Terrorism planning a must for new schools
It’s not enough that winter storms have to be anticipated in terms of deploying human and equipment resources at a moment’s notice to maintain and restore our societal infrastructures. Now we have to add terrorism to that mix as clearly evidenced in last week’s buildup to this year’s first serious storm.
While DelDOT and power company employees, police officers, National Guard units, hospital and EMT professionals and first-responding volunteers prepared for and responded through the duration of the storm, our school and governmental officials also had to deal with the uncertainty and real disruption caused by terrorist threats.
The threats, subject now of intense investigation, took their intended toll. They disrupted our educational efforts through creation of alarm and fear.
In the case of bomb and shooter threats called into local schools and Beebe Healthcare facilities, terrorists used the relatively new technology of voice over internet to place the calls. While that technology doesn’t offer the opportunity of conventional tracking, the fact that the calls had to be digitized to be transmitted offers other avenues for investigation.
Just as technology plays an important role in the threats, it must also play an important role in rooting out and eradicating the problem. Disruption through fear is the goal of terrorists everywhere who, through their targeting of our schools, show their utter disregard for our most innocent citizens and our concern for them.
The immediacy of the problem locally shows itself not only in recent threats, but also in discussions underway about construction of new and renovated elementary schools. What security measures, in terms of technology-driven surveillance and screening, and building access, have to be considered in light of this 21st-century threat?
Effective, undisrupted education of our children is absolutely essential if we expect our citizens to be able to deal effectively with increasingly complex problems, from getting at the root causes of terrorism to dealing with their evil manifestations until they are adequately addressed.
Terrorism is a persistent epidemic that will require our attention and vigilance, at every level from local to global, long into the future.
