“So when the lockdown sounds, what will I do?” I asked my class.
“Turn off the lights, shut the blinds, and close and lock the doors. While I’m doing that, what will you do?”
“We’ll get under our desks and hide, silently.”
Since 2019, Indiana has required schools to conduct annual active shooter drills. I get it. The number of school shootings has skyrocketed from fewer than 10 per year in the 1960s to more than 200 annually since 2021. I wish we could prevent them. But, until we do, educators must keep children safe from the unthinkable.
Schools have a legal mandate to protect their students in loco parentis — serving in place of the parent who has entrusted their child to us. So, educators are taught to harden schools against intruders.
In the event of an intruder in the building, we barricade ourselves into a room and let no one in under any circumstance — let alone a stranger, who could be impersonating someone else.
Schools that have followed these protocols have been able to keep more students safe in active shooter situations, and many teachers put themselves in harm’s way to protect their students from an intruder.
This is why educators are getting whiplash over Attorney General Todd Rokita’s insistence that schools should hand their students over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, no questions asked. We are being told to unlearn everything we’ve learned to keep kids safe, and blindly follow unvetted rumors — or face the consequences.
When enforcers look like intruders
Across the country, heavily armed and masked men are entering places of learning or stalking the paths to get there. They are taking teachers, parents and students, often by force. Many of those taken are U.S. citizens or parents of them, and many are minors. The prowlers often present no identification, carry no warrant and give no notice, frequently arriving in unmarked cars.
They are precisely the type of intruders we are trained to protect our students against. Yet we are being told to accept this interloping as normal behavior. We are being told to trust them.
Even worse, people are able to impersonate these agents effortlessly to commit robberies and kidnappings — all you have to do is wear a ski mask when it’s warm out and camo in the city where it’s useless. Like a Jason Voorhees mask in the 1980s, ICE tactical gear has even become a Halloween costume.
How do we protect schools against such a threat?
Making schools less safe
Endorsing this culture of reckless enforcement in child-centered spaces raises red flags that would be obvious to anyone who thinks about school safety. It flies in the face of “stranger danger.”
And yet, Rokita has seen fit to not only rubber-stamp it statewide, but also to sue schools that try to protect their students.
What is the goal of this political spectacle? How does it make Indiana a better place to learn if its students and teachers are confused and powerless?
It can’t be about the law — undocumented students are entitled to a public education under Plyler v. Doe. It can’t be about money — undocumented immigrants consistently pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits, including public education. And it can’t be about education — we are struggling enough as it is, with 3,000 third graders retained statewide for their reading scores, and massive brain drain in higher education. Hoosier schools don’t need another challenge piled onto them.
So far, letting ICE into schools seems to have only accomplished one thing: a nationwide spike in chronic absenteeism. It has forced schools to move or close, and left students afraid to attend, or grieving the loss of their friends. But it doesn’t seem to have made schools safer or more effective — quite the opposite.
Public educators care about our students, and we want them to be safe. If our schools become a target for violence against our children, it will be hard to convince any teacher that it isn’t our job to protect them.
Ronak Shah is a middle school science teacher in Indianapolis.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Rokita wants ICE in IPS schools. We train to keep masked intruders out. | Opinion
Reporting by Ronak Shah / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
