Another ‘layer of protection’ in school districts to keep students safe

NORTH CAROLINA ( QUEEN CITY NEWS ) — Walk down any hallway lined by classrooms, and memories of your school year will likely flood your mind. But what you might not remember if you graduated before 1999 are active shooter drills being taught today in classrooms across the country.

“How often do you think about the safety of your students?” Queen City News asked a North Carolina school administrator.

“Every morning when I drive down the road that leads to my school and every afternoon when I leave this school and every weekend,” he said. “It never stops.”

In the 25 years following Columbine, there have been more than 400 school shootings in the U.S. Last year, nine took place in North Carolina alone.

“People who are determined to create harm can create harm.  That is unfortunately the world that we live in,” the administrator said.

Due to the fear of his school being targeted, the man did not want himself or his campus to be identified. Instead, he prefers to put a spotlight on a tool that he and others in his position are using to minimize the risk of a threat.

“I would venture to say that if you didn’t purposely look for them, you wouldn’t know that they exist. Which is what you want, right?” he said.

Hundreds of students walk beneath a white panel that’s mounted above the school’s entrance every single day. What could be mistaken as blinds, is actually a device that can deploy to the ground within seconds.

“We are kind of that next step that provides a much higher level of safety and security,” Ran Johnston with MAYDAY Security Solutions said.

The company, based in South Carolina, has developed a product that is being installed in school entryways across the Tar Heel State. It’s called LifeShield.

With a push of a button or trigger of broken glass, the panels will drop, blocking the line of sight of a potential shooter. But that’s not all – the panels made out of Kevlar are also bullet-resistant.

Queen City News had the company test them out with a 9 mm pistol from five yards away in a shooting range.

“This is actually working like a baseball mitt and catching the bullet and then the elastic is actually dispersing all of the force, so that is what makes it so lightweight and so simply easy to catch a bullet,” Johnston said.

While the shots pierced through the first layer of fibers, they hit the second like a brick wall.  None of them went through to the other side.

“And so here is a round out the panel, as you can see it just hit the panel and mushroomed out,” Johnston said while holding the crushed bullets.

In the two years that the product has been on the market, the panels have been installed at school districts, charter schools, and synagogues across the country. It’s an invention that mainly goes unnoticed but is in place just in case.

“You want to have your school feel like a welcoming and inviting building for people to come visit, but behind the scenes having resources like this that in a moment’s notice can really help us keep people safe,” the school administrator said.

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