The announcement tone sounds, calming busy classrooms around the school. The principal’s voice booms out, panic lacing his tone, “LOCKDOWN! LOCKDOWN! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!” Students go silent, reviewing the lockdown training.

Outside the window, sirens wail, breaking the silence. Will help arrive in time before it’s too late? 

Active shooter lockdowns have become a reality for many students, as shootings both real and specious, have broken out across the country, including schools close to home. On November 8, 2023, Manual went under a lockdown after an anonymous call. The caller told dispatchers that they were a victim on the second floor in an active shooter situation. Fortunately, there was no active shooter, but the impact and fear of that day was very real for many students and faculty members. 

Milo Harvey (12, J&C), was one of the many students who experienced the incident. The day of the false shooting, Harvey’s chromebook had stopped working. After she had switched the chromebook for a new one, the lockdown announcement went off, but Harvey did not hear it. As she was walking down the hallway, she ran into the SWAT team. Luckily, she was directly by her teacher’s open classroom and was able to slip in before the door closed. 

“I was definitely scared that first week. I think seeing the SWAT team definitely freaked me out a lot more,” Harvey stated. The incident caused her to stay home for two days afterwards and she did not go back to the class where the lockdown occurred until December. 

Many students endured similar impactful experiences due to the active shooter drill. Alexander Jones (12, MST) created Students Demand Action (SDA), officially starting it earlier this school year. After the shooting, Jones realized that Manual was not as safe as he once thought, becoming fearful for his community. 

“It was very real for me, and it felt like I needed to step up and do something because I didn’t wanna have people panicking like that again,” Jones stated. 

SDA’s goal is to change gun laws. Currently they are doing this by hosting voter registration drives, operating phone banks and attending rallies and parades. In just a month of action, the club has registered 25 people to vote and they plan to continue to do more.  

Avery Tandy (11, HSU), experienced additional fear that was not provoked by the incident itself, but by another person. Tandy had a substitute teacher when the lockdown occurred. The substitute ordered the students to sit in the corner of the classroom without barricading the door. The doors to Tandy’s classroom were like the majority of doors for Manual classrooms. They are mostly glass and open outwards. This makes anyone an open target without a barricade. 

The other students continued to talk amongst themselves while the substitute walked around the classroom while being completely visible to anyone in the hallway. Tandy expressed that the substitute showed no signs of receiving any prior training to handle lockdowns. Instead of comforting the students and making them feel safe, the substitute put the students in harm’s way, increasing their fear. 

This moment has completely altered the way Tandy views life. She did not want to return to school the next day, fearful of what may happen.

 “I had never really thought I was in danger when going to school. But now every day when I wake up, I pray in the mornings that everyone is safe and that I just get through the day and through the week, and that my family’s safe because you never know what’s gonna happen,” Tandy said. 

In an interview, JCPS Assistant Superintendent for Climate Culture, Matt Anderson, reflected on their substitute policies for emergency situations. 

“We do an onboarding with them when they’re hired. And there’s a whole host of things that we walk through around them, from simple things like locking the doors,” Anderson said. The principals and administrators also have protocols they follow to give the substitutes all the safety information needed. 

This doesn’t explain the way Tandy’s substitute acted as they should have been completely trained for the lockdown due to JCPS policies. 

Teachers in JCPS are also informed on how to handle emergency situations. They are trauma informed and trained to know how to respond to their students appropriately. All schools have a safety team, and after a threat they come together to discuss it and how to respond. There are also entire departments that provide resources for students to use after a traumatic event. 

“A lot of that, we feel fairly confident is best practice, if not more, in terms of school safety,” Anderson said. All of these resources are put in place to help with a student’s mental health and safety.

Manual’s Principal, Dr. Michael Newman, worked on making changes to Manual’s emergency policies after the false shooting by conducting a Post Action Review. Dr. Newman met with his administration team, JCPS police, and finally Metro First Responders. This allowed the groups to reflect on what needed to be changed and what would remain. 

“My experiences led me to help ensure people were informed about the event as accurately as possible and offered the opportunity to receive additional emotional support from our district’s crisis response team and our counseling team,” Dr. Newman said in an email. 

The Emergency Procedures Policies that are already in place are ALICE (alert, lockdown, inform, counter, evacuate) as the primary response protocol, a location to gather students during an evacuation, communication protocols, and plans for parents to pick up their children after an emergency. All of these policies and protocols were considered and some were altered after the lockdown. 

JCPS has also added a weapons detection system through the company Evolv. Currently, all high schools have the system and JCPS is working on including them in middle schools. This system uses AI to detect any sort of weapon that would bring harm to students and faculty. 

Overall, the weapons detection system has been successful. “Our data for guns is down comparatively,” Anderson said. 

In an open records report WHAS11 filed, 10 different weapons have been flagged by the systems this school year. The majority have been knives, but they have also found two stun guns, and one handgun. Someone found a gun in a student’s backpack at Louisville Male High School, bringing the total up to 11. 

Unfortunately, the weapons detection system cannot be used until entering the building, so actual instances of gun violence have occurred on JCPS property. On Sept. 29, someone injured two teens outside a football game at Pleasure Ridge Park High School (PRP) against Louisville Male High School. One teen, a 17-year-old, was in critical condition after suffering multiple gunshot wounds, tragically dying a week later. The other teen is expected to recover. 

Just over two weeks later, on Oct. 17, a student accidentally shot himself in the leg at the Atherton High School’s parking lot. The student was transported to University of Louisville hospital and is expected to recover.

School shootings have also spread all across America. Since the start of 2024 to November 15, there have been 76 school shootings. These have collectively left 36 dead, 103 injured, and thousands traumatized.

An example of this was on Sept. 4. Colin Gray, a 14-year-old, opened fire in Apalachee High School, killing two students and two teachers while injuring nine others. 

All of these school shootings evoke fear throughout the country, causing concern for student’s safety. Preventative measures have been taken to help provide an extra layer of security for students caught in the crossfire. One example of this is bulletproof backpack and inserts that are intended to protect a student who may be exposed to gunfire. 

Zach Nemanich, owner of TuffyPacks, created a bulletproof insert to put into the computer or back pocket of a backpack. He made this in response to the uprising in school shootings 8 years ago in order to protect his kids and other students. This product works extremely effectively. Nemanich tests each shipment and receives lab results of the material from suppliers, ensuring that there is not a faulty batch.

Due to concerns for their child’s safety, the main demographic buying this product are parents. They go to these extreme measures with the hope that their child will be protected during a school shooting. 

“Every time, unfortunately, there’s a shooting, we have an increase in sales for a few days to a few weeks,” Nemanich said. Luckily, he does not know of any circumstances where one of his inserts were used to prevent penetration of a bullet in a shooting. But, with the recent uptick in shootings, Nemanich expects to receive more orders, each increasing the possibility of being used. 

Dr. Newman reflected on the bulletproof backpacks in an email, stating, “I am so sorry that students and parents feel like they need to bring bullet proof backpacks to school.  This just shows the level of anxiety, frustration, and anger that has developed as a result of violence in schools across the country, and world.”