This gives new meaning to the nickname “Keystone State.”
Pennsylvania’s Blue Mountain School District has equipped every classroom with a five-gallon bucket of river stones as a defense in the event of an active shooter.
“If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance to any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full of students armed with rocks, and they will be stoned,” district superintendent David Helsel told the state House Education Committee last week.
The school district, in northeastern Pennsylvania’s coal country, about 90 miles northwest of Philadelphia, said the rocks are meant as a “last-ditch response,” along with other security measures against armed intruders.
“We have devices installed in our doors to help to secure them, to make it very difficult to break though,” Helsel told the local ABC affiliate, WNEP. “We also train kids and talk about barricading the doors.”
The school district reportedly has one maintenance worker trained as an armed security guard and plans to train other support staff members.
The buckets of rocks gained so much national media attention that Helsel used the school district’s Facebook page to elaborate on security plans to parents, students and staff.
