AMERICAN FORK — Last week I wrote an article about keeping children safe at school. Today that article seems almost quaint.

A young man killed 20 children and 6 teachers at an elementary school Friday. Facts are still being sorted out by news organizations but a familiar narrative is starting to form. A young man, mentally disturbed, kills a member of his family then goes to a place he is familiar with and kills vulnerable people who can’t fight back.

I’ll not discuss guns — and Second Amendment rights here. There will be innumerable articles about how to keep guns away from people who are likely to cause harm. The big question is, can schools keep children safe? Unfortunately, against a determined attacker with a plan, no school can be 100% safe. However, there are things a school can do. The school these children attended already had policies that, if implemented, would have prevented this from happening. Click on this link to read a poignant letter from the Principal of the school who is, if the reports are correct, now dead. 

Their policy was to lock all outside doors at 9:30 am. The attack started at 9:41 am. The attacker would not have been able to enter the school if the doors had been secured. Anyone wishing to enter had to ring a bell and a staff member would “visually monitor” them before buzzing them through the door. A visitor carrying guns and wearing body armor would surely not have been allowed entry if the attacker had been “visually monitored”. We will have to wait for a full investigation before we know what security measures were used or if the policy was followed.

Would this have stopped this young man if he had really wanted in the building? No, he would have been able to shoot through doors or windows. But, if he had been spotted outside, the staff would have had time to initiate a lock down procedure and call authorities.

The staff is not to blame for the shooting. I am sure that whatever happened, the staff will relive that day forever, wondering what they could have done differently. But the procedures clearly show that they knew what should have been done to stop or slow down an assailant but the procedures were not followed.

Go to your school and find out what their security systems are, then insist that they be followed for everyone. Even if you are a frequent visitor to the school, remind the staff that they should follow the procedures for you and everyone else.

Schools have to be open and welcoming to the public. We don’t want our schools to look and feel like prisons. At the same time, we need to keep our kids safe.

The weak link in all security systems is humans who are too polite to stop someone from entering, or too embarrassed to insist on seeing ID, or too angry to wait for the proper procedures to be followed. The weak link in the all security systems is you.

Jeanne Whitmore is the founder and CEO of American Fork charter school Aristotle Academy and an education columnist for the American Fork Citizen. You can learn more about Aristotle Academy at aristotleacademyk8.org or on Facebook.