Every school I’ve taught for or subbed at has the drill. Although here in Texas I’ve always seen it called “a lockdown drill” and not “a gunman drill”. That’s the clear purpose though, as we’re trained to keep our lights off, get children away from windows so they can’t be seen, lock and not open our doors, etc…
Here in Georgia, they have tornado/weather drills, and intruder/shooter drills. Have since '99 at least.
Policy here in Gwinnett couny is everyone has to stop in the front office and check in. Room moms, dads bringing cupcakes, me picking up a little one for Dr. appt. Everyone.
Didn’t stop some whack job from strolling into a middle school in my neighborhood with a hammer and thumping some poor 5th grader in the head.
I think the first thing to address is access to the property or building. Once everyone is in for the morning, seal the perimeter. All visitors funnel into a sally port type of entry with armed personnel in place. Can’t shoot anyone you can’t access, right?
It’s not a total solution, but it’s a start.
My daughter’s CPS (Chicago Public School) has them. And all the doors are locked, all the time - the teachers open them from the inside in the morning to let their class in, and open them from the inside in the afternoon and only release each student to a parent or designated picker-upper. (This means that no student is allowed to walk home alone, even though my daughter’s dad’s house is, literally, across the street with a crossing guard at the crossing. The crossing guard, of course, is crossing children walking with their parents, because there are no solo children. Stupid fecking waste of funding…)
If you want to get in, you have to ring a bell at the Main Entrance, and you are supposed to sign in at the office and get a pass. Except that the office is around a corner and more steps away than the first set of stairs is - so someone could totally get buzzed in, run up the stairs, and slaughter three classrooms full of kids before the secretary even realizes they’re not coming to the office for a pass.
Stupid security theater.
Of course, I spent all morning lying my ass off to my daughter about how safe her school is and as long as they practice their drills and listen to the teacher, everything will be okay.
When I graduated from my high school (04) they didn’t have them but when I came back to work there (09-10) they were as common as fire drills and tornado drills. Makes me sad. 
Same thing as people described above, everyone huddles on the ground, lights off, people are supposed to be quiet as possible. I guess one of the times I thought it was a drill, it really wasn’t.
I’m a high school teacher. We have lockdown drills a couple of times a year. Fortunately we’ve only ever had to do a “soft lockdown” for real once, when there were shots fired in a shopping area down the street.
All of the above testimonials are quite surprising to me. In Florida, throughout my elementary, middle and high school career (1997-2010), all that I remember are fire drills, and hurricane drills. The hurricane drills were when we went to the biggest room in the school (cafeteria) and ducked against the wall with our arms over our heads.
Occasionally in one middle school we had a special drill, but it was because there was some military facility across the street, and there was some kind of leak (break in?).
NBC News featured a group interview yesterday with eight or nine teachers from the Sandy Hook school about their experiences during the day of the shooting. One of the teachers specifically discussed how she instructed her students to follow their lockdown drills as soon as she realized something was happening in the building.
Given that a smallish school in a sleepy exurb like Newtown had instituted lockdown drills, IMHO it would not be unreasonable to surmise that it’s a relatively common practice in the States.
Hurricane drills sound really stupid. It’s not like they sneak up on you. What are the chances that a hurricane will be coming right at the school and class will still be in session?
Sounds more like a tornado drill.
My daughter’s school in quiet, safe Burlington, Ontario, Canada does such drills at the beginning of every year. They’re not called “gunman drills” but that’s what they are.
We didn’t do them when I was a kid, but they do now.
It appears possible the drill saved lives in Connecticut, so I’m glad they do them.
I teach elementary school in Florida. We have “Code Yellow” and “Code Red” procedures for these type situations. Every teacher has a key to their classroom door and instructions on what to do should dangerous circumstances arise. I go over these scenarios with my students the first week of school and reiterate the instructions about once a month.
I don’t make it scary, just serious. The students know that there are bad people in the world. I make sure they know that the chances are next to nothing (we usually discuss a bit of math as we go over the odds), but that it would be stupid to not be prepared. Just like fire drills at school and at home, we tell our kids that it is our responsibility to be prepared for dangerous situations. Rather than discussing someone coming in and killing children, we’ve talked about the police chasing a criminal (perhaps someone who stole money from a store) who might choose to seek shelter in a school.
Students know what to do if they are in the hallway, classroom, cafeteria, playground, or any other area of the school when the Code is announced. We have written instructions for all subs (who are trained in procedure prior to employment). During our initial discussion, I let the kids ask appropriate questions until they feel they understand how and why we prepare to react. I don’t let them share horror stories and encourage them to discuss any continuing fears with their parents (I make certain this happens).
We drill this once a year as a school, but I do it about four times a year in my classroom. While we can’t be sure how everyone will react in a real emergency, we do the best we can to provide the knowledge needed for maximum safety.
I always end our talk by making sure the students know that every adult who works at our school is prepared to do anything to keep every child safe. I let them know how important we take this responsibility and that we value their safety more than our own. As far as they’re concerned, we would risk ourselves before letting harm come to them – and that is absolutely true. I’m confident that virtually every adult at our school would risk his or her own life to save that of a student. That’s not being heroic. Parents place a tremendous amount of trust in us every day. We have a responsibility to live up to that trust and act as that parent would in the same situation. It’s something we all take very seriously.