Schools preparing for the worst with active-shooter drills

CARMEL, Ind. -- "Lockdown, lockdown, lockdown. This is a drill."

With those seven words, calmly announced over the intercom system, an eerie silence overtook a bustling elementary school of 650 students in suburban Indianapolis. Lights were turned off and blinds shut. In some classrooms, doors were barricaded with small desks and chairs.

From start to finish, the "intruder drill" at the Forest Dale Elementary School in Carmel took about 10 minutes -- an exercise now as routine at the school as a fire drill. What might sound terrifying to some parents has become the norm in many schools nationwide after a rash of school shootings.

More than two-thirds of school districts surveyed by the U.S. Government Accountability Office conduct "active shooter" exercises.

Some schools make their drills very realistic, simulating the sounds of gunshots and using smoke and fake blood. In one case, armed police officers with weapons drawn burst into a Florida middle school, terrifying staff and students alike.

Staff and teachers are usually given warning drills will happen.

GAO investigators said one district noted "the difficulty of striking a balance between providing knowledge and inciting fear, particularly at schools with younger children."

Between 2000 and 2013, there were 25 shootings at U.S. elementary and secondary schools, resulting in 57 deaths, according to the FBI.

These numbers include the shooting at Connecticut's Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 when an intruder gunned down 20 first-graders and six educators.

Students at Forest Dale began participating in twice-a-semester intruder drills even before Sandy Hook.

"We do fire drills, but we don't expect there to be a fire. When you get on an airplane, they talk to you about all sorts of safety procedures, but not because they expect the plane to crash, but because you just need to know, just in case," said D.J. Schoeff, a school resource officer in Carmel and a regional director with the National Association of School Resource Officers.

Not all schools feel the same way about the drills, and some security experts are cautious about them.

"Practice your lockdowns and diversify when you do those, different times of the day, and keep your focus on the other types of threats and day-to-day security issues without getting a tunnel vision focus on active shooters," said school safety consultant Ken Trump.

Many schools across the country don't have enough security cameras to capture the entire campus for potential threats, Trump added.

He said exiting the building can be risky if there truly is an intruder because of the uncertainty about whether there could be accomplices outside waiting. "You are leaving secure areas and evacuating into -- you don't know what," said Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services in Cleveland.

But a school psychologist, Dr. Melissa Reeves, said schools need to be prepared and conduct age-appropriate exercises like the Forest Dale drill. It's the more realistic simulation drills with props that worry Reeves.

"We do not light a fire in the hallway to practice fire drills, so why do we feel the need to bring in a fake gun, people screaming and people with makeup that looks like blood?" said Reeves, a psychologist at a pre-K through 12 school in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the president-elect of the National Association of School Psychologists. "There are other ways we can train staff members and students to be prepared."

Jennifer Cassidy, who has a second-grader and fifth-grader at Forest Dale, said her kids never come home talking about the intruder drills.

"I don't think that's because they are traumatized or freaked out. I think they just think it's just another part of school," she said. "At first I felt like, I don't understand why we have to do these. Then, after Sandy Hook, I was glad we do these, and I feel completely different about them."