Price of safety in Federal Way schools | Letters

Published 2:53 pm Friday, December 21, 2012

In light of recent events, consider the following.

While the designer of the recent school upgrades continues to get awards for his “genius” design and $17.5 million budget, many of the students and teachers would be hopeless in the event something like what happened in Connecticut happened in our district.

The windows, which the designers planned as emergency exits, are hardly big enough to fit a third-grader through, let alone an adult. Those same windows have spring-loaded safety latches that no one seems to think the teachers need to know how to open, despite complaints that in the event of an emergency, everyone including maintenance and administrative staff would be ill-equipped.

Combine that with the fact that full wings of rooms are locked off from the rest of the school, and the teachers aren’t given keys to get in, and are told simply to wait for someone to come get them, or run through the open common area — and you’ve got a whole portion of the school who would be left as sitting ducks for someone like the gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary.

Let’s do the math on this one: 23 classrooms. 400 students. Zero escape routes. Congratulations to the schools on their “recycled jean insulation” and “concrete floors with radiant heat.” Apparently, that’s the price for safety.

Corinna Fabre, Federal Way