Our classroom supplies wish list is fully funded! Thank you to our generous PTA! One of the new items our school will purchase this year is this Wound Lock syringe, a medically proven device. Now, each classroom’s first aid kit will include six of these syringes so that our teachers, who are our first responders, can help stop bleeding from gunshot wounds on the spot.
#notonemore #armmewith #classroomsupplies #teacherwishlist #donorschoose #teachersupplies #classroomsafety #firstresponders #teachertribe
—July 18, 2018
Early control of severe bleeding may prevent shock and may be life-saving. The United States Army Institute of Surgical Research reports that 30 to 40 percent of civilian deaths by traumatic injury are caused by hemorrhaging; of those deaths, 33 to 56 percent occur before the patient reaches an emergency care facility.
Since 2014, X-Stat devices, made by the Oregon-based medical device company RevMedx, have been used by the military to save the lives of wounded soldiers. These innovative pocket-sized syringes stop the bleeding caused by knife and gunshot wounds, and were recently featured in Fixes, a column in The New York Times by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Tina Rosenberg. Approved by the FDA for civilian use, X-Stat devices are now available commercially.
One of the members of our editorial team, Casey McConville, brought this tampon-like syringe to our attention and asked, “How weird and sad would it be to have these in classrooms? At the same time, it could sadly be so practical…” (A typical school bleeding control kit contains a tourniquet, compression bandage, compressed gauze, bleeding control gauze, dressing, emergency shears and in more and more cases, the QuikClot Bleeding Control Dressing.)
We were not alone in our thoughts. More and more schools are also thinking in this vein.
Responding to Literary Safari’s email inquiry about whether RevMedx has any school customers, Will Fox, vice President of sales and marketing at, wrote that the company does “have a handful of schools that have expressed interest in not only XSTAT but all of [our] bleeding control kits.” Fox also told us, “Although XSTAT 30 is the product with the most notoriety, the product that really fits for civilian applications (including school kits) is our XSTAT 12 product.”
(We requested a longer interview to learn more about RevMedX’s work with schools and their bleeding control kits, but received no response.)
These sticks and stones will break your bones. But your bullets will never break us.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀A shout out to the Butler Middle School PTA & Board of Ed for buying a Classroom Weapons Kit for each of our teachers! These boxes contain a set of consistent tools for teachers to use against an active shooter. Our old policy of simply turning off the lights, shutting the door and hiding is no longer enough. Now we have the option of fighting back. #notonemore #armmewith
#butlerstrong #backtoschoolshopping#ad #classroomsupplies#teacherwishlist #donorschoose#parentteacher #teachersupplies #gokit#gobucket #activeintruder#schoolshooting
—July 18, 2018
Schools around the nation have come up with alternative options to arming teachers with guns. They include equipping teachers with baseball bats and buckets of river rocks. Meanwhile, lawmakers (as the video below of the Pennsylvania House Education Committee Hearing on School Safety shows) are quite comfortable placing the onus on school districts to find solutions to gun violence in schools.
The surreal nature of these developments led us to imagine a “Go Bucket” kit that would find its place in the ever expanding School Safety marketplaces.
20 school districts in our state alone have installed bulletproof shelters in their classrooms since the shooting at William Butler Middle School. The shelters are AR-15 tested and made from steel, aluminim, titanium and ceramic. In a time when we feel scared, these shelters give a feeling of hope and comfort. We are grateful to Ms. Marie Marshall, CEO of Shop & Drop, for donating 35 shelters to our school in memory of her son Ethan Marshall (October 8, 2004 — March 5, 2018), one of the seven victims we lost in the tragic event on our campus earlier this year. Our teachers will have a chance to select custom exterior designs and shelter shapes for their classrooms, and we expect these to be installed during the winter break. #armmewith #notonemore
#butlerstrong #backtoschoolshopping#ad #classroomsupplies #teacherwishlist #donorschoose #parentteacher #teachersupplies #gokit #gobucket #activeintruder #schoolshooting
—July 20, 2018
Yes, bulletproof shelters are a real thing, and they are being actively marketed to scared schools and teacher around the nation whose fears echo those of Catherine Collett, 28, a sixth-grade teacher in Northern Virginia, who worries about what she would do in the case of an active shooter incident:
“Could I empty out the cabinet and throw out the shelves and put kids in the cabinets? Is my better chance just barricading the doors? Can I move furniture that fast? Do I ask my kids to help me?”
Overall, the business of school security is a thriving industry in the current cera of mass shootings. According to market research company IHS Markit, the education sector of the market for security equipment and services reached $2.7 billion in revenue in 2017, and the market is expected to grow an average of one percent annually, reaching $2.8 billion by 2021.
As The Atlantic reports:
Each major school shooting — Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland — has helped expand a multi-billion dollar industry that sells not just sophisticated surveillance technology, but also high-priced consultants to explain it all to anxious educators. The recent tragedies are providing momentum — not to mention funds, including millions of dollars in federal money — to initiatives that aim to keep children safe. As the tragedies have piled up, some education leaders say they’re inundated with sales pitches from security companies, each with the same basic message: You could be next.
Is this a case of opportunistic growth? The Security Industry Association is a co-sponsor of two key pieces of legislation that allow federal dollars to be spent on school safety equipment and technologies.
