International Armoring Corp. makes ballistic materials that can be applied to cars, windows, and walls. Their customers are businesspeople, celebrities, dignitaries, heads of state... and as of recently, educators worried about school shootings, Businessweek reports.
The company makes discreet and functional armored protection for use in elementary schools. To avoid making classrooms look like fortresses:
IAC designed special walls it calls Safeboards that can be used as whiteboards -- and can also withstand the firepower of handguns, automatic weapons, and nearly every shoulder-mounted weapon. When teachers hear an alarm or suspect trouble, they can slide the whiteboards over the doors to their classrooms.
Corner partitions made up of sliding walls (pictured) can be installed for more protection, buying time until authorities get there; each one can hold 37 kindergarteners. The sliding whiteboard starts at $1,850, and each corner partition costs about $5,800. For this new school year, six school districts have bought IAC’s ballistic classroom equipment.
Armor made for students and teachers are growing in popularity. In fact, an increasingly large industry has grown around marketing protective gear to schools, TIME reports.
Proponents say these products provide more than just a psychological fix, but critics need a lot more persuading, NPR reports:
"After every high-profile school shooting, we have an explosion of gadgets, gurus and charlatans," says school safety consultant Kenneth Trump, who is openly disdainful of the bulletproof items, but more so of training programs that advocate confrontation. "Corporations see dollar signs," he says, "and believe that schools have huge budgets to buy new products and services."
[Businessweek, NPR, TIME]
Image: Safeboard
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