CULLMAN, Ala. – An elementary school in Alabama has installed bulletproof safe rooms in two classrooms to protect students in the event of an active shooter.
The rooms were installed at West Elementary School in Cullman, Alabama, in late February as part of a pilot program. Since then, another school shooter killed three children and three adults at a private school in Nashville.
“I want it in every classroom in the United States,” Kevin Thomas told Fox News. “It’s needed more and more every day.”
The shelters are 8-by-8 foot rooms built with ballistic material that can stop any bullet that’s been used in a school shooting to date. Dry erase material is on the outside so the rooms blend in with the classroom.
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The bulletproof shelter stands in the corner of a teacher’s classroom. From the outside, it looks like a dry-erase board. (Fox News)
Thomas says he started working on the idea after a conversation with his wife after 21 people, including 19 children were killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last May. Thomas works in construction and his wife asked him to build something that could save lives.
“Seeing people in Texas and the parents going don’t let this be for nothing, remember us, with that I can say we heard them loud and clear,” Thomas said. “After 25 years of standing by hoping somebody else would do something, we decided it’s time for us to do something.”
The shelter can hold up to 60 elementary school aged children, 45 middle schoolers, or 30 high school students. The shelter is collapsible and can lie against the wall, or it can be set up in a corner as a reading or free time room.
When it’s collapsed, it can be pulled out in less than 10 seconds during an emergency.
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A teacher demonstrates how she can deploy the shelter if there’s an emergency. (WBRC Fox 6 News)
“Maybe we don’t stop them, but we can minimize the effectiveness,” Thomas said. “We’re not hiding under desks anymore, turning out the lights, closing the door or hiding in a corner.”
“Research tells us buying time saves lives during the unimaginable event of a school shooting,” Cullman City Schools Superintendent Kyle Kallhoff told FOX in a statement. “These safe rooms would provide time for our School Resource Officers and other trained first responders to react in a worse case scenario.”
Kallhoff said he hopes the pilot program in his school district will lead to federal and state funding for every school in America to have these safe rooms. Each shelter costs about $60,000 to install.
In this classroom, the teacher has the safe room set up as a reading or free time room. (Fox News)
“We need to make sure that all schools have the equal opportunity to get these in their schools, not just the ones that can fund it themselves,” Thomas said.
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Thomas also emphasizes that he doesn’t want the money to come out of state or federal education budgets, but believes federal funding can be reallocated. He’s going to Capitol Hill later this month to work with legislators on lobbying for the funding.
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“We want to install a million in a year,” Thomas said. “That’s our goal.”
