Sandy Hook. Parkland. Oxford. Three of the many school shootings that have happened during teenagers time in school. The sad fact of reality is that these shootings have become apart of our lives. We turn on the news and we’re devastated, yet not surprised it happened. We have to go to school everyday hoping we come out alive, hoping our school doesn’t become another number on the list of shootings. We cannot change our past or even predict our futures, but we can take the safety precautions that will save lives.

As city’s and states become more populated, school districts are being flooded with students. With this schools have gotten bigger, usually with multiple floors, yet there’s no way to get out if you’re on the second floor. In most schools you can break the windows but if you jump out you risk breaking many bones and then you can’t get away anyways, defeating the purpose of you jumping out of the window. A solution to this would be getting window ladders for EVERY room that is on a second floor. In the event you need to escape you can break the window and lower down the ladder, once you get close enough to the ground you can jump. This allows students to get out of the building in a safer way, it’s not super safe but definitely better than jumping from a two story window.

Not only would this work in the event of an active shooter, but also a fire. If there’s a fire and you’re on the second floor, you can’t always get out by going downstairs. This would leave you trapped in a room in a building that’s on fire, so not something anyone wants. You would simply do the same thing as before, break the window, lower the ladder, and climb down. Having these in rooms will not only help students feel safer, but they can save lives of many students and teachers.