Marie Corfield: In remembrance of Newtown: Schools are becoming prisons

Marie Corfield: In remembrance of Newtown: Schools are becoming prisons:

In remembrance of Newtown: Schools are becoming prisons

December 14th marks the three year anniversary of the terrorist attack at
Sandy Hook Elementary School, and nothing has been done to prevent it
from happening again.

If you follow me regularly, you know that every week I update (when necessary) and postthis piece as a protest/plea to President Obama and officials anywhere and everywhere to stop gun violence. But as we've seen far too many times—most recently in San Bernadino—this country is run by the NRA, and until that changes, the massacres and bloodshed will only continue.

Next to public education, gun violence is an issue about which I care deeply and passionately. It started with Sandy Hook. I was eating my lunch at my desk and catching up on the news, when I heard about it. I shared my experience in an open letter to America's elected officials: 

I stood in the hallway of my K-4 school and said to a coworker, "Did you hear? There was another shooting—at an elementary school. They shot kindergarteners." I remember looking at the little ones who were passing us on their way to class and thinking, it could have been them; it could have been us.

Nothing has changed since then. The terrorist attacks continue; the empty rhetoric from the NRA and the politicians they've bought continues; and so do the prayer vigils. 

While elected officials everywhere refuse to act, our schools are becoming prisons. They have to, because we never know when and where the next terrorist attack will occur. Instead of spending money on educating our students, school districts are now forced to spend far too much upgrading school entrances, fitting them with more security cameras and equipment, including bullet-proof glass. 

No longer do we only have fire drills, we now have lock down drills, where kids practice hiding from terrorist invasions. A far cry from the 1950's 'duck and cover' drills against nameless, faceless Communists who were thousands of miles away. We now have to hide from people who could be our neighbors: that strange guy, that angry teenager.

Classroom doors in many districts must now remain closed and locked at all times. And Marie Corfield: In remembrance of Newtown: Schools are becoming prisons: