School shootings have been an issue affecting the United States for many years. Now, MCPS is adopting new policies to address the issue and increase school safety. Schools have implemented active shooter drills ever since the 1999 Columbine High School tragedy to prepare for possible emergencies, including MCPS. However, these kinds of drills often induce fear in students, cause anxiety about future situations, or bring back trauma from past experiences. To prevent this, MCPS has created a set of guidelines detailing their new changes to their active shooter drills. These new guidelines have an emphasis on decreasing the potential negative psychological effects that these kinds of drills may have. Some changes include banning simulated gunfire and explosions.
“It’s probably not a good idea to use fake things instead for the drill,” sophomore Andrew Kuan said about the issue. “Even though kids could be aware that it’s just a drill, it could still cause some concern among students.”
Other RM students said that they understood the reasons for the drills, even though they were concerned that schools had to perform them in the first place. “It’s depressing that we have to prepare for these types of scenarios but I can see why they’re relevant,” junior Binhui Jiang said. “[The drill] still has the informational quality and preparation quality of a drill without as much of the stress. The old policies I understand that it’s more akin to the actual scenario but having it be in the same type of drill as a fire drill doesn’t sit right, it’s not like they have smoke coming out during a fire drill.”
MCPS’s goal with these new changes is to ensure that students and staff stay prepared for any emergencies in the future while also maintaining a positive learning environment for everyone. However, they are also planning to deal with other issues in the county. For example, MCPS has been attempting to control vaping in schools, and has been taking action to deal with the problem. The district has been planning to install vape detectors for months and is currently trying to purchase vape detectors to distribute to high schools.
Many RM students find that the vaping issue causes inconveniences in their day-to-day lives at school. “It’s hard to use the bathrooms when there are people in there vaping, and most of the time they get closed because of it,” Kuan said.
Jiang holds a similar view. “Especially with [RM] piloting those closed bathroom policies and other methods, yeah. I do trash clean up around the school as part of OCC and I’ve found several vapes or the batteries for these vapes,” Jiang said.
Vaping is seen as an issue not just at RM, but throughout many MCPS schools. “It’s really annoying, because people can just do it in the bus or the bathrooms and they’re just so careless about their surroundings. So I would say it’s a kind of big issue,” sophomore Anthony Wei from Winston Churchill High School said.
In addition to vapes and active shooter drills, MCPS is also looking into regulating weapons at schools. Gun violence and the amount of teenagers carrying guns has increased in the past few years, so this decision is likely a result of that and the new drills. In addition to vape detectors, MCPS is looking to get weapon detectors as well.
RM students say that the weapons issue is not a big concern for them. “I’m not worried. I’ve never really seen any weapons inside the school.” Kuan said.
Jiang agrees. “So most of the incidents that I’ve heard about people bringing weapons were not exactly in the school, mainly things near the school,” he said. “[For] these incidents, there’s not much security can do because they mainly patrol within the school.”
