By Marissa Yelenick

Active shooter drills in Maryland schools will be different next school year under a new set of state guidelines meant to limit the impact those drills have on the mental health of students.

The  are designed to prohibit trauma-inducing elements like imitation of gunfire or explosions. They also require school systems to notify parents in advance when students will be practicing what to do in the event of an active shooter in their buildings.

The new guidelines were released by the Maryland Center for School Safety this fall, ordered by a new  requiring the center to draft new parameters and create a new process for collecting and analyzing data on their effectiveness. The center will also look into the psychological impact the shooter drills have on staff, parents and students.

Parts of the guidelines — including bans on gunfire and the requirement to notify parents — have already gone into effect because they are explicit in state law. The full set of guidelines will be put into effect at the beginning of the academic year in 2025.

“The mental health crisis that we see in our young people is undeniable,” said Del. Jared Solomon (D-Montgomery), who sponsored the measure in the House earlier this year. “As we normalize having to deal with school shootings, we are creating more anxiety and more issues among young people.”

While schools have long practiced safety drills, active shooter drills are relatively new, following the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, according to the guidelines.

While school systems have made an effort to keep students safe by implementing active shooter drills, concerns have been raised  about the impact these drills have on student’s mental health. This led to the April passage of the Maryland bill, as well as  signed by President Joe Biden to increase federal guidance on the subject.

Maryland’s new guidelines, released in October, call for unified terminology between districts to discourage miscommunication between the school system and the relevant public. They intend to increase communication between staff and students to create an open dialogue where everyone feels comfortable raising concerns, as well as creating a diverse planning team who will work on planning the drills and doing a post-analysis of how it went and any shortcomings it faced.

The guidelines emphasize that active shooter drills are not a one-size-fits-all matter, and should be adjusted to fit the age group.

“These are going to be part of a young person’s life for the foreseeable future, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t do them in a way that is both trauma-informed and age appropriate,” Solomon said. “It’s really important that the way school systems do these types of events reflects a care and age appropriateness of the grades that are being impacted.”

The guidelines also recommend that a mechanism be established to pause or stop the drill when necessary, for schools to notify parents before and after all drills to increase trust and communication, and to allow students and staff who feel uncomfortable to opt-out of the drills.

The lead sponsors of the bill, Solomon and Sen. Cheryl Kagan (D-Montgomery), felt that the impact guns have on today’s children needs to be mitigated as much as possible, and worked to balance a focus on their safety while prioritizing their mental health.

“The law that Del. Solomon and I sponsored and passed tried to walk the fine line of thoughtful preparation that isn’t traumatic,” Kagan said. “And we also had to consider parents and community members who are understandably alarmed and concerned when they see the impact of these drills … Our concern was that [the drills] were not being strategic in how they were handled, and were actually causing trauma for those involved.”

One active shooter drill that occurred in Solomon’s district served as a driving force for his involvement.

“Families were literally getting texts from their kids saying, ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again,’ and it was a drill. They didn’t know,” said Solomon. “There was no requirement prior to this for a school or a school system to notify families before or after.”

Additional motivation for the bill included shared experiences from other parents Solomon spoke to, he said. Many shared their frustrations at the lack of foresight they had into when the drills would be taking place and what would happen during them, which prevented parents from having appropriate conversations with their children to prepare them.

Starting in January, schools will distribute a new survey made by the National Center for School Mental Health to gather feedback from staff, parents and students on how effective the drills are, and the mental impact they have on all involved.

“The goal is not to create fear but to instill confidence and preparedness,” said the guidelines from the Maryland Center for School Safety. “By working together as a community, schools can foster safe and supportive learning environments.”

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“I’m directing the members of my cabinet to return to me within 110 days with resources and information for schools to improve active-shooter drills, minimize this harm, create age-appropriate content and communicate with parents before and after these drills happen,” Biden said during a Thursday afternoon White House event. “We just have to do better and we can do better.” 

Students nationwide participate in active-shooter drills, between school districts and have received mixed reviews as to their effectiveness from students, parents and educators. In some states, including New York, lawmakers have sought to scale back routine drills amid concerns they’ve exacerbated the youth mental health crisis. A approved this summer bans realistic drills that use props and actors to mimic real-world school shooting scenarios. 

Biden also ordered on Thursday the creation of a new task force to assess the threat of conversion kits that allow semi-automatic guns to be modified into fully automatic weapons, so-called “ghost guns” without serial numbers and weapons created with 3D printers. 

The efforts fit into the president’s agenda to toughen gun laws and prevent mass shootings. The Rose Garden announcement also featured Vice President Kamala Harris, who in a tight presidential race against Republican Donald Trump has positioned herself as a gun owning-Democrat in favor of stricter firearms restrictions. Trump has the endorsement of the National Rifle Association.  

“It is a false choice to suggest you are either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away,” Harris said. “I am in favor of the Second Amendment and I believe we need to reinstate the assault weapons ban and pass universal background checks, safe storage laws and red flag laws.” 

Active shooter drills have become routine in schools nationwide although a White House fact sheet notes there is “very limited research on how to design and deploy” them in a way that’s effective without becoming harmful in themselves. Though the executive order doesn’t mandate the drills or specific strategies on how to conduct them, it directs the U.S. Education Department and the Department of Homeland Security to publish a report outlining the existing research on their efficacy, how to design them in ways that are age-appropriate and “how to prevent students and educators from experiencing trauma or psychological stress associated with these drills.” 

Rob Wilcox, the deputy director of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, told The 74 on Wednesday that the variation in how drills are being conducted presents a need for federal officials to analyze their usefulness and provide guidance around the best path forward. 

Along with “traditional lockdown drills” where students are instructed to shelter in place behind closed doors, he said the Biden administration has been warned about the psychological harms of “unannounced simulations” where “fake guns, fake blood, fake gunshots” and a militarized police response are used to portray real-world assaults. 

“The president and vice president have heard from parents and students across the country about the need to know more about these drills and the need to really understand what our kids are going through,” Wilcox said. “What is the effective way to do it and what are the harmful ways?”

Traumatizing — or empowering? 

Teachers are split on the value of active-shooter drills, according to released this month. Fewer than half of educators said the drills have prepared them for a school shooting. More than two-thirds said they have had no impact on their perceptions of campus safety and just a fifth said they made them feel more safe.

A Pew Research Center survey found that a quarter of teachers experienced lockdowns in the 2022-23 school year because of gun incidents at their campuses. While 39% of teachers gave their schools a fair or poor job of training them to deal with active assailants, a smaller share — 30% — gave their school leadership an excellent or very good rating.

About two-thirds of parents of K-12 students say that children should be required to participate in at least one active-shooter drill per year and 83% were confident their kids’ schools were well equipped to keep them safe, released last fall. While 80% of respondents said the drill should be “evidence-based and age-appropriate,” just 36% said they should feature the sounds of guns or gunshots. 

that active-shooter drills , but other researchers have sought to combat that narrative. A in the peer-reviewed Journal of School Violence found children exposed to gun violence feel safer after undergoing lockdown drills. 

Research into the psychological impact of active-shooter drills and lockdown drills has generally treated all procedures as one in the same, said Jaclyn Schildkraut, the lead author of the Journal of School Violence report and executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at New York’s Rockefeller Institute of Government. Given that schools have deployed a range of drills — and because some efforts may be more effective than others — she said it’s “very important that we do have very clear guidance about what schools are being asked to do.”

Drills that seek to mimic active shootings have, in particular, become a point of controversy. In one in 2019, teachers reported injuries after they were shot with pellet guns during a mock shooting simulation at their elementary school. While some drills have taught kids to shelter in place during a shooting, others have instructed kids to use school supplies as makeshift weapons and fight back against an armed assailant. In some communities, schools have and as a solution to help kids defend themselves. 

But the drills, including those criticized for traumatizing kids, have been credited with saving lives during campus shootings, which remain statistically rare but have reached record highs in the last several years. During a shooting at Michigan’s Oxford High School in 2021, a 16-year-old student was reportedly shot as he charged at the assailant — an act that cost the star running back his life but the county sheriff said likely saved his classmates. 

“We don’t light schools on fire to practice a fire drill, yet we know that some schools are simulating active-shooter situations to practice for an active shooter,” Schildkraut said. 

The effects of conducting realistic shooting scenarios, she said, should not be conflicted with the impacts of less-invasive emergency preparation like lockdowns. 

Keeping guns locked

Thursday’s executive order coincided with the release of a new Education Department tool designed to encourage families to keep their guns at home behind lock and key. 

The outlines state safe-storage and child-access prevention laws, which have been adopted in 31 states and penalize gun owners who fail to lock their weapons or who provide access to them to an unsupervised child. Though no such laws exist at the federal level, the Education Department website says the state-based efforts are an “important step towards keeping our youth, schools, and communities safe.”

The website also features examples of community and school district measures to promote firearm storage, including by the Cincinnati, Ohio, school district and a campaign at Colorado’s Cherry Creek School District, which distributed several hundred gun locks to families for free last year.

“When school administrators communicate with parents about safe storage of firearms in their homes, it motivates parents to act,” Biden said Thursday. 

About three-quarters of school shooters get their guns from a parent or another close relative, according to . In about half of cases, the guns had been readily accessible.

Prosecutors have increasingly turned to the actions — and inactions — of the parents of school shooters, who are . 

Earlier this month, a 54-year-old father from Georgia was arrested on murder charges after his 14-year-old son was accused of carrying out a shooting at Apalachee High School that left two of his classmates and two math teachers dead. The boy was given an AR-15-style rifle as a holiday gift last year.

In April, Michigan parents Jennifer and James Crumbley were each given decade-long prison sentences in first-of-their-kind convictions after their son, who was 15 years old at the time, killed four students in the 2021 Oxford High School shooting. The parents gave their son the 9-millimeter handgun used in the assault as a Christmas gift and stored it in an unlocked drawer in their bedroom despite warning signs the teenager planned to act violently. 

“After current events, especially in Georgia, it’s beyond clear that safe storage in the home is essential,” Wilcox, the White House gun prevention office deputy director, told The 74. “Fourteen-year-olds should not have access to assault weapons.”