Education

Billions spent on hardening may not make schools safer.

Beside pencils, sharpeners and calendars in classrooms throughout Minnesota's Lakeville Area Schools, there are now big blue boxes with a red button and the word "POLICE."

The button sends a text message to emergency dispatchers, alerts the rest of the school to potential danger, and activates 1,200 pounds of magnetic force to keep the class door shut.

It's one of the measures that Michael Baumann has implemented to harden the schools in his district and protect against active shooters since he became superintendent in 2017.

He hired four more counselors to improve mental health services, established a team to monitor potential threats of violence, and spent $14.4 million installing the emergency alert system and building ballistic panels into walls that are designed to stop bullets, all aimed at helping students and teachers survive an active shooter.

Everyone goes to bed and thinks, "that'll never happen in my school district."

Well, I can tell you, as a superintendent, that's the nightmare, says Baumann, who previously served in the army deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan. "I felt like it was my obligation to do what I could."

Fear of shootings has turned school security into a booming industry.

The market for school security equipment and services reached $2.7 billion in 2017, according to a report by the research firm Omdia.