- Since the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, school design with security in mind has changed dramatically in places that can afford the upgrades.
- Yet many of America’s schools haven’t changed at all and can’t afford the sophisticated features embedded in the new Sandy Hook.
- Architects and designers who build and modify K-12 schools agree that design alone can help but can’t stop or prevent school shootings altogether.
Meg Tarpey and her younger sister survived the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School 10 years ago, then watched the site of that massacre be demolished and a new school built in its place.
In 2016, Tarpey, her sister and their mother visited the new building for the first time along with a comfort dog. Sandy Hook had been reimagined, with community input, incorporating a footbridge leading to the entrance of the school, a gate surrounding the campus and floor-to-ceiling windows for easy views of anyone approaching the school.
“That day was really hard, because in a way I felt like they’re trying to get rid of what happened, like moving on from it,” said Tarpey, who was in third grade, and her sister in first, when the shooter with an AR-15 assault weapon blasted into their Newtown, Connecticut, school.
Years later, Tarpey, now 18 and speaking in one of her first interviews with media since the Dec. 14, 2012 killings, said she’s come to realize visiting the new site gave her back a piece of herself.
“There’s an aspect of it that is really beautiful,” she said, “making something beautiful from tragedy.”
Since the 26 deaths at Sandy Hook, at least a dozen schools, from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, to Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, have been the site of mass shootings or killings, according to a USA TODAY, Associated Press and Northwestern University database. A compendium of guidance has been developed on constructing schools to prevent such killings. Yet no national database tracks remodeled or new buildings that incorporate school safety features.
More: Shots fired in US schools spiked dramatically last year, gun violence report finds
But many experts suggest the changes are creating a system of haves and have nots, where many school districts, particularly those in low-income neighborhoods of color, are left exposed, unable to afford significant upgrades. In addition, these changes may only slow someone intent on killing others and are unlikely to stop them altogether.
Others worry many children are paying the price for the hardening of schools, with campuses converted from inviting spaces open to the community into fortresses designed to keep strangers, and sometimes students themselves, out.
Architects and designers who specialize in K-12 schools said a balance is needed between designing schools for safety and learning. Schools also need to focus on mental health to prevent isolated, bullied or disenfranchised students from targeting schools with guns, they said.
“There is only so much that the physical design of schools can accomplish, especially as budgets for school buildings have dropped over the past 50 years,” said Julia McFadden, an architect and designer who worked on the $50 million rebuild of Sandy Hook.
Sandy Hook to Uvalde: Congress has proposed many gun control laws. Only one has passed.
How Sandy Hook was reimagined
Groups including the American Institute of Architects, the International Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design Association and the National Rifle Association have crafted guidance on how schools can keep shooters from entering classrooms.
McFadden, now of TSKP STUDIO and previously of Svigals + Partners, the Connecticut firm chosen to rebuild Sandy Hook, said partners and architects at the firm, including herself, were adamant about allowing the community to play a role in what the school should be and what school security meant.
The firm gathered about 50 teachers, staff, parents, maintenance workers, first responders, government officials and others for insight.
Jay Brotman, a managing partner of the firm, recalled showing design decisions to the families of the victims throughout the process and called those meetings “obviously emotionally fraught.”
The new campus entryway has a footbridge that crosses a rain garden and delays visitors from entering, floor-to-ceiling windows built with impact resistant glass that can shield against threats and allow anyone to see who’s coming onto campus, and a surveillance gate, among other safety features.
More: This new high school in Michigan was designed to thwart active shooters
Brotman, who has consulted school leaders and other architecture firms on creating safe schools over the years, advises against adding obvious barricades around the front of a school and blocking natural light from windows.
“Instead of hardening, it’s really about layering. You delay, you slow down, you put buffers in front,” he said. “That’s where these politicians are standing up and saying to harden. It’s preposterous. Kids have to go outside and play.”
For schools without resources for large projects, “sometimes it’s trimming trees and bushes around the property so you can see inside. If you can control the environment and monitor the environment, that’s probably 80% to 90% of the work,” he said.
“You don’t have to spend millions of dollars … In this country, if we renovated every school to be as safe as Sandy Hook, well, there’s not that kind of money out there, nor is it needed,” Brotman said.
After shooting, Uvalde is upgrading Robb Elementary School
In Texas, a new building, funded entirely by grants and donations, will include security features the district once never thought imaginable for a Uvalde school. The district- and community-approved conceptual design for the new Robb Elementary will cost an estimated $50 million, said Gary Patterson, Uvalde’s interim superintendent.It will be re and designed at no cost by Fort- Worth architect firm Huckabee and Joeris General Contractors.
Other Uvalde schools likely won’t get the same treatment. Limited state funding and local tax contributions to schools in Texas mean building upgrades have been almost nonexistent. The plan for upgrading security at other Uvalde schools involves equipping campuses with 8-foot hight perimeter fencing