Law limits "active-shooter" drills

OLYMPIA — Gov. Jay Inslee has signed into law a bill that limits how schools conduct “active-shooter” drills involving life-like simulations.

House Bill 1941, signed into law last week, requires any drills to be “trauma-informed and age and developmentally appropriate ” for students.

In addition, the measure requires school employees to notify all students, teachers and staff before conducting any shooting-safety lockdown drills.

“Active-shooter drills are associated with increases in depression, anxiety and fears about death among children as young as 5 years old, to high schoolers, their parents and teachers,” Rep. Amy Whalen, D-Kirkland, said, noting the bill was created in response to hearing from parents about how their children were consistently upset after active shooter drills.

At a House Education Committee meeting in February, Walen said her nephew described how shootings were simulated and students were instructed to build barricades during a drill at his high school.

“School shootings are rare, and we should probably not prepare our children to be anxious and afraid at schools,” she said.

More than 40 instances of a gun being brandished or fired in a school setting have been recorded in the state since 1990, according to data compiled by the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s K-12 School Shooting Database research project.

However, of the more than 40,000 gun deaths annually nationwide, school shootings account for less than 1%.

The bill will go into effect on June 8, 90-days after the end of the 2022 Legislative session.

The bill was signed into law onto two months after a boy was sentenced for killing a classmate at nearby Freeman High School along state Highway 27 in Freeman.

Caleb Sharpe, 20, pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree murder, three counts of attempted murder and multiple counts of second-degree assault in a 2017 school shooting.

Sharpe was 15 when he killed Sam Strahan on campus Sept. 13, 2017, and wounded three other students, records show.

On that day, he brought a duffel bag concealing an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a handgun to school, record show. When he got to the second floor of the high school, he pulled out the rifle and started to load it with .223 caliber ammunition.

It jamed, so he pulled out the handgun and shot Strahan as the teenager approached, court records show. He then shot and wounded three other students.