A Pennsylvania school district is arming classrooms with buckets of rocks as a last-ditch defense against mass shooters.
David Helsel, superintendent of the Blue Mountain School District in Schuylkill County, told ABC News on Friday that every elementary, middle and high school classroom in the district is stocked with a 5-gallon bucket full of river stones for students and teachers to pelt an armed intruder.
“We’ve been trying to be proactive just in case,” Mr. Helsel said. “How can you aim a gun if you’re being pelted with rocks?”
Mr. Helsel said faculty members and students are given active shooter training through a program known as ALICE, which stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate, a local ABC affiliate reported.
The stones, he said, serve as a last resort for if a shooter is able to gain access to a locked down classroom.
“We have devices installed in our doors that help to secure them, to make it very difficult to break through,” Mr. Helsel said. “We also have, we train kids and talk about barricading the doors.”
“If someone can provide a better last-ditch response to an armed intruder that’s trying to gain access to a classroom, then I would be open to any idea,” he said.
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