Sadly, A New Drill

I was glad that I never had bomb drills in elementary school like my parent's generation had.  Instead, I grew up only doing fire and tornado drills.  Today's building codes and weather warning systems make those less important now, and though Grace occasionally has these drills at school, the most frequent drills she tells me about are lock-downs.  Last year when she first described being in the gym and her PE class quietly locked themselves in a basement room, I was taken aback...but I do hear about school shootings each year, and never hear of school fires or tornado damage with students in the building.  I'm so glad for the school's preparation for something so horrible, but it makes me cringe when Grace describes her teacher locking and putting paper up in the window of the classroom door and closing the blinds.