Thursday, April 19, 2007

The tragedy at Virginia Tech has us all evaluating safety & security, and questioning whether our children's schools are safe. Whether it be daycare, elementary, middleschool, highschool, homeschool, etc. Well, for us - there was a little taste of fear yesterday, and thankfully the school was prepared, and reacted and Ezra was safe. I arrived at school as usual at the back entrance, we use the back entrance because of his classroom location, and fewer car riders are picked up there in general, the school is set up well for getting car riders in and out quickly... when I arrived, I drove past North Mecklenburg High School, it's merely a few hundred feet away from his school. You could walk there in a matter of 2 minutes. Police were lined on the street, most of the Huntersville Police Department were there, and I felt like 'something' was wrong, but it looked like business as usual as I approached Blythe Elementary where Ezra goes. It looked normal that is until I parked my car beside the same mom I usually park beside and we wait on our children. Then, we noticed that all blinds were drawn, all doors were locked down and there was NO sign of movement or life around the building except for us moms. The other mom walked up to one of the officers, who was readily standing guard of all entrances of each school, and she asked 'what is going on? why isn't the school letting out'... he told her 'mam, we have a safety issue, and all 3 schools are on mandentory lockdown, this is not a drill.' When she told me this I must say I felt nausious, thinking about V-tech, and the possibility of something scary going on inside. He did reassure her that there were no security issues INSIDE of Blythe, and that we'd be allowed to pick up our children once they secured the area. 25 min later, Ezra came out; as he was coming out, most of those police cars went flying by the school with sirens on. The below article is the reason we were on lockdown. It's a tragedy, and it really was an eye opener for me. I commend the school system for having had a security measure in place, and for keeping my child safe.

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