Security is now a key focus area for educational institutes, companies and industries around the world especially after insurgency in terrorism in many countries. Shooting at school premises, especially in the USA is one such gray area that is a cause of great concern for the schooling community, parents and police authorities in the country.
As per a CNN report released in the last week of May 2018, there had already been 23 cases of shooting incidents on different school premises in USA in which at least one person was hurt or killed, besides the shooter. The United States of America has the highest incidence of school-premise related shootings and violence in the world. The reason for this has been attributed primarily to the availability and accessibility of firearms especially handguns freely amongst children. In 2018 itself the number of students and teachers killed on school premises in America were more than people killed in American military service. If a year-on-year comparison is done, about 16 people have been killed in the first half of 2018 vis-à-vis 4 people in 2017.
Schools are no longer willing to treat these events of school shooting lightly or treat them as one-off case. Even though the figures above include incidents at colleges and university levels, an alarm has been raised for school authorities, parents and even the government to strategize methods for protecting schools from becoming easy targets of gun related violence and bullying.
What becomes imperative here for the school authorities and guardians is to gear up to tackle such incidents better to upgrade school security – they need to rise up to the occasion to guarantee safer and secured environment to their children in the classrooms, corridors, playground, washrooms and other areas. Schools are soft targets of the perpetrators of such crimes primarily for two reasons – firstly because of the lower age group of people who are psychologically and physically not too strong to defend themselves and secondly because schools typically do not fall in high security zones. There are also cases where the schools are targeted to seek attention and revenge by ex-students or even existing students.
As an efficacious countermeasure, and a preliminary method to fortify and strengthen the school from being easily targeted by such criminals is to have window films installations done on the easiest entry points – the windows. Installing window films for schools is one of the many methods of preparing a response plan equipping the vulnerable students and teacher’s time to react and act practically in times of crisis and emergency.
Proper window film installation at schools can serve the following purpose –
1. Primary reason for installing the security films is to make the school premises safe.
2. Keep out the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays and heat while letting in natural light into the rooms
3. Reduce utility bills
A. Security films for schools are one of the effective methods of tackling a shootout situation. This is so because:-
a. They prevent the glass doors and windows on school premises to give up on the first impact by increasing the shatter resistance of the glass -either by gunshot or by physical force.
b. With window films installation, the security films are taped firmly to the windows and the doors, they prevent the broken glass from becoming flying projectiles that can cause harm to more number of children.
c. The glass breaks but holds fort for a certain period of time – this time period is very crucial for the teacher, students and the school management to react to the potential threat.
d. Window films for schools are not the solitary way of protecting schools. They are neither bullet proof nor can they deter the shooter or the terrorist from entering the school for long, but they are the most cost effective solution for stalling susceptible students and teachers falling prey to an impending shooting incident for a certain period of time.
B. With solar window films, there is abundant natural light that is allowed inside reducing dependency on electric supply to light up the classroom. These sun control window films efficiently obstruct unwanted heat, harmful infrared and ultraviolet rays from entering the class, as a result, help maintain the classroom interiors while making studies more comfortable and pleasurable for students.
With a combination of window films that enhance security from criminal minded people as well as from the dangerous rays of sun, teaching and learning can become a heavenly experience for students. http://www.commercialwindowshield.com
