The unfortunate trend I’ve witnessed in newer schools in my neck of the US (west) is to essentially make them fortresses, a place where entrances and exits are tightly controlled and each classroom can quickly be locked down. They honestly feel like prisons.
We all remarked on the classroom during back to school week this year for my third grader with “wow, you get an actual window this year!”. Other classrooms in the school have no windows or natural lighting at all.
It’s deeply fucked-up if you look at the odds of an indiscriminate shooting (what we’re mainly worried about—less so the killer seeking a single specific victim who happens to choose to find them in a school) occurring while a given student is present any time in their 13 years of primary and secondary education. Loosen it to “any gun violence at all” (a way, way larger category) and the odds are still tiny.
School shootings are shameful and we should take steps to make them stop, but subjecting all kids to freakishly locked-down buildings and shooter drills and all that is not a reaction supported by the statistics. We’re causing mass harm to kids over a panic.
Jacob Geller did a really interesting video essay [1] about the parallels that can be drawn between modern school architecture and maps from shooter games - on top of whatever other context or functionality they provide, they are fundamentally spaces that are designed around the question "what happens if violence occurs here?"
You are lucky. When my son was in elementary school ten years ago, it cost a fortune for the school to put in a secure entrance. It was like a castle gate house where you enter the main door and it immediately locks behind you. You state your business through an intercomm and then they unlock the inner door.
We all remarked on the classroom during back to school week this year for my third grader with “wow, you get an actual window this year!”. Other classrooms in the school have no windows or natural lighting at all.
One guess as to why this is becoming the norm.