In 2024 alone, there were more than 220 school shootings in the United States. Every year parents, students, teachers and politicians ask what can be done to prevent them and what can be done to keep students safe. Recently, Gretna High School took one important step to ensuring student safety: window coverings.
Black, rolled up coverings that can quickly be unrolled and block the line of sight into a classroom were installed throughout GHS recently.
“I had gone to a conference, and they had the company there that was demonstrating them,” Deputy Lance Schickert said. Schickert is the school resource officer for Gretna High. “It’s a quick way so we can have the windows open when passing by to make sure everything is okay. But that way, if something were to happen, the whole thing falls so that way we can’t see through them.”
He said he liked the idea because it was simple and effective. Schickert’s request to install window coverings to increase safety falls right in line with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA’s) suggested preventive actions. FEMA suggests to get out of a shooter’s view, stay quiet, close and cover windows and turn off the lights.
According to Principal Todd Mueller, Gretna had been wanting to install this safety measure once the idea was presented by Schickert, but seeing it through to completion has been about dollars and cents.
“‘Right now, we are working on putting them in classrooms, but it’s just a matter of cost,” said Mueller said. “A grant was passed to put these in. Some blinds are long and some are short, so it was expensive trying to get them all installed.”
Some students have questions how effective they are and if they can Can a window blind can act as a deterreant in an emergency situation.?
“If a bad guy can’t see in, he will just keep running,” Schickert said. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, the bad guy is looking for certain people. So if they can’t see in, they are going to keep running around, which gives time for authorities to get there.”
Sitting in class and gazing into the hallway through the skinny, rectangular window will look the same for Gretna students. The blinds will only be manually pulled down in the case of an active shooter or similar emergency.
