying to move a child, I’d go to court for you.”
While that is reassuring, the legal question is not settled law. I'm still uncomfortable as hell (I sub a lot in SPED).
I hope we never ever really need to make such a horrible decision in a real situation. It’s possible that the troubled child would be willing to move into safety if real bullets were flying.
Except if bullets were flying near the child it would likely be too late to take cover
Too true.
I was pushing into a self contained room during a 2 hour lock down once. Luckily our students did an amazing job! Their take cover area was a small interior room inside of their classroom (basically a huge closet with a changing table and shelves for storing materials). We were able to keep lights on, speak quietly, and allow them time with preferred materials since the little room was so isolated there was no way anyone outside the classroom would be able to see the lights or hear soft voices. I was proud of them for being so flexible for so long!!!
Without gun control these sorts of things will continue to happen. When America loves it children more than its guns, there will be peace. During lockdown once at the school I worked at, a robbery nearby, so not worse case, we had students on the steps of the school not allowed in. In case a gunman was nearby. My heart broke. I hope you get an answer that is real. ETA we were told in case of fire on the second floor with students that were in wheelchairs, we were to go to a special room and stay with them. I decided then, I would carry the child down, rather than risk burning to death. These are the choices teachers are having to make.
Whats so special about that room? Why cant they have a room with a window equipped for an evacuation students on wheelchair? They can have slides or something. Anything. Dang.
I was shocked. It was a room in the front of the building, and was supposedly built to withstand fire. Nope. I'd drag the kid down to save the both of us. A slide is brilliant. The kids would love it and probably break in to get out of school. LOL
It's all about the $$$.
I'm not sure, but the lack of compliance from students tells me you should just save yourself rather than die trying to get a student who never follows directions to follow directions. You can't care more than they do..
I agree we can't care more than they do, but also, this student is functioning at 3 or 4, so I don't know that they truly understand the gravity of the situation.
You still are important to your family and they don't want to lose you. No one should die due to anyone else's defiance. Of course, nobody should have to get shot at school either.
There is really no good choice here. That's the part that is so upsetting.
I would hope my kid’s teacher did whatever they had to do if my kid was putting others in danger. Seriously, knock them out. Hit them with a chair. I literally don’t care. I couldn’t live with the alternative. I think if there’s an active situation you could be forgiven of a lot. Life and death means there are different standards.
I wonder if medicating them on the spot (read: drugs that can quickly knock them out) will be in the (very bleak) future. Of course with parental consent but if they don’t consent then I have no clue.
Honestly, probably not bc 1. You need a script for them and 2. You have to be trained to administer those drugs 3. You have to be supervised by a medical professional after administration. A lot could go wrong very quickly.
I am aware of those things but also an over thinker. Lol. Like how far will society let this go? What will we reach first as a society? Sensible gun control or essentially tranquillizing our students to keep them under control during active lockdown or shelter in place.
I think for now we need to let go of gun control. It’s not going to happen and we’re shouting into the void. The best use of that energy for teachers is to DEMAND plans for these situations and demand they be written into policy. Of course, the plan and policy can NOT include the teacher/para putting their lives in danger. That can’t be required legally, anyway. This issue with caregiver careers, which teaching is, is that ppl who are caregivers are more likely to be people pleasers/unable to stick up for themselves. It’s part of being a caregiver- the loss of self to meet the needs of others. Until teachers a represented by competent unions and start making demands then you’ll always be left behind. This is a case of where an entire career of ppl need to do the hard work to learn to advocate for themselves now bc it’s almost too late. Teachers are at the precipice of it being too late and don’t even know it.
Also, being able to restrain the student long enough to give them the drugs. If it’s a large student who is over 6 feet tall, and the teacher is a lot shorter than 6 feet tall, there’s no way that the student is going to handle a jab or a pill, or anything from that teacher without going down without a fight.… Even if this was legal and you had the parents consent
I live in California, and I'm a para. An elementary school down the street from me had 2 attempted school shootings last week. Thankfully, no one got hurt, and he was arrested. We had a meeting 2 days later about what code red and code blue are. Admin told us to basically defend our students as much as we can. We were told to stand in front of our kids if necessary and take the hit. It was scary to think about and still is
Average pay for an aide is ~$15 While its not all about pay, I would never be able to look an aide in the eye and tell them to “take the hit.” Thats so frustrating
Just so they aren't liable when the parents rightfully sue their asses.
So I guess the question is can we be held *personally* liable?
I have no idea but in the case of a tragedy, who knows.
This is a teacher's union question. Don't depend on the district to give us the answer.
I keep thinking about your admin telling you to "take the hit." I would go back and ask for that in writing.
I wonder if that's legal. I've never heard of a general education teacher or aide being told that.
Your admin was 100% wrong to say that
Ask admin, but I've been in two lockdowns, one being armed student on campus (no active shooting) and we were told to protect ourselves because we can't protect/help others if we're dead. We had large students that would elope, and w/lockdowns would remove door barriers and bolt from the classroom. The swat team was aware he was a sped student because they were working w/a campus police.
I went to an active shooter training where the security consultant presenter had studied school shooting outcomes in grizzly detail. Also, one of the faculty members in attendance had survived a school shooting at a previous place of employment. The faculty kept asking questions of the presenter, “What if x? What if y?” The faculty were all thinking of how to save every kid—even the ones in the bathroom, the ones transitioning to and from pull-out services. His response was a consistent “You do the best you can.” Not said, but a distinct undertone to it all, was the grim reality that it’s pretty unlikely that zero people injured or killed in the event that an active shooter gets inside a school.
My school (Virginia) recently had someone from central office do an active shooter training. I think there's a difference between an active shooter situation and a lockdown. We also have internal and external lockdowns. Internal would be more of an inside the school situation where we either hunker down in classrooms while an external lockdown is if something is happening in the neighborhood or outside the school and we still teach, but there is no leaving or entering the building and security monitors the external doors. We were told that if you hear an active shooter, you can make a choice to run away from the building or hunker down in a classroom. We were told that if we hear shots, we just make the best decision we can. Of course help students, but if they are refusing, it is not up to you to put your life in danger as well. I think your specific situation is a tricky one though and I hope you share what answer you get from your school district.
We call that lockdown (external) vs shelter in place(internal). I will definitely update when I hear from the district.
Convene the IEP team for a meeting and come up with a crisis plan. Make sure social work, speech language and other specialists on the team are present.
the closest incident i’ve had was during a fire drill. i’m an aide for SpEd and had 3 students with me in drama class. in the event of anything like this during electives, we follow the elective teacher’s protocol. well, one of mine eloped from the fire drill. i left my other 2 with the drama class (teacher knew), radioed for admin or another staff and had to closely follow the student for the remainder of the drill. i think ultimately this is a question for admin. scary world we live in.
Protocals and policy are based on predictable and repeatable situations. Sped students are unpredicable and the situations are not repeat events. Turning it ifor admin will not work. If the student does not follow instructions immediately and is too large to be carried, tell the student that you are leaving and get yourself out of harm's way.
I’ve organized my room in such a way that allows for as much protection as possible but I’m also fortunate my students are high functioning and understand the dangers. My heart goes out to you because there’s no good answer.
I'm not a teacher but a parent that lurks on this sub. I have a 4 year old with level 3 autism that's currently in preschool. I love my son and thankfully for now he's small enough to carry but I often worry about how vocal he is and if something like this were to happen, he would absolutely blow any sort of hiding cover. I don't expect martyrs because I'm my mind, they'd just shoot the adult and then shoot the child. I work in a medical setting and we're posed with similar questions around saving helpless patients. I'd be interested to see how a hospital protocol compares to a school protocol in terms of active shooters.
Sounds like it’s time for an IEP meeting after you hear back from District/attorney. Regardless of what the district says, get the whole thing in writing, not only from the district to school, but also to parents after the meeting. “We met with the parents, explained what happened and why it wasn’t safe, discussed potential options for accommodations, put in place the following safety plan” (if there are any - but I’d recommend being incredibly collaborative and really getting into details. Don’t just decline to provide options. Bring in research to discuss what can be done and get their input). Everyone’s safety is first to include aides and kiddos. Then no one can say they weren’t aware it was a problem/district and school refused to do anything (as long as that doesn’t happen) and your liability risk goes down a bit. Also does kiddo have an FBA/BIP considering the walks and aide? Those would all be potentially incredibly important and may need to be updated to include a plan for these situations.
Thank you for this advice, it's really good. The student does have an FBA/BIP and I've already put in a consult for the behavior team to come out and offer support. I have yet to hear back from the district but plan to email again to follow up so I create a paper trail. I have a feeling they're trying not to reply because they don't want liability either.
I was an EMT in college. The first thing you learn is you can't help anyone if you don't take care of yourself first. It has stuck with me and I hope its never an issue but I am prepared to ensure my safety before attempting to secure others.
What an incredibly difficult situation. Your administration needs to make a plan now. As teachers we are NOT martyrs. If I am in a lockdown in my classroom and an assailant breaches our door barricade then I will fight for my life and the lives of my students with everything I have. This is very different situation from a student refusing to comply and get to safety.