Protecting Texas Schools – Texas Lt. Gov. Patrick’s One School/One Door Proposal Gets Support Of Deranged Reporter
Michael J. Matheron. May 21, 2018
Who says nothing can stem the terrifying tide of school massacres? No one now. After last Friday’s Santa Fe High School massacre, a one-man posse, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, galloped into Santa Fe and let ’em have it with a brilliant out loud thinking man’s scattershot:
“We may have to look at the design of our schools moving forward and retrofitting schools that are already built. And what I mean by that is there are too many entrances and too many exits to our more than 8,000 campuses in Texas,” he said, citing security at office buildings and courthouses. “Had there been one single entrance possibly for every student, maybe he would have been stopped.” [See]
LTG Patrick scored an appearance yesterday on Sunday’s CNN’s State of the Union, where, among other things, he pulled his high quality brain trigger again with even more problem-solving savvy:
Jake, we need to get down to one or two entrances into our schools. You have the necessary exits for fire, of course. But we have to funnel our students into our schools, so we can put eyes on them. This young man showed up with a trench coat, which he wore often, I have learned, and he had a gun under it. And he came through one of the entrances undetected. . . So, I am proposing that our new school designs are built that way, and we retrofit our schools. The average age of schools in Texas — in America, Jake, are 44 years old. Schools weren’t designed and built 40, 50 years ago to deal with today’s issues.” [Full SOTU Transcript for context]
Although arguably violating journalistic ethics, this reporter agrees with the Lt. Gov. : One door, perhaps two, probably one in door and one out door; I’ll leave it to the Lt. Gov. to decide.
The retrofitting works for everyone. Kids, of course, accept anything that shortens the school day. Standing idly with three or four hundred kids at 7:15 a.m., all converging on one door, would be a God-send. Teachers, too, welcome a later start – and super early dismissal! – for the same reason as the students. Administrators are fine with anything that rids them of hundreds of requests to administer. With so few humans able to enter the premises before dismissal, they too will get snooze time, or, really, just carry on as always.
Moreover, adding the numerous “necessary exits for fire” makes humanitarian sense, and is actually required in many Texas public buildings. These doors present an unyielding obstacle to people trying to open them for anything other than their stated purpose, fire. Doing otherwise is a Texas misdemeanor. In addition, these doors protect students from tornadoes, cyclones, Nor’easters, nuclear explosives, and extraterrestrials who, though armed with unthinkable weaponry, would quite certainly be too large to get through these formidable human-sized emergency doors. Those concerned about school safety ought now understand and recognize how safe their children will be with all these emergency doors and only one school entrance and exit door.
Thank you Lt. Governor Dan Patrick. Go to the head of the class!
